You are 60, or nearly. The work itself is fine, but five days of it has started to feel like six. You have thought about asking for a four-day week, and then done the sum in your head: a fifth of your pay, gone. So you say nothing, and another year goes by.
There is a rule in the superannuation system built for exactly this moment. It is called a transition to retirement income stream — a TRIS, or more commonly a TTR pension. It lets you draw an income from your super while you are still working, so you can cut your hours without cutting your household income. Noel Whittaker has been writing about this strategy for years, and it remains one of the most useful and least understood parts of the super rules.
What a transition to retirement pension actually is
Your super sits in what is called accumulation phase: money goes in, earnings build up, and you generally can't touch it. A TTR pension moves part of that balance into a separate pension account that pays you a regular income, while your employer's compulsory contributions keep flowing into your ordinary super account.
You can start one once you reach preservation age, which is now 60 for everyone. You do not have to retire, resign, or drop a single hour to open one — although as you will see, the version that helps most people does involve dropping hours.
Two limits apply. You must draw at least 4% of the account balance each year, and no more than 10%. That 10% ceiling is the important one: a TTR pension is not an early-access door to your super. It is a tap, not a bucket.
The version most people want: fewer days, same money
Say you are 60, earning $110,000, and you move from five days a week to four. Your salary drops to about $88,000 — a fall of roughly $22,000 before tax, or closer to $15,000 in your hand once tax is allowed for.
If you have $400,000 in super, you could start a TTR pension with, say, $250,000 of it and draw $15,000 a year. That is 6% of the pension account, comfortably inside the 4% to 10% range. Because you are over 60, those pension payments are tax-free — they don't even appear in your tax return.
The result is one fewer day at work, take-home pay roughly where it was, and your employer still contributing to your super on the four days you do work. Your balance grows more slowly than it would have, and that is the real cost. But it is a cost you can see and measure, rather than a vague fear that stops you asking.
The other version: same hours, less tax
The second use of a TTR pension has nothing to do with working less. You keep your hours, salary sacrifice a chunk of your pay into super, and replace the lost take-home with tax-free pension payments.
The gain comes from the difference between two tax rates. In 2026-27, income between $45,001 and $135,000 is taxed at 30 cents in the dollar plus the 2% Medicare levy. Money going into super as a concessional contribution is taxed at 15% inside the fund. On $20,000 redirected into super, that is roughly $6,400 of tax replaced by $3,000 — around $3,400 a year that stays in your retirement savings instead of going to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
Two things to keep straight. First, the concessional contributions cap for 2026-27 is $32,500, and that cap includes your employer's compulsory contributions — go over it and the excess is taxed at your marginal rate. Second, earnings inside a TTR pension that is not yet in retirement phase are taxed at 15%, the same as accumulation. The old tax-free-earnings version of this strategy was shut down years ago. What is left is the contributions tax saving, which is still real, but smaller.
The rules that trip people up
A TTR pension moves into retirement phase — where the 10% ceiling falls away and earnings become tax-free — when you turn 65, or earlier if you tell your fund you have retired, or in cases of permanent incapacity or terminal illness. Turning 65 happens automatically. The others do not: your fund needs to be told.
Beyond that, the practical traps are ordinary ones. Your fund may charge a separate fee for the pension account. Insurance held in your super can lapse or reduce when you move money out, so check the cover before you shift anything. Any Centrelink payment in the household is assessed differently once you have a pension account. And if your employer says yes to four days but the workload stays at five, the strategy has solved a money problem you did not have and left the real one untouched.
What if you're behind, or it doesn't stack up
If your balance is modest — under about $200,000 — a TTR pension may not be worth the paperwork and the extra account fee. Drawing 4% of $150,000 is $6,000 a year, which will not replace a day's pay, and every dollar you take out is a dollar no longer compounding.
In that situation the more powerful move is usually the opposite one: keep working the hours you have, put more in rather than take anything out, and use the catch-up concessional rules if your total super balance lets you. Your last few working years are when contributions have the shortest time to grow but the biggest immediate tax effect, and that is worth something.
It is also worth being honest about what you are buying. A TTR pension does not create money. It brings some of your own retirement savings forward so you can buy time now, at the cost of a smaller balance later. For someone who is exhausted at 61 and would otherwise stop work entirely, that trade can be excellent. For someone who is simply curious whether they could squeeze out a bit more, it usually isn't.
If you want the whole retirement picture rather than one strategy — how much you need, what the age pension does, how to turn a balance into an income that lasts — Retirement Made Simple (6th Edition) by Noel Whittaker walks through it in plain English, updated for the current financial year. Buy direct from the author for $19.95, delivered instantly in PDF and EPUB.
This article is general information only and doesn't take account of your personal circumstances. Figures are current at time of writing and change each financial year. Consider seeking advice before acting.