Written

For

The

Australian

-

How

to

avoid

losing

Centrelink

pension

benefits

with

a

little

rearranging

Did you know you could build yourself a mausoleum of any price tag and Centrelink wouldn't count a cent of it against your age pension? It's one of the quirkier corners of our welfare system, and after last year's sharemarket surge pushed many retirees closer to the assets test threshold, it's worth knowing where the loopholes sit.

Let me run through a few that most retirees miss.

The family home is exempt, and so is money you spend renovating it. But here's what many don't realise — if you sell your home and haven't bought the next one yet, the sale proceeds can stay exempt from the assets test for up to 24 months (or 36 if you're building). That exemption holds even if you park the money in investments, though deeming still applies to the income test. Money you set aside for renovations on the new place can also be quarantined — just keep the quotes and contracts as evidence.

Funeral planning is another underused lever. Funeral bonds up to $15,500 per person are exempt, and prepaid funerals have no upper limit at all. Splash out on the premium casket, the venue, the transport — pay for it now and it's off your assessable asset ledger. Just don't double up: if you hold both a bond and a prepaid funeral, only the prepaid one keeps its exemption.

My favourite though is the super accumulation trick for couples with an age gap. If one partner is still under 67, their super in accumulation phase is invisible to the assets test. Commuting, say, $100,000 from a pension account back to accumulation can tip a couple over the eligibility line and unlock the pension concession card — often worth thousands annually. The trade-off is 15% tax on earnings inside accumulation versus tax-free pension phase, so the numbers need to stack up.

None of this is about gaming the system — it's about knowing rules that are genuinely there to be used.