
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?
Read More »
UA-21703836-4
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.
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.

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?
Read More »

Which is the best super fund? Which fund will provide you with the best rate of return, and how do you decide between the thousands of options on offer? In this post we are going to look at the recent results form a group of major superannaution funds, and determine just who...
Read More »
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...
Read More »

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...
Read More »

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)...
Read More »

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...
Read More »
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...
Read More »
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...
Read More »
Todays Australian Financial Review (p3) carries an artile titled “Super funds warned” in which Jeremy Cooper (“chairman of the federal government’s review of the $1.2 trillion superannuation industry”) suggests that Australian super funds need to increase returns and gain greater scale to increase opportunities. The example given is “Two Canadian pension funds with a...
Read More »
My brother sent this photo yesterday. It is the view from his current workplace, in Laos. Here is my view… Sometimes the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day can stop us from seeing and thinking clearly. When considering money issues, this is the most common cause of mistakes being made. It may sound easy...
Read More »
Recent Comments
(1 weeks ago)
(4 weeks ago)
(7 weeks ago)
(8 weeks ago)
(8 weeks ago)