I'm not sure personally..... http://blogs.news.com.au/moneystuff/index.php/news/comments/julia_get_your_hands_off_my_money/
I'm preparing mentally, (even though I'm not happy about it) to have to work for the rest of my life. I suspect I'll either die on the job as a +75year old or be retrenched and die of starvation on the street at a similar age.
+1. I save a lot of my income, don't spend much at all. If people could live before super was introduced, they can live without super. I and many others will probably manage fine without super payouts, a bit cut but still fine. Not looking too bright though what with 40 years left before I can claim my super lol.
My staff are all in their 20's and 30's, and each month when I pay their super into their funds I think that by the time they reach retirement age (which will probably be 85 by then) there will be nothing there because the government will have given it to the banksters.
I'm not fussed with the idea of superannuation savings being used to fund infrastructure but I also agree with the author of the rant that Public-Private Partnerships are the wrong way to do it for the simple reason that it is demonstrably cheaper for the government to just borrow the money by issuing bonds and build the stuff themselves. For example, the Cross City Tunnel, the Lane Cove Tunnel and the Green Square/Airport railway link were all built via PPPs and all of them would have been cheaper to build if they weren't built via PPPs. Its simple business maths: Government managed build = cost of construction + cost of borrowing. Public/Private Partnership managed build = cost of construction + cost of borrowing + profit margin. The general assumption seems to be that private companies can build stuff cheaper than the government can by being more efficient and those savings become their profits. In reality what seems to happen is that private companies are just as inefficient as governments in building stuff so they don't actually save much money but they still have to add on their 20-40% profit margin. Even if they manage to save 10% of the total cost by being efficient, the whole project will still cost 10-30% more that it would have otherwise meaning the mug punters (i.e. us taxpayers) end up paying that extra 10-30% for the use of the bridge or road or railway or whatever. Oh yeah, and we also lose the ability to hold anyone to account for any stuff ups that occur in making the infrastructure available for use. I'd be happy to invest directly in government bonds that are issued specifically for infrastructure. That system worked perfectly well for decades until some bunch of idiots decided building public infrastructure for the use by, and benefit of, the public wasn't actually the government's responsibility. I'm not happy to put any money anywhere near a Public/Private Partnership set up by some merchant bank because past performance say they have EPIC FAIL written all over them.
A PPP is where Govt and contractors get into bed together, but it's the public that ends up getting screwed !
I'm definitely not counting on super to get me through retirement. I believe by the time I retire there wont be a pension and I have always assumed the onus would be on me to provide a comfortable position to retire. Good thing I've got 40 or so years to get it sorted Although I feel for those who are coming up on retirement in the next 10 years or so
Not counting on it, but making the most of the opportunity that SMSF presents in the current environment. For me that means getting in with SMSF now before some idiot government decides it's in the nation's interest to nationalise "new" account holders etc under a MySuper scheme (oh wait...), which to me looks like superannuation on the outside, but will probably end up being a US social security style ponzi in the long run with federal "borrowings" being taken from it. I can see the day where a moratorium is introduced on any new SMSF being created, and that's the end of precious metals investment by super. If the financial S hits the F, I'd be much happier with a big fat lump of the yellow stuff sitting in a vault than watching zeroes disappear off the end of a fund balance.
What amount of capital do you guys think would be ideal to start going down the SMSF route and into PMs? I probably only have a few grand in my super at the moment so not sure if it's worth the effort for me to do all this work to save a few bucks on my super fund's admin/insurance fees. Also if the S does hit the F, we won't be that safe either since there'll be a paper trail of us investing in PMs for our super. Which may also lead them towards my stash of PMs which allegedly were 'lost' in a 'boating accident' . Basically my super fund doesn't perform well or poorly, it just doesn't have many fees (like $15 a month I think) although I'd probably get better results pulling out my super and setting up a SMSF using UBank's 6% interest rate. Choices choices...
IMO not worth it until you have 50k or more - the accounting requirements will chew up 1-2k per year or so so until you have economy of scale to combat that i.e. that cost is lower than the fees you would be paying in a super fund it's not worth it.
lol not relying on super for my retirement.. Will probably have to sell an oz of gold to support my self each month in my retirement.
esuper is $699/year - gotta start somewhere, so maybe a few grand now in a SMSF is better than a few grand in an APRA fund.
I'm not expecting anything, not a dollar. So anything is a bonus. Retirement and pensions for the majority is a brief historical aberration (as with tertiary education).
