I have been thinking about dipping into SMSF with eSuper, to keep it simple. Is there a figure where it is not worth to do SMSF? I have been told by my accountant, don't bother unless I have $200K and willing to fork out additional $2000 to set it up and $750 to run in yearly. Spoke to another stacker during f2f, he said even $10,000 is worth the time to do SMSF as all the fee can be withdrawn from the super balance. My intention is to transfer 100% of my super to SMSF with eSuper, and have 50/50 in cash and metals, with 3-6 trade during the year. And have the metal in storage with GV in Melbourne. So my question is: 1 Is there such number which is the point of not worthwhile running SMSF? 2 Can set up fee and running cost with eSuper be deducted from the super balance? Thank You
esuper has specials all the time where its free to set up, all that costs money is a company to act as the trustee if you want a corporate trustee. only costs roughly 600ish per year with esuper and usually they include the first year free in the specials they have. personally i got an smsf with them when i had about 1500 dollars in super.
I set up a SMSF with <$1000, and I know many that have done it with <$10,000. Regardless of the ongoing costs, it is still worthwhile, considering that you are in control of your own assets.
I think I agree with your accountant here, well maybe Id do it for $50k, if you have some knowledge of finance and markets, but def not worth it for $10k. If you have 10k in your super, and you are forking out $600 a year in fees, or 6% p.a. You should be able to find a super fund with ~1% in management fees p.a. (ill pm you mine if you want) This 5% p.a. difference in my opinion is definitely not worth the extra flexibility you get by being about to put it into metals/cash instead of diversified shares/property/cash. That extra $500 a year in fees means your assets have to beat the average market by 5% every year just to keep up.. This is unlikely - even if p.m.'s do well in short term, this isn't sustainable Also, I DEFINITELY would not want to make up your super of 50% metals 50% cash. Its far to risky. You are putting your $$ away for the long term, you need a mix of many asset classes in case you get wiped out in PM's. Also, does the $600-$750 per year cost include audits? if not the overall fess will be higher. All my opinion. Past performance isn't equal to future performance *The thank you was my fat finger
Hi Bloomst, I'll try and give you a call in the next couple of days. There is a swag of ways to save money on SMSF. All above board but outside of the box.
Heck, if you are running one of those presentation...I'll fly in for the day mate...beat paying a FP!
Don't forget the government smsf Levi fee on top of the esuper fee which makes it closer to $1000 per year. I'd seriously consider more diversification than just cash and PMs too but that's just me. Good luck with it all. edited for spelling
Don't forget the government smsf Levi fee on top of the esuper fee which makes it closer to $1000 per year. I'd seriously consider more diversification than just cash and PMs too but that's just my me. Good luck with it all.
IMO a SMSF should only be taken on if you have at least 300 K plus and a mature view on metals.Accounting fees will be way beyond 2K/annum by the way. I have seen a large number of younger members get on the SMSF wagon justifying that its great because they control their destiny. Fact is that most of these plays seem to be made into a high relative percentage of metals and have ended in tears.
I've done it all myself. Have much less than $300K. Someone with no accounting background can do it with eSuper easily, on any balance. Know what you're doing though. Just throwing all your super into one thing, metals, is not smart. Same as putting all your super into share or cash or magic beans. Buy some books, get a Commsec account and look at their analysis tools. Find your way onto an ASX200 share tips mailing list. Talk to your friends who invest (or your parents friends), not for what they own but what their asset class proportions are. Find a good cash account and don't park it there when they drop their interest (like ING Direct now), shop around every few years. If you buy some Woolworths, Telstra and shares in one bank, don't throw all your shares into microcaps selling magic beans, then learn about whether managed runds, A-REITS or overseas bluechip shares and work out if they are for you....make sure most of your assets pay dividends or interest. Then take 10-20% (20% is absolute maxiumum) of your cash and budget to buy metals when the time is right. Don't buy all your gold at once...it may go down 20% like last year.... Avoid obvious modern numismatics with a high premium that an auditor may make you insure and develop a relationship with a couple of good PM dealers, in store and online. There are half a dozen books for sale in Dymocks that tell you all about what rules to follow in an SMSF. Buy one and read it once for your grounded knowledge and handy reference. Then google for updates when you need to on contempory changes. Go for it, if you plan on this being a long term thing and a personal learning experience. Otherwise you may waste your money or like Kawa said - throw all your money into metals only and lose interest and opportunity costs.
I went into esuperfund with about $35k. I still have an industry super which I can't get out of, that takes care of my life insurance and other things, costs a fair bit and they haven't been making me rich. I put extra money, pre tax, into my industry super and once a year I transfer it all into my SMSF. It is mostly in gold and silver, unallocated at Goldstackers. I no longer buy pms for my own stack, I buy the same amount of pms but with pre tax dollars, so I get a bit extra and I put aside a regular amount. I have just transferred over a year's worth of additional salary sacrifice so it is in an interest earning account until Silver drops to $16 With unallocated I don't have to worry about storage, insurance, break-ins or compliance. I also get to do GSR swaps with little fuss and low fees. Instead of buying pms with my own money I spend my money paying down my mortgages on my investment properties. So I have the remnants of an industry super, a SMSF with precious metals and investment properties. The fees for eSuper are manageable, a lot less than the fees from my Industry Super and my property managers. If you haven't got much in your super then you don't have much to lose.
Wow...there is a lot to digest from all the reply so far, plus reading the backpages of this sub-forum. There is so much to consider, from doing it myself or through advisory service, to the asset class breakdown, etc. I think I will try to focus on working out which one is better for me by doing it myself through eSuper or going through Advisory. I am pretty switch on with finance knowledge, but I don't want this to consume my spare time. I will defintely keep you guys up to date what's happening.
Anglo, Do you have one that you'd recommend? I'm happy to go and browse them myself and make my own decision, but I'd also be interested to hear if there's one that's better than others.
I bought, just based on scanning the shelves and thumbing through a few of them, 'Securing your superannuation future' by Daryl Dixon. It was published in 2012 which was the same year I started my families' SMSF. It was a very general book, I chose it for a range of reasons including up to date knowledge at the time, and others had more written on how SMSF is run after the members are retired. I'm 30+ years away from that, but there is obviously a need for that so some books devote more space to the retirement/phase phase compared to the accumulation phase of the SMSF's life. Since then I have realised that the author has an accounting firm sharing his name that has a superannuation speciality of services and I'm glad to have bought it. The book is a stand alone work thought and he doesn't push you to go and pay a consulting firm like his to do anything at all. Bear in mind there may be more recent editions of books that were published earlier than the Dixon one, with updates including the limited but poorly thought out changes made by the Gillard/Green/Rudd government's last year in office. As far as I can tell, anything published from 2011 onwards will be have a complete description of the rules over issues such as the Fund lending in limited recourse borrowing, which is one area I wanted a detailed understanding.
