Retirement age calculator: When can you access your super or the Age Pension?

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In all the talk about retirement in Australia, there is often an assumption that there is a definite line in the sand where you retire and start to receive income from your super and/or the Age Pension.

In fact, the three things don’t necessarily happen at the same time.

For starters, there is no ‘retirement age’ in Australia. You can retire from the workforce whenever you choose or work for the rest of your life. However, if you want to draw an income from your super or the Age Pension, there are two ages that are important to know for planning your retirement:

• Preservation age: This is the age when you can access your super funds provided you have also met a condition of release (such as retiring or turning 65).
• Age Pension age: This is the age when you can access Australia’s Age Pension, provided that you’re an Australian resident and you pass both the income test and the assets test.

The ages at which you become eligible to access your super and the Age Pension have changed over the years and depend on your date of birth. Like many things to do with retirement and super, working out these red letter days for yourself is not as straightforward as it could be.

So, to help you plan we’ve built a retirement age calculator.

How to use the retirement age calculator

Note: When the calculator first appears, by default it shows the result for 1 January 1960.

In the calculator below:

1. Click on the date.
2. Select the year of your birth from the dropdown menu.
3. Select ‘next’ until you find the month of your birth, then select your birthday.
4. If you were born before 1 January 1949 you will also need to select your sex.