What if I told you that there is a way to triple your money in just 5 years, and it only takes six simple steps? Believe me, an easy $2 million is possible.
Let’s say you invest $100 per month, with nothing else besides investing in yourself and your family. You will be able to save $3600 per year ($300 every month). This isn’t hard at all.
No matter how much you make every month, putting away a few hundred bucks shouldn’t hurt too bad right?
So let’s first start on our journey to financial peace of mind by picking the best super fund for tradesmen out there! A lot of people think this is going to be a hard search, but it’s not.
If you do even the smallest bit of research online (or even ask your colleagues) you will become aware that there are hundreds of different super funds to choose from and they all seem to be pretty good!
So how do we narrow this down? What criteria should we look at? I’m glad you asked:
1. First, and most importantly, is what kind of insurance coverage do they have? Are they going to pay out enough when I need them too?
It seems like this would be an obvious answer, but not so fast! For a super fund to hold insurance over your head as a tradesman or worker in their industry, they have to comply with certain rules.
But not all super funds follow these rules, they can make their own up! That’s why you need to do your homework and look at what kind of insurance they provide (you’ll need to do some googling here).
2. They must pay out the correct amount when I retire.
Again, this seems like an obvious answer right? You don’t want your super fund taking your money for twenty years only to now realize that the government took most of it away from them so you have almost no money left over for retirement!
You have enough on your plate worrying about bills as it is, so let’s try and avoid something so stress-inducing. Trust me, it’s not worth the headache.
3. Next I want to look at their fees!
Just like insurance, superfunds are intertwined with the government and have to adhere to certain rules here as well. We don’t want any nasty surprises when we retire right? If you were considering a special kind of fund that doesn’t charge any fees, run away!
These people are breaking the law and will eventually get caught out by the powers that be. There is good news though; only about five percent of all super funds break these laws so you are in good hands over ninety-five percent of the time.
4. The next step is looking at their investment strategy.
This is a very important thing to look at. You want a fund that invests in things that you know about and understand, right? For example, if you are a plumber, you don’t want your super fund investing in the stock market.
That seems kind of silly, doesn’t it? It’s like spending all day repairing toilets and listening to people bitch about their bills, only to have your superfund invest all of its money into other peoples’ toilets! How does that make sense!?
5. We also don’t want them taking big risks do we?
The last thing you need is for your entire life’s savings to become worthless because the head of the company took a risk on something he thought would work and ended up failing!
This is why we only want our superfunds to invest in things we know, understand and can trust. Like property investment for example. If you aren’t a budding landlord, that’s fine as well!
The point I’m trying to make is that you don’t want your super fund investing in stuff that they think will pay off big down the track when there was no chance of it paying off.
Chances are this won’t happen but even if it does, at least you will still have enough money saved up outside of your super account for an easy retirement (one where you don’t need to worry about getting sick or spending all your money on pills and operations).
6. Now it’s time to look at the fees they charge when you want to withdraw your money!
You need to know what kind of fees will be associated with accessing your money in retirement, otherwise, you might end up sitting on a pile of cash that is sitting around doing nothing (and slowly losing value).
There are different types of fees; commitment fees, early withdrawal fees (these seem kind of obvious), administration fees etc. each one slightly more confusing than the last. You don’t want to get caught out by these strange fee structures, do you?
7. Next we need to make sure this superfund has enough money saved up so that they can pay us our benefits when we retire!
This is a key feature that most super funds lack. You don’t want to be left penniless with anything but the shirt on your back now do you?
The simple fact is that some people have been paying into their super for so long, they still don’t have enough saved up to meet the benefits they require in retirement! This is very scary stuff indeed as I’m sure you can imagine.
8. Lastly we need to check out how much money they have under management!
We must keep an eye on this because it’s a big indicator of whether or not your super fund has a good strategy going forward and will continue to pay out reliable dividends year after year. The more money under management, the more likely this fund is to have a good investment strategy.
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