While household budgets squeeze tighter across the Gold Coast, one local fintech founder is building a client base by helping ordinary residents stop bleeding money they don't know they're losing.
Simone Radcliffe's office sits above a surf shop on James Street, Burleigh Heads, which tells you something about how she wants her business to feel — accessible, coastal, nothing like a bank. Her company, Clearpath Financial, launched in March 2024 with three clients and a co-working desk. By July 2026 it carries a waiting list of 94 households, all Gold Coast residents, all looking for the same thing: someone to tell them where their money is actually going.
The timing is not coincidental. Australian Bureau of Statistics data released in May confirmed that household disposable income fell 3.1 per cent in real terms over the 12 months to March 2026, the steepest single-year drop since 2009. On the Gold Coast, where median rents in Broadbeach and Southport have climbed past $780 a week for a three-bedroom property, that national squeeze is playing out in very specific, very local ways.
Clearpath charges clients a flat $149 a month — no percentage of assets under management, no hidden product commissions. Radcliffe structured it that way deliberately after her own frustration with advisers who steered her toward products they were paid to recommend. The fee covers a monthly one-on-one session, automated expense tracking linked to a client's bank feeds, and a quarterly "money audit" that line-items every subscription, insurance policy, and standing direct debit.
The average client, according to Clearpath's internal data, finds $340 a month in spending they either forgot about or actively want to cancel. That includes everything from duplicate streaming services to insurance premiums that haven't been market-tested in four or five years. At current Gold Coast petrol prices — unleaded sitting around $1.89 a litre at most Caltex and BP sites along the Pacific Motorway — even marginal budget wins compound quickly for families doing daily commutes from Coomera or Pimpama into the CBD.
Clearpath is not a licensed financial planning firm and doesn't advise on investment products, a distinction Radcliffe is careful about. The company holds an Australian Credit Licence through a corporate authorised representative arrangement with Brisbane-based aggregator Affinity Group, and refers clients requiring full financial planning to planners at the Gold Coast Financial Planning Hub in Robina Town Centre. That referral network has become a selling point in itself — clients trust that Clearpath isn't trying to cross-sell them into superannuation products or managed funds.
The city's demographics make it particularly suited to what Clearpath does. The Gold Coast's population grew by roughly 14,000 residents in the year to June 2025, with a disproportionate share landing in the northern corridors around Hope Island and Helensvale — younger families and interstate migrants who arrived with equity from property sales elsewhere but are now navigating Queensland's cost structures for the first time. Many have never worked with a financial adviser and baulk at the traditional entry point, which the Financial Services Council put at an average initial advice fee of $3,500 nationally in 2025.
Radcliffe has also been visible in the local business community in a way that traditional advisers rarely are. She runs a free 90-minute workshop at the Burleigh Heads Community Centre on the first Tuesday of each month — the July session is already booked to capacity at 35 attendees — and she appeared on a panel at last month's Gold Coast Young Professionals Network event at The Star's event precinct on Broadbeach Island.
For residents watching the property market cool and wondering whether now is the time to fix a mortgage or hold cash, Clearpath's immediate practical advice is consistent: before making any investment decision, eliminate the financial drag from your existing spending. Get the foundations solid first. The firm is expanding to a second adviser in August and is looking at office space in Varsity Lakes to serve clients in the city's southern suburbs. Radcliffe expects to cap her client load at 200 households to preserve the one-on-one model — and says she'll reach that number before Christmas.
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Published by The Daily Gold Coast
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