It is appropriate that there is no decision yet on who will form a government. After all, neither Labor nor Coalition seemed to have decided on very many policies - or if they, had, they seemed reluctant to reveal them. There was certainly very activity on the subject of superannuation during the weeks preceding the election. The Labor party seems reluctant to adopt a number of recommendations of the Cooper Review. And they want to dilute the recommendations of the Henry Review.

Why we lie to ourselves about how much we’ll need in retirement

In their books, Freakonomics and Superfreakonomics, economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner look at a host of phenomena and try to explain their existence from a statistical or economic perspective. In the first of their books, one of the things the authors looked at was online dating services. Specifically, they wondered if users of these services were truthful about their personal details.

The Australian workforce is ageing - and doing it faster than the population as a whole. Faced with the massive cost of caring for an ageing population, the government will find ways to encourage organisations to hire more mature employees and will offer incentives to workers who choose to stay in the workforce until later in life.

It’s good news. Mostly. The government has announced that it will halve the minimum it requires retirees to draw down from their private pensions in 2010/11. This has caught many retirees and their financial planners by surprise.

The Superannuation System Review piloted by Jeremy Cooper has called for an end to commissions paid to financial planners by super funds. Great. But late. The Review set July 2012 as the deadline for the end to commissions. However, three of the country’s biggest fund managers have jumped the gun.

THERE'S A RIGHT WAY AND A WRONG WAY TO CHANGE FUNDS. TO MAKE MORE MONEY YOU NEED TO GET IT RIGHT.

In the euphoria of a marriage celebration, many of us have uttered the words ‘for better or worse’. Without exception, on that happy day we would have been thinking more about the ‘better’ and less about ‘worse’ - if we considered it at all.

THE MUST-READ REVIEW OF THE SUPER REVIEW YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED

The Cooper Review. If research is to be believed, you don’t know about it and you don’t care about it. So why on earth would you want to read about it?

GOOD VERSUS ROTTEN FUND PERFORMANCE

The importance of choosing the right super fund The extraordinary disparity between the best performing products and the worst shines a blinding light on something we’ve been banging on about for a while. Being in the wrong fund or the wrong option type is more critical than how the market is performing month by month. Need proof?

MTAA Super isn’t like most other super funds. They don’t invest the way most funds do. Their performance doesn’t behave like most other funds. MTAA Super is an anomaly that many members have likely failed to understand.

Super funds were on their way to posting healthy 13% plus results for 2009/10. Then the jitters returned. The financial year has closed with a run of negative returns that will rob most fund members of thousands in lost income. Why have funds gone backwards again? Where’s your money gone? Who’s responsible? And what’s the outlook for the coming year?

Two steps forward, one step sideways. That’s April for you. After a couple of good months, fund returns dipped slightly last month, with the SR 50 Balanced (60-76) Index shedding 0.8%.

Counter to expectations (or should that be prejudices?)
sustainable funds are outperforming mainstream
funds. But how many of us have boarded
the green bus? Equally important, how many
funds take sustainability seriously?

The Savvy review of the Henry Review
We’ve been waiting for this. Waiting longer than passengers on a
Sydney train station. Waiting longer than Richmond fans hoping for another Premiership. Waiting longer than patients in Emergency. Now that the Henry review is public, what’s in it for those of us with super?
Here then is a quick guide to the highlights (or lowlights for the pessimists).

funds perform spectacular bounce back

Who’d have guessed. There we were this time last year beating our brows and gnashing our teeth over the state of our super. (Or were we beating our teeth and gnashing our brows?) Anyway, we weren’t happy little campers. Then lo and behold, things bounced back. Not just a little bounce, either. This rebound has been spectacular.

In case you hadn’t noticed, we like metaphors here at SuperSavvy. We especially like automotive metaphors. So bear with us while we use another one.

To avoid a repeat of your GFC losses, you need to do a simple exercise. As much as it might hurt, have a look at last yearʼs statement. Notice anything missing (apart from money)? Thereʼs one glaring omission from all the statements weʼve seen. This omission is critical if youʼre going to survive the next economic downturn. So what is it?

It was just a year ago that most of us were reeling from losses of 20% or more. Sometimes much more. These losses forced quite a few into a retirement rethink. The losses also forced many of us to pay attention to where our superannuation is invested - something that was WAY overdue as many Australians simply hadn’t given their super the attention it deserves.

What do a cat, the moon and quantum physics have in common? Tick, tick, tick, tick. Time’s up. The answer is nothing.
Another question: What do a hundred Balanced options have in common? Tick, tick, tick, tick. Time’s up. The answer is nothing.
What's wrong with Balanced options?

Bankwest’s second Financial Fitness Index reveals that one in four men and one in three women are financially unfit. Young or old, the results were similar across all those surveyed by the bank. What's your fitness level - and how can you get into shape?

Wow, what a difference a year makes! From a loss of 20% to a gain approaching 13% in twelve months is the most remarkable comeback since Lance Armstrong. Or Michael Schumacher. Or Tiger Woods ... oh hold on, Tiger hasn’t come back yet.

The Australian superannuation system is considered a pretty good model. It isn’t perfect - and many would argue that constant tinkering has weakened rather than strengthened it. That aside, it is likely to be copied in several other countries. However, employment changes have put thousands of Australians at risk.

9.55% growth in 5 months
Who’d have guessed back in January that fund members would be celebrating Christmas. The plummeting balances of 2008 looked like continuing in 2009. If there was light at the end of the GFC tunnel, nobody was prepared to say they could see it.

After 18 months stuck in reverse, most of you celebrated when your funds started moving forward. Not just nudging forward, either, but full-on pedal-to-the-metal barreling down the motorway. With Jimmy Barnes at full volume. You sit back to enjoy the ride. You watch the signposts flash past – March, whoosh, April, whoosh, May, whoosh, June, whoosh, July, whoosh, August, whoosh, September, whoosh and Oct … thwump! Ouch! What was that?

Every week, dozens of super-related stories lob on our desks here at Super- Savvy. Two that have turned up this week are especially interesting.

It was a cool, blustery night. The setting was a dramatically black room in Melbourne’s rejuvenated docklands area. The event was SuperRatings Fund of the Year Awards dinner, attended by about 300 representatives from Australian superannuation funds.

For the seventh month in a row, the Australian share market has continued to help super funds charge back into the black. We have now seen the highest five singular month returns for Australian Share options in the last five years. Who’d have guessed it at the start of the year?

ASIC has noted the number of SMSF owners prematurely dipping into their super, and they're not happy. In fact they've been making some very public warnings about it. Are you guilty of accessing your super before its time?

The desire to reduce fees is mightily tempting. Nothing wrong with that. With super, lower fees equal higher balances. It's not surprising then that every day people leave managed super funds and start their own SMSFs in order to reduce the fees they pay. So here's the conundrum. Low fees are good, but they're not a good reason to go DIY.

The good news for embattled fund members is that the July results just released by SuperRatings show quite healthy returns.

Balanced options are the default investment types offered by most super funds. They are the option type held by the vast majority of Australians - by a long shot. There’s something about the word Balanced that inspires confidence. After all, balance is good. We try to eat balanced diets. We learn to balance work and play. A Balanced option implies a medium risk, medium return investment that many of us find to our liking.

Lower fees can add over $100,000 to your super

Fees up. Returns down. So where's the good news

Performance gap becomes a canyon
After a year in which most of us have seen our super balances shrink faster than an escaped balloon, many investors have blamed their funds for their reduced balances. In some cases, they’d be right. But many funds have managed to do reasonably well in the very tough conditions of the past year.