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Saturday 9 February 2019

Finally getting a decent return

I am finally getting a half decent return on my retirement funds with now a decade to run before I reach the age I can retire from work forever. In Australia, the pension age is 67, that is the age you can receive a government pension if you are unable to self fund your retirement.


For someone like me, I have saved over and above the minimum requirements and I am allowed access to my funds at age 60. Now that I have resigned from that awful high fee National Mutual fund that converted to AXA and finally purchased by AMP.

The Royal Commission into banking including wealth management has uncovered systematic rorting of retirement savings in the high-fee managed funds. I rolled the meager savings I had in private superannuation into Australian Super, the well managed industry superannuation fund.

For all the high fees I paid, the returns were lower than industry funds yet when I requested an audit of all the fees I paid since I joined as an eighteen year old, they replied that I had received statements and I must work it out myself. Likewise, they told me they were making good returns and the fund is able to justify such high fees.

Now I have rolled the funds into my Australian Super account that had more or less the same account balance I am seeing my investment growing. I have seen Australian Super tracking upwards on a decent uptrend, now I am seeing double the growth and very happy.

I understand we are in the final stages of a record bull market as measured by the New York Stock Exchange and further falls will be likely in the future. However, the Australian economy is recovering so we have that to sustain the fund along with commercial property, fixed interest and bonds.

So it is with some irony that I missed out on the boom to those high charges and rolled over my account not long before the market down turned. Had AMP, one of the largest and worst performing funds not taken a year to release my funds, I could have enjoyed more of the upturn.

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