Wealth Creation Blogs Worth Sharing.

For those of you currently working in the resources industry, you would no doubt understand that the potential downside is the punishing rosters and long periods away from home that can take a toll on your family and personal life. Sure, the money is good for the most part, but it comes at a cost. Unfortunately, many marriages suffer irreparably and many industry workers find themselves having to “start again” after relationship breakdown and divorce.  It can be an extremely difficult time and apart from the emotional strain, there’s the stress of having to rebuild financially.  Quite often, you may find yourself in a situation where you’re left with minimal assets and essentially must start again. In this situation, it’s critical to make sure you have your superannuation structured and invested correctly. If you’ve come through a divorce with your superannuation intact, it may end up being your biggest asset. You really need to get it working for you. The othe...

Super Choice – how can employers help their employees? Since 1 July 2005, most employers have been required to give their employees a choice of fund for their superannuation guarantee contributions. It is only if the employee fails to choose, or chooses a fund which cannot be used by the employer, that the employer will be able to choose the fund. Prior to this, employees essentially didn’t have a choice and they were basically stuck with the fund their employer chose for them. In the past decade since “Super Choice” was introduced, there has been a great deal of competition in the superannuation market given that employees can choose where to put their money. A competitive market is good for consumers with an almost limitless choice of highly developed options for employees to choose from. So, what does this mean for employers? Well, in the early stages of this change it was essentially an administrative burden as large companies with large numbers of staff were faced with p...

For those of you currently employed on a salary, your employer pays your superannuation fund 9.5% of your earnings payable each quarter. This is known as the Superannuation Guarantee (SG) contribution. Some employers choose to pay monthly. However, most pay quarterly and today (October 28th) is the payment due date for the July -September quarterly payment. Have you been paid your contribution? It’s important to keep track of these payments. It’s your money and it will play a big part in your retirement. The other thing to consider is where this money is invested. Most Australian’s have some level of exposure to the local stock market via their superannuation. Over the last week or so, our stock market has declined by around 4%. What this means is that when your SG payment is made (hopefully by today), it will be invested within your super fund. With stock markets being down a bit, your super fund will be purchasing assets at a cheaper price. Is this important? Try...

Welcome to the 2016/2017 financial year. No doubt you’re all enjoying your new cars and computers that you rushed out and bought before June 30. Or like most people, you probably didn’t realise that July 1st marks the start of the new financial year. Don’t’ worry, this is not going to be one of those “let’s look back over the last 12 months” articles where we remember which celebrities are no longer, or who won major sporting events (although go the Maroons!). But I think it important to give some brief consideration to how our local investment markets have performed and how this has translated to our super funds. Believe it or not, it’s been a fairly stagnant year as I write this. Our local markets are set to finish pretty much where they started 12 months ago. A little hard to believe given the recent Brexit debacle where we were all told it was the end of the world financially. So what should we expect from the next 12 months? Well, nobody knows. However, there is ...

Book and have your free Statement of Advice consult with Andrew O’Brien of Hindsight Wealth before the Bronco’s Vs Panthers game Friday 22 July, 2016 at Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane to be in the draw to win a family ticket to the big game. Terms & Conditions Andrew O’Brien of Hindsight Wealth is conducting this promotional game. The prize is: A family general admission ticket to the Bronco’s Vs Panthers game. 7.45 p.m Friday 22 July, 2016 at Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane. Family ticket constitutes (2 adults, 2 children) or (1 adult, 3 children). Draw entrants must be over 18 years of age. A Statement of Advice consultation is a complimentary service. The promotion closes Friday 15th July, 2016. The draw date is Monday 18th July, 2016. The lucky winner will be announced on Andrew O’Brien of Hindsight Wealth business Facebook page and Andrew O’Brien of Hindsight Wealth LinkedIn profile. The winner will be notified via Facebook, email and phone.

I’ve posted recently about the positive start investment markets have made for the year. This in turn has had a positive impact on my client’s super funds with balances enjoying healthy gains. As I’ve said before, we shouldn’t get too excited about short term gains. Superannuation is very much a long term investment. However, what the last few months does demonstrate is the need to have your superannuation invested appropriate to your time horizon and risk profile. Understanding the numbers is important. For instance, if you are just starting out in your career and have a relatively modest super balance of $20,000, even a solid annual return of 10% will only yield in increase of $2,000 in your balance. By contrast, if you have a higher balance of say $100,000 then the same percentage return yields a $10,000 increase. Obviously this isn’t a complicated concept. However it highlights the need to manage your super correctly from the very start. Get your super performing ea...

On January 13 this year I wrote a post The markets are down! What’s going to happen to my super? What do I do? And here we are a little over 2 months later and the contrast could not be greater.  Welcome to the world of investing! So what do all these numbers mean and how does it impact on my super? Well, for the majority of people, their superannuation has some level of exposure to Australian stock markets.  To get an idea of how the market is performing, you can simply follow one of the indices such as the All Ordinaries Index or ASX 200.  Without getting too technical, these are a basic measure of how the majority of the companies on the Australian stock exchange perform on average on any given day.  Normally reported on the news at night you’ll hear statements like” the All Ords went up half a percent today” . On Feb 12 this year the All Ordinaries sat at around 4800 points.  It’s currently sitting at 5240 points which means an increase of...

Keeping track of your superannuation can be difficult.  Especially when you consider the average time Australians are currently spending in a job is just over 3 years.  So in a 50 year working life, on average you’ll have around 17 jobs.   That’s a lot of super funds to keep track of.   Each one of your funds could be charging you fees and each of them could have insurance built into them.  It may not sound important, but it really is.  You could be paying more than you have to and you could be paying for insurance elsewhere when you already have it. Worse still, if something happens to you and you need to claim on that insurance, you may not know where to find it.  As part of the rollover consolidation process that I undertake with clients, a free “super search” is conducted based on your tax file number.   Various searching services have been around for a while, however, they usually charge a fee, take a long time and req...