Consolidating your superannuation funds can save money in fees that can be put back into the fund for your retirement.
If you have ever switched jobs, there is a good chance that you have superannuation funds sitting in two or more different accounts. This makes it more difficult to access your funds when you want to invest them and causes you to pay more money in administration fees.
Consolidating your super funds can provide easier access to funds and provide more money for your retirement. So, how do you start consolidating superannuation funds?
Check for a Lost Super Fund
The ATO has a service called “superseeker” which allows you to see if you have “lost” or forgotten about any supers. The Government has classified over 6 million super funds as “lost.” If one or more belongs to you, make sure to get your money back.
Check Super Fund Ratings
There are many private firms that rate supers and even the Government rates them. Start out by checking all of your super funds to see which ones perform better. Some of the better super funds display their own information on their own websites. At any rate, see if any of your super funds performs better than the others by a large margin. A professional financial planner can help you with this.
Know Your Fees
Make sure that you know how much every one of your super funds is charging you in fees. Then compare the fees to the performance of the super fund. A professional financial planner may also be appropriate for this step.
Prioritise Services
Decide what services are important to you. Do you require a large selection of investment options? Would you like direct share investment as an option? Figure out what you need when considering another super fund. You may want to know which funds provide the best customer service, too. Your financial planner usually has this information.
Find a Financial Planner
At this point, there are more steps, such as finding insurance, considering the super fund from your current job and requesting to transfer. You can do this yourself, but we believe that you are better off with a professional financial planner in Perth who is experienced with superannuation funds.
Call (08) 6462 0888 today.
