For many people superannuation has been a secondary objective for most of their working lives, with paying down mortgages and the costs associated with raising a family taking precedence through necessity.

That is all very understandable, but it can leave you with the feeling that you should have saved more through super as you approach retirement.

If you are in that situation then there are some strategies that you can employ to help, particularly as you hit 60.

Until July super preservation ages varied with when you were born, but since July 1 the passage of time means 60 has become the preservation age for everyone.

That means from there you can access your super tax free, giving you lots of possibilities to build retirement balances among other things.

Once you hit 65 you have full rights to your super regardless of employment status, giving you ultimate superannuation freedom.

Age 60 and super

Once you hit 60 you need to trigger an employment-ending event to get access to your super.

That can be as simple as losing or quitting a job with the intention of remaining retired.

If you do that you can access your super tax free, which gives you possibilities for late-stage super balance boosts.

Becoming unemployed

This can be quitting or losing a job and filling in a form to your super fund saying you will not be going back to work.

It can also be losing part of a job if you have two or more roles in a particular employer.

Remember in both of these situations your circumstances are allowed to change.

That means you can choose to go back to work in a few months after changing your mind on the attractiveness of retirement.

The move has to be reasonable – don’t quit on Friday and go back to work on Monday or the Australian Taxation Office will chase you for pulling a swiftie.

But if you do decide to go back to work you can use tax-free super withdrawals to boost your super savings.

That’s because you retain the right to access your super as you choose tax free even if you go back to work.

It would work like this.

You could decide to make large salary sacrifice or personal super contributions that would greatly reduce the amount you are paying in income tax.

That’s because those contributions would only be taxed at 15 per cent, not your marginal rate which is 30 per cent above $45,000 and topping out at 47c in the dollar including the Medicare levy.

You could use tax-free super withdrawals to make up any income shortfall resulting from the super contributions strategy and the tax-free status of super would mean whatever gain you make on lower income tax could be salted away in your super fund for post retirement.

Transition to retirement

This is an attractive arrangement for anyone wanting to either boost their super in the last years of work or cut back the working hours without cutting back on income.

It is available for people between the ages of 60 and 65 and works like this.

You choose to move a part of your super account into a transition to retirement (TTR) pension account, which is paid to you as income at a rate of between 4 and 10 per cent a year depending on what you choose.

Remember you cannot withdraw a lump sum from TTR, nor can you top up a TTR account once it has commenced, so think about how much you want to contribute hard at the get go.

Like the example above, you can use TTR to give you extra cash to boost your super contributions, with the income tax benefit helping you get over any difficulties arising through income reduction.

TTR is not quite as attractive tax wise as retirement as the earnings in your TTR account will be taxed at 15 per cent compared to zero in a retirement fund.

But you will not be taxed on the TTR pension so that is where the benefit lies.

You can either use this as a way to boost super savings through working full time while drawing a TTR pension or cut back the working hours and enjoy some of the benefit of your super savings early.

The second choice will give you some tax advantage but erode your super balance somewhat.

Rob Goudie, principal of Consortium Private Wealth, says such strategies are popular “because people are increasingly retiring with some debt, which is stopping them utilising concessional contributions”.

Access to extra super helps them deal with the debt and boost contributions, Goudie said.

How much can you contribute?

Using a TTR pension does not exempt you from normal superannuation contribution rules.

Currently you can contribute a maximum of $30,000 congressionally per year to super so if you were to put $500,000 into a TTR account and withdraw $50,000, or 10 per cent a year, that all can’t go into super.

However carry-forward arrangements could allow some people using the above strategies to invest more in super.

Carry-forward arrangements allow people to invest up to five years of unused concessional caps into super as long as they have less than $500,000 in their fund.

Remember that limit includes all your super holdings, not just what you’ve got in TTR.

Given that the standard 11.5 per cent super guarantee payment on a $200,000 salary is $23,000, there is still plenty of head room for most people to put extra into super using the above strategies.

The New Daily is owned by Industry Super Holdings