
Let's consider just how many ways super and pension accounts are misrepresented or misunderstood.
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Here at Michael's Musings, a Perth planner will help you sort out the real information in amongst all that noise. Feedback and comment cheerfully received, even if sometimes ignored. To log-in using your Facebook, LinkedIn or other network ID, please click this image.
Australian superannuation now constitutes one of the world’s largest specific retirement savings pools. It is an area beset by misinformation, vested interests and difficult legislation. The aim of this area is to bring some clarity to the area of superannuation in Australia today.

Let's consider just how many ways super and pension accounts are misrepresented or misunderstood.
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Self Managed Superannuation Funds (“SMSF’s”) have long lived under a very harsh penalty regime. If a trustee failed to meet their obligations then the Australian Tax Office (ATO) was able or even required to declare the fund “non-complying”. That was a nuclear bomb option as it resulted in the fund assets being taxed at...
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Marketing is often most effective when it glosses over the smaller details and focusses on just one or two key points... does that lead to better outcomes or is it misrepresentation?
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Which is the best super fund, and how will you decide between the thousands of options on offer?
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It’s interesting to read notes and articles and research that shows Australia’s pensioners “sitting on a time bomb” or that there is a shortfall in retirement savings of hundreds of billions of dollars. For what it is worth, the bulk of these appear to be a beat-up. For the morosely disinterested or even the...
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Todays’ Australian Financial Review includes an article “Disclosure statements found wanting” (page 56 Financial Services, AFR Friday 29th October 2010). Now there is a non sequitur if ever i’ve seen one! That statement assumes that there would be a time when superannuation statements would NOT be found wanting – and i really can’t see...
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A few people have read my earlier post on this subject of 10 year super fund returns and wondered just what point i was making… (thanks for the feedback Neil and others!). The post was primarily aimed at showing the average 10 year return of the average super fund (which was not much over 4%pa)...
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The front page of the Australian Financial Review today (Friday 23rd July) suggests that ‘Balanced’ Funds “have failed to keep pace with investments such as low-risk bonds and gold over the past decade even after posting double-digit gains in the year to June“. If you move on to page 51 to read the balance...
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Now it makes a bit more sense… Why had the industry funds been making such a push for banning commissions, to the point where you could argue that their members’ funds were being used to pay for a campaign that didn’t actually improve the position of the members (because their members were already in...
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The front page of todays Australian Financial Review (AFR) includes an article titled “Unlisted assets drag down super fund returns”. In it, the returns of ‘Industry Funds’* is suggested as showing falling returns into a recovering market. This is entirely expected, and should not be a reason to argue against the ‘Industry Fund’ attraction...
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