The Braddon adviser helping Canberrans fight back against the cost-of-living squeeze

Verity Okafor opened Groundwork Financial in a converted terrace on Lonsdale Street, Braddon, three years ago with two staff and a waiting list she expected to clear within months. Today the list runs to 11 weeks, and she has hired four more advisers since January. The firm's core product — a flat-fee financial health check priced at $490 — has become, she says, the busiest thing her practice does.

That waiting list is a signal worth paying attention to. Across Australia, households are making increasingly anxious calculations about wages, rents, mortgages and energy bills. In Canberra, where the median dwelling price sits around $847,000 according to CoreLogic's June 2026 figures, and where rental vacancy rates have hovered below 1.2 per cent for most of the past 18 months, the pressure on middle-income earners is acute — even in a city where the public service provides unusually stable employment. People who assumed they were financially comfortable are discovering they are not.

Flat fees, not percentage cuts

Groundwork's model is deliberately structured to reach clients who traditional wealth managers ignore. The standard industry model — charging a percentage of assets under management, typically between 0.8 and 1.2 per cent annually — means advisers have a commercial incentive to focus on clients with large portfolios. Okafor's flat-fee structure charges $490 for an initial plan, then $180 per quarter for ongoing support. A nurse at Canberra Health Services on $87,000 a year is, by design, just as commercially attractive as a senior executive in Barton.

The firm works out of a ground-floor space steps from the Braddon precinct's cafes and co-working spaces, and partners with the ANU's Financial Wellness Hub — a program based on the Acton campus that connects students and early-career workers with low-cost advice. Groundwork also runs a monthly drop-in session at the Gungahlin Library on Anthony Rolfe Avenue, which began in February and consistently draws between 30 and 45 attendees. Most questions, staff say, are not about investment returns. They are about whether it is possible to keep renting in Canberra on a combined household income of $130,000, or how to stop superannuation from being the only asset a 40-year-old possesses.

The broader context makes that anxiety rational. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in May 2026 that household savings rates nationally fell to 3.2 per cent in the March quarter — the lowest level since 2008. In the ACT, electricity bills have risen roughly 22 per cent since mid-2024 following the latest Essential Services Council determinations, and grocery price inflation, while easing nationally, has remained stickier in Canberra's relatively concentrated retail market. Meanwhile, property investors are pulling back in Melbourne and Sydney following state budget changes, and some of that uncertainty is bleeding into ACT sentiment even though the territory's tax settings differ.

What Groundwork tells its clients to do first

The firm's initial advice process focuses on three steps before any investment discussion: auditing every recurring subscription and direct debit (the average Groundwork client cancels $340 in monthly charges they had forgotten about), consolidating superannuation accounts (about 43 per cent of new clients arrive with two or more funds, each charging separate administration fees), and stress-testing their mortgage or rental budget against a further 15 per cent increase in housing costs over 24 months.

Okafor's practice is not alone in seeing demand surge. The Financial Planning Association of Australia recorded a 31 per cent increase in adviser enquiries nationally in the 12 months to April 2026. But most of that growth has concentrated in larger firms in Sydney and Melbourne. In Canberra, Groundwork has become one of a small number of practices — along with the Canberra Community Law financial counselling program on Alinga Street in Civic — explicitly targeting the gap between the people who need advice most and the practices willing to serve them.

For anyone on the waiting list, the firm recommends using the federal government's MoneySmart budgeting tool as an interim step, and checking whether their employer's enterprise agreement includes access to an Employee Assistance Program with a financial counselling component — a benefit, Groundwork's staff estimate, that goes unclaimed by roughly 60 per cent of ACT public servants entitled to it.