Help your child into a home, without quietly funding it from your retirement.

Plenty of parents do exactly that. Mozo’s 2025 Bank of Mum and Dad survey found 54% of parents who help their adult children into a home dip into their own savings to do it. Seven per cent drew on their super, and 8% put up the equity in their own home as a guarantor. (The survey covers every kind of help with a home, not just deposits.)

At this stage of life, though, a gift to a child is tied to two other decisions that come out of the same money: what you’ll need to live on for the rest of your life, and what you want to leave your children when you’re gone. Families often make those decisions years apart, with different people, without connecting them. Giving well now means looking at all of them together.

ASFA (the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia) estimates a couple who own their home need about $730,000 in super at 67 for a comfortable retirement (alongside a part Age Pension), and a single person about $630,000. That comfortable lifestyle now costs a couple about $79,000 a year.

Set a deposit against those numbers and it looks different. Giving $100,000 at 62 takes more than $100,000 out of your retirement. It also takes whatever that money would have earned over the next twenty-odd years, from the pot that has to last that long. It’s more than a year of comfortable spending for a couple, given away before retirement has started.

Helping is a good instinct, and none of this is about being less generous. It’s about generosity that still works in fifteen years. The kindest thing you can do for your children is avoid becoming a financial problem for them in twenty. Help within that line.

However you describe it, money you give a child now is money that won’t be in your estate later. In Mozo’s survey, 8% of parents said they funded their help by gifting an early inheritance.

That matters for your will. Many wills are written long before this kind of decision comes up, and a will that splits everything equally doesn’t know one child has already had $100,000 unless you tell it. If you have other children, how to even that up is a question of its own, covered in keeping it fair. The point here is simpler: the gift, your will and your retirement plan should agree with each other, and they only will if you update them together.

If the help is a loan, your will can say whether any balance still owing when you die is forgiven or taken off that child’s share. Either way, it should say something. An estate lawyer can make the loan, the will and what you intend all match.

If the money is documented as a loan rather than gifted outright, you keep a path to recover it if your own circumstances change: illness, a partner who needs care, a market fall just before you stop work. A gift is gone. A loan is help you can, if you must, call back, although how easily depends on the loan terms and on your child’s ability to repay. The difference between the two is worth understanding properly before you choose gift or loan.

If you’re near pension age, or thinking ahead to aged care, one more thing applies. Centrelink lets you give away up to $10,000 a financial year, and no more than $30,000 over five financial years, without it affecting your payments. Anything above that is still counted as your asset, and deemed to earn income, for five years from the date of the gift, and aged care means testing looks back over the same five years. A loan doesn’t get around this. Money you’ve lent is counted as your asset (and deemed) for as long as it’s owed, and forgiving it later can count as a gift at that point. Services Australia’s free Financial Information Service can walk you through how this applies to you.

• If I never saw this money again, would my retirement still work?
• Have I checked this against twenty-plus years of living costs, or just against the balance today?
• What would I do if I had a health event or a major expense two years from now?
• Am I giving from surplus, or from the buffer I’m supposed to live on?
• What impact would this have on my other children? Will I need, or want, to support them as well, and can I afford to do this more than once?
• Does my will reflect this help, and does it say whether it counts against this child’s inheritance?

If any of those answers is a shrug, the number you were about to transfer probably isn’t the right number yet.

There’s usually a middle path: a smaller cash contribution, a documented loan, a guarantee structured to cap your exposure, or staging the help over time rather than handing it over in one lump. Each of them still gets your child into a home; they differ in how much of your own position you hand over to do it.

Which one is right depends on your numbers: your retirement timeline, how much of your wealth is liquid, and whether you can genuinely afford to gift at all.

The right answer depends on things an article can’t see: what you hold in super and outside it, when you plan to stop work, what your will says now, whether your other children will want help later, and how your child’s lender wants the help set up.

This is the conversation Fledge is set up for. The call is free and confidential, and we reply within 24 hours. We look at the whole picture with you and help you see:

• how much you could give without eating into what you need to live on
• how a gift, a loan or a guarantee would sit with your retirement timeline
• what your will may need to say about this help, and about your other children
• what has to be settled before any money moves

You leave knowing what matters for you, what to decide, and in what order. When you need a specialist, we introduce you to the right one: a financial adviser to test the retirement numbers, an estate lawyer to bring your will into line, or a mortgage broker if the lender’s side needs sorting.

It’s free because the specialists we introduce may pay us a referral fee if you choose to work with them. That never costs you anything, and it never changes who we recommend. You don’t need paperwork or numbers ready.

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