About Retirement Calculators

Meet the guide behind the map

Why I Built This Site

Hi, I’m Mary Benton. I’m a financial planner based in Australia, and for over 15 years, I’ve helped Australians navigate their way into retirement—many with confidence, some with uncertainty, and nearly all with the same question:

“Where do I even start?”

Retirement planning is like planning a cross-country road trip. There’s excitement, yes—but also detours, speed bumps, and lots of unfamiliar road signs. Many people start the drive without a clear map—and wind up lost or overwhelmed. I wanted to change that.

RetirementCalculators.com.au is the resource I wish every Aussie had: a GPS for your retirement journey. Whether you want to chart your own path, get help on a few key turns, or have someone sit beside you for the ride, this site gives you the map, tools, and options to choose your own adventure.

About Me – Mary Benton

I’m Mary Benton, an Australian financial planner specialising in retirement advice, and RetirementCalculators.com.au is the site I wished existed when I started helping people plan their retirements.

My path here ran through chartered accounting — I qualified with the ICAEW and ICAANZ — before I moved into financial planning in 2005, after struggling to find a good planner for my own needs. Retirement planning turned out to be my niche and my passion: the moment where decades of work, saving and hoping get turned into an actual life. Since then I’ve sat with hundreds of Australians at kitchen tables and in offices, working through exactly the questions this site answers.

Along the way I noticed something frustrating: the facts retirees need — pension rates, super caps, test thresholds — are all public, but they’re scattered across government websites, written in bureaucratic language, and quoted out of date on half the internet. Meanwhile, the tools that do exist mostly want your email address before they’ll tell you anything.

So I built this site around three promises:

Current figures, always — every number comes from official government sources and updates automatically at each indexation (see How We Source Our Figures).
Plain English — if my clients would not use a word, neither does this site.
No strings — the calculators are free, need no sign-up, and your answers stay on your device.

This site is educational — it shows you how the rules work and lets you test scenarios with your own numbers. It doesn’t give personal advice, and it isn’t a substitute for it. When your situation needs more than facts, that’s what the coaching calls and the find-a-planner service are for.

Away from work you’ll find me travelling, learning new skills, and fielding “but why, Granny?” questions from the grandkids — which, honestly, is excellent training for writing plain-English explanations of the assets test.

Meet the Team

We’re a small, dedicated team of professionals who believe retirement planning should feel less like filing taxes and more like planning a meaningful adventure.

Our Mission

To make retirement planning simple, clear, and personal. We want every Australian to:

And we believe they should be able to do that at their own pace, with just the right amount of help.

How This Site Works

Everything on this site is structured around your journey:

You are here: Identify your current financial position
Set your destination: Visualise your ideal retirement
Find the best route: Use our tools, courses, coaching, or expert help
Adjust along the way: Your plan is flexible, just like real life

Whether you follow one path or combine a few, the goal is simple: help you arrive with confidence.

Watch Our Welcome Video

This site isn’t about selling
products or locking you into advice-

—it’s about giving you the resources to move forward, however you choose to travel.

So buckle up. Your dream retirement is just down the road—and I’m here to help you get there.