Sadly, all too often that is not how things pan out.

"I have seen it time and time again," Adele Martin of Firefly Wealth says. "Businesses are not worth nearly as much as people thought they would be. People slave away for 40 years and have nothing to show for it."

Kellie Payne of advice firm RI Caloundra says: "Often you have a greater value of your business than other people do."

It is an issue that could affect many women, given that there are more than 400,000 females running businesses in Australia.

The moral is that business owners need to contribute to super, or at least set aside money for their retirement. The catch is that, unlike salaried employees, the self-employed are not required to inject money into super, so they have to be responsible for their own contributions.

Unfortunately, too few do.

According to AustralianSuper, the country's biggest industry super fund, 25 per cent of self-employed people have no super savings.

That is a frightening figure, especially when you consider that fewer people will be able to rely on the age pension as governments seek to keep the national budget in check.

Another issue is that under the current rules, eligible small businesses may be entitled to place up to $1.35 million into super tax free when they sell, but this may not always be the case.

"The government could change the rules at anytime," Tanaya Bendall-Green of Strategies for Life says.

Super works differently for the self-employed. Rather than being mandated to make regular contributions to their super fund, they can put in a lump sum at the end of each financial year and claim a 100 per cent tax deduction. The tax deduction can be claimed on amounts of up to $30,000 for individuals under the age of 50, and $35,000 for individuals over that age. If a deduction is claimed, super contributions will be taxed at 15 per cent.

Martin recommends that the self-employed start injecting small amounts into super regularly  "and build".

She says: "I prefer to do it monthly rather than wait until the end of the year."

One issue to think about is that if your marginal tax rate is less than 15 per cent, it will make sense to make after-tax contributions to super, rather than pre-tax contributions. Happily, entrepreneurs don't have to decide whether to claim a deduction until the end of the year.

Taking stock and paying super

Her life reads almost like the sort of press release that organisations pay her to produce. Beautiful child, tick. Successful husband, tick. Interesting, often glamorous, lifestyle, tick.

But perhaps the biggest tick for Sara Dagres is her public relations business, The People Agency, which puts her among the many happily self-employed.

"It's measured by the success of my clients,"  Dagres says.

And the 43-year-old is ensuring her own long-term success by obtaining advice about paying herself superannuation.

It's eight years since Dagres  went out on her own, after a long career in fashion PR and events management in Sydney. Now, working from home in her home town of Melbourne, she is taking stock.

Like many women her age there is a lot happening in her life.

"I never thought about topping up super when I was single and living the life but now I've made it into the next level,"  Dagres says. 
"Financial security is important and it's balancing that out with my work and business and being a mum."

Dagres' career took off when she worked for Simon Lock of Spin Communications who established Australian Fashion Week in 1996. "He couldn't find someone who could type fast and look good in the role," she says. "I did. My life was very much like Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City."

Dagres established a fashion label in Bali, worked with Chic Model Management and then in events PR. "I learnt the knack of PR," she says.  "I'm not scared of picking up the phone and making a cold call."

"Then at 35 I met my partner, a businessman, who looked at me and said: 'Why are you working for all those other people?'

"I've worked hard to get here. I did my time up to 35 – it wasn't all glamour jobs I did."

The information in this article should not be taken as financial advice. Please consider your personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

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