SMSF trustees are required to regularly value their fund’s assets as a part of ensuring compliance with Australia’s super legislation. Assets must be valued at market value, based on appropriate evidence and data. The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) can review these asset valuations as a part of their ongoing SMSF ... Read more
Superannuation strategies
Superannuation strategies can be any super-related action that can help an individual grow his or her benefit. Such action can include strategies that protect existing super benefits, minimise costs, help boost your super savings by making extra super contributions, or by actively selecting your super account’s selection options.
If you run an SMSF, then you may be considering SMSF-specific strategies in relation to administering your SMSF, or investing your super monies, or running an SMSF pension.
All Australians contemplating retirement, at some stage will be considering retirement strategies such as deciding on the right age to retire, working out how much money will be needed for a life in retirement, whether they will be eligible for the Age Pension, and deciding who gets their super savings after they leave this earth.
For more information on important superannuation strategies, refer to the links below:
- Housekeeping strategies (such as reporting your tax file number, choosing a super fund, checking fees, nominating beneficiaries)
- Contributions strategies (such as salary sacrificing, spouse contributions, non-concessional contributions, co-contributions, capital gains tax management)
- Investment strategies (such as choosing an investment option, asset allocation, shares that pay franked dividends
- Age-based strategies (such as making super contributions, accessing super, timing retirement)
- Retirement strategies (such as how much super is enough, lump sums, super pensions, Age Pension, work test)
- SuperGuide checklists
The following SuperGuide articles provide examples of superannuation strategies:
Set out below are all SuperGuide articles that relate to Superannuation strategies.
Re-contribution strategy: What is it and how can I use it with my super?
Using a re-contribution strategy with your super sounds complex and mysterious, but in reality the name says it all – you withdraw some of the savings in your super account and then you re-contribute them back into the super system. Which raises an obvious question. Why take money out of super and then put it straight ... Read more
What to do if you exceed your super contributions caps
When experts talk about super, they often warn about the importance of not going over your contributions caps, but you don’t always hear about what happens if you do. Although carefully monitoring the amount of contributions you or your employer makes into your super account each year is the wisest course of action, ... Read more
Beginner’s guide to making super contributions
Building a sizeable retirement nest egg can take some effort, but a recent study by Roy Morgan found only 18% of employees with super currently have more than the compulsory 9.5% of their salary or wages going into their super fund account. This is a significant drop from 2009, when nearly a quarter (23%) of workers ... Read more
Guide to transition to retirement pensions (TTRs or TRISs)
Transition to retirement income streams (or pensions) allow you to gradually draw on your super benefits while you’re still working and moving towards your retirement. They go by a variety of acronyms, including TTR and TRIS. For simplicity, we’ll use the TTR acronym in this article. There are different ways that you ... Read more
Did tax kill the transition to retirement magic pudding?
Transition to retirement (TTR) pensions used to be referred to as the Magic Pudding because like Norman Lindsay’s famous cut-and-come-again pud you could have your cake and eat it too. The pudding may be a bit smaller since the government tightened the tax rules back in 2017, but a TTR pension is still appetising for ... Read more
Death and taxes: Guide to superannuation death benefits
The two certainties in life, namely death and taxes, is an idiom that can mean different things to different people. For present purposes we take it to mean that death is inevitable and it is very difficult to (legitimately) avoid taxes. Tax cannot be avoided even by dying. Although under current law there is no tax ... Read more
Capital gains and super: Using super contributions to reduce your CGT bill
Super contributions can be used in many different ways when it comes to planning your finances and saving for your retirement. In the right circumstances, they can also be a very useful tool for minimising your tax bill. It’s often overlooked that your super contributions can be used to reduce the amount of capital ... Read more
Turning 65 and super: A Super Guide
Anyone aged 65 or over can access super benefits without retiring or satisfying any other special condition of release. Turning 65 is a condition of release. Unless you’re in a public sector fund, such super benefits will be tax-free when paid on or after the age of 60. For a general summary of the super and ... Read more
Retirement planning: Choosing the right super strategies for your age
A superannuation fund is an investment vehicle, rather than an investment. Many fund members, journalists and even investment analysts are confused about this distinction. For example, asking whether property or super is the better investment is the wrong question. The right question to ask, is whether the tax savings ... Read more
Super loophole still benefits politicians and senior public servants
Amid the confusion surrounding the $1.6 million transfer balance cap on super pensions, and the short timeframes available to comply with this change (which took effect from July 2017), a small but important loophole was missed by the super experts, and continues to be ignored by the superannuation lobby groups, and ... Read more
Super health check for beginners: 10 tips for your 2018/2019 retirement planning
Note: This article is current for the 2018/2019 financial year. SuperGuide regularly publishes an updated super checklist for beginner readers. More advanced checklists can be found elsewhere on the site. Use this list as a prompt for your 2018/2019 super resolutions. You may not keep all of your resolutions, ... Read more
Superannuation death benefits and the $1.6 million transfer balance cap
We have received many questions from readers about how the new $1.6 million transfer balance cap will operate when a fund member dies, especially if the fund member has arranged for his or her spouse to receive a superannuation death benefit pension, including a reversionary pension. This article provides a brief ... Read more
Beyond the Royal Commission: 10 super strategies to protect your retirement
I am waiting for the final report of the Financial Services Royal Commission before I fully express what I think about the behaviour of the financial services industry as a whole, including the superannuation industry. Apart from the apparent incompetence and dishonesty of some players in the financial services sector, ... Read more
Ten years on: Four lessons from the GFC (Grab-For-Cash)
Note: A version of this article was first published in 2009, in Trish Power’s book, DIY Super for Dummies (Wiley), and republished in 2015. I was holidaying in Europe when the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) officially hit in October 2008 (although investment markets had been falling dramatically since December 2007). ... Read more