All I want is to manage my own super through the ETrade platform and use it to buy and sell shares. The same way I currently do with my own money. That's it. I don't want to be involved in any of the hassles of management, auditing or anything else that it may involve. I also have no interest in buying physical metal for it. What you would think would seem a relatively easy process seems so hard. I'm not even sure where to start. The layers of bueracracy are so thick I dread the thought of having to tread through them. Is there no company that streamlines this process? I would have thought it would be a business opportunity. Or can anyone recommend the best way or provide a link to going about this? I looked at esuperfund but they don't use Etrade. Any help appreciated.
Hi hawkeye Unless you are under a legal disability (a child or unable to manage your own affairs) if you want to have your own SMSF, then you will have to take responsibility for properly managing it and ensuring that the accounting, auditing and tax returns are done properly. You will have to declare to the ATO (in the Trustee's Declaration) that you accept responsibility for ensuring that the fund complies with Superannuation Law. When you think about it, this makes sense. Australia is one of the few countries in the world where members are allowed to control the assets within their own self-managed superannuation fund. It is easy therefore for a member simply to remove the money in the fund. This might happen if the member is desperate and in debt, or simply dishonest. Such contraventions need to be caught as soon as possible, hence the need for proper accounts to be kept and an annual audit. Bear in mind that the contents of the fund will be larger than otherwise because of tax concessions which have applied to income and gains within the fund. And the member's contributions into the fund will also have reduced the member's income for tax purposes. This means that the public purse is reduced to the same extent as these benefits. All Australians have an interest therefore, in ensuring that the rules are complied with. Many people on this forum will tell you that it is not a hassle to create an SMSF and to manage it. This tends to be supported by the fact that there are about 450,000 SMSFs in Australia. Creating the SMSF is simpler than often stated (you can easily do this yourself with appropriate documents and guidance), and if you do all the accounting yourself, then obviously you need some skills - but you don't have to do this. There are many many accountants, and now also several online portfolio management services, who are only too pleased to take the hassle away from you - for a fee.
There must be something about ETrade that I'm missing? Seriously, if you want to do away with all the paperwork crap to just trade shares, use e-super.
No. That's pretty much exactly what I want. To control where the money is invested without all the admin hassle. ASX300 is fine.
This reminds me of a TV advert on super which shows a young couple out playing with their kids. In the background is a catchy tune and a talk about investing saying what would you rather do. The message is leave to us we'll do it for you. The real message is leave to us and we will use your money and make a fortune and give you a poorer return than if you just put the money in a term deposit. The "average" investor has a bulls eye painted on his or her back. The finance industry, being banks, insurance companies,brokers, investment advisors, real estate managers are there to shake down the "average investor" [sucker] People are taught to play it safe, let the experts invest your money in "managed funds"....end result the returns are negative when you factor in inflation. If its too hard...you reap what you sow and your return is what you put in. Think and grow rich...or bend over and let your advisor drive your investment home:lol: Kind Regards non recourse
That's not what I said at all. Where you say is the reason I want to do the investing myself. I just don't want the admin hassle of filing forms, audits, whatever else, etc. When you look at some of the fees involved with all this for filing a form it's obvious it's a huge scam. Maybe you enjoy all that paper-pushing BS but I have a life I want to live.
What I enjoy is ensuring my money works for me Hawkeye not some faceless insurance/banking conglomerate. In my thread on investing 101 I mentioned the only property we didn't manage the income we were losing. This year because we manage it the income for January was $12,000, in the previous 7 years we averaged $3000 less 20% "management fee". I can learn to like pushing paper for $9,000 ++ a month mate. No one has your interest at heart like yours truely Kind Regards non recourse
Hawkeye - getting back to your op - I thought your issue was you wanted to use E-Trade as the trading platform and [/*] not have to worry about annual returns, reports, audits and the like[/*] So we get back to the question of which is more important to you, 1 or 2. If it's 2 (which from your most recent comments, including the now deleted cbb ones, was to my mind the situation) then why not run with esuperfund - virtually no admin etc and use one of their 2 trading platforms which means no work for you pretty much as they harvest this info for your reports and returns. If however there is some reason you are immovable on using E-Trade then you need to make some choices: you'll need to collate and send off to esuperfund all the info required at reporting time or[/*] pick another manager similar to esuperfund who will electronically harvest the E-Trade data and incorporate that into the reports and returns (and the link I gave earlier has a long list of companies who will do this for you but afaik none at the price offered by esuperfund)[/*] You and only you can decide which is more important for you, E-Trade platform or the reduction/elimination of the "hassles of management, auditing or anything else that (your SMSF) may involve". The only other comment I will make is, is there REALLY that much difference between the trading platforms?
