Retirement

[afstruct]

I was talking about JetStar Bombers.

You mean Death Star don't you ? !!!

 

[afstruct]

Have been lucky . worked on passenger jets =( what we all travel on ) , to GA = light aircraft , to 14years on the Aussie sports car of the sky (including the last Deeper maintenance of) = the FA 18 Hornet.

Edit, Passenger jet = when started at Qantas= 747 = only=the Queen of the Sky= absolutely awesome to work on!!!!!
To 767s, 737s , A310s, A320s
To RAAF 707s and C130s

 

[hademall]

My daughter has been in the same job since school /TAFE, fairly well paid in a specialist job for 25 years.
About 10 years ago I asked her how much super she had. She had no idea. Her boss paid her Super Levy into an account at a well known bank.
Which bank ?
It didn’t matter because “It isn’t my money” according to her. “Like hell”, or similar words, was my reply. Soon got that perception sorted.

I showed her how much I had accumulated over the same period, and she could not believe what I had. This amount included salary sacrifice contributions, which were not available with her fund. But no SGL contributions, which were not available to me as I was in a 'grandfather-ed'
Super Scheme.
So, I recommended that she transfer to the same fund as me, as employees now had the choice of fund selection, and that opened a can of worms that explains why people miss out on substantial payments in retirement.

It took my financial advisor about a month to get her funds from Which bank.
When she told me how much it was, my reply was “BS !!! there has to be more”.
It was finally found that she had two accounts, the ‘missing’ account was titled some strange name, and had life insurance, and mortgage insurance payments being made from it. She had no idea about any of that ............ Sign here, thanks for coming, see ya,..............
My financial adviser had been asking the wrong questions, and Which bank had not been forthcoming with useful information and answers.
End result, about 15 years employer’s contributions, less insurance, and crap % returns amounted to less than $50K.
If she had carried on regardless, she would have found that by age 67, she may have had another $100K. Not good enough.
Maybe after the Banking Commission, these sort of rip-offs are finished.

Since then, with a bit of knowledge and education on how it all works, she is miles ahead.
I don’t know what she has now, but she acknowledges that swapping has made a big difference to what financial position she is likely will be in by 2045.

Back onto retirement …….. I am not going into my situation because I am ‘lucky’ and had it ‘easy’ ………. so I have been told.
But, at present, I have no worries about spending money on what I like. Just annoys me that during the past 2+ years, we have not been able to travel as planned to reduce our kids inheritance. Haven't seen Wave Rock, and now, probably never will.
And I am glad I resisted the urge to buy one of the last VFs, considering the problems that members seem to have with them.

Short version. Thirty plus years ago I had a job as health and safety rep on a seven storey hotel renovation in Little Bourke St, Melbourne. I was making enquiries regarding a work cover claim by a labourer, only to find out his boss who by the way employed some twenty or so bricklayers and labourers had not been paying his Workcover premiums. Further enquiries led me to find out he was also not paying the proper superannuation contributions for his employees.
I went on to open the biggest can of worms, discovering that not only the subby bricklayer was embezzling (robbing) from his employees, there were others too.
We are talking a lot of money. So there’s that.

 

[losh1971]

Short version. Thirty plus years ago I had a job as health and safety rep on a seven storey hotel renovation in Little Bourke St, Melbourne. I was making enquiries regarding a work cover claim by a labourer, only to find out his boss who by the way employed some twenty or so bricklayers and labourers had not been paying his Workcover premiums. Further enquiries led me to find out he was also not paying the proper superannuation contributions for his employees.
I went on to open the biggest can of worms, discovering that not only the subby bricklayer was embezzling (robbing) from his employees, there were others too.
We are talking a lot of money. So there’s that.

Yep this happened to me. I was on a very well paid bakers job working nights and weekends with all the penalties. Trouble was the bakery closed and went into receivership. I lost $1000s in unpaid super as the boss was putting on my payslip super to Hostplus, I think it was at the time. Yet when I went to roll it into my new fund they had never heard of me.......

 

[hademall]

Yep this happened to me. I was on a very well paid bakers job working nights and weekends with all the penalties. Trouble was the bakery closed and went into receivership. I lost $1000s in unpaid super as the boss was putting on my payslip super to Hostplus, I think it was at the time. Yet when I went to roll it into my new fund they had never heard of me.......

Yep, sadly this was the case as I outlined. If I hadn’t persisted, lots of people would have lost a lot more than they already had.
I had to watch my back after opening that particular can of worms.

 

[chrisp]

Yep this happened to me. I was on a very well paid bakers job working nights and weekends with all the penalties. Trouble was the bakery closed and went into receivership. I lost $1000s in unpaid super as the boss was putting on my payslip super to Hostplus, I think it was at the time. Yet when I went to roll it into my new fund they had never heard of me.......

Yep, sadly this was the case as I outlined. If I hadn’t persisted, lots of people would have lost a lot more than they already had.
I had to watch my back after opening that particular can of worms.

Unfortunately, I’ve heard of similar stories. One I heard was of a company that regularly when in to receivership and all the worker’s entitlements would be lost, or not paid at all in the case of their superannuation. Then, by some miracle, a new company would emerge doing the same work and hiring the same retrenched workforce, and managed by much the same people (but the company would be under someone else’s name - usually a relative).

I think the government introduced a requirement that superannuation payments not be in arrears to combat worker’s losing years of entitlements to these fraudsters.

 

[hademall]

I think the government introduced a requirement that superannuation payments not be in arrears to combat worker’s losing years of entitlements to these fraudsters.

I think that’s correct.

 

[lmoengnr]

Unfortunately, I’ve heard of similar stories. One I heard was of a company that regularly when in to receivership and all the worker’s entitlements would be lost, or not paid at all in the case of their superannuation. Then, by some miracle, a new company would emerge doing the same work and hiring the same retrenched workforce, and managed by much the same people (but the company would be under someone else’s name - usually a relative).

I think the government introduced a requirement that superannuation payments not be in arrears to combat worker’s losing years of entitlements to these fraudsters.

That sounds like a common problem in the house building industry...

 

[figjam]

Hopefully the rip-offs of the past by large, well known and respected companies have ended.
Being exposed by the Banking Commission, named, shamed and fined has made investors / consumers more aware of 'their' future entitlements.

I got caught by AMP in 1987, talked into investing $10K into something, which immediately dropped to $8K due to commission, fees and other stuff which was not disclosed to me. My understanding back then was that $10K in AMP was $10K to me, not $1K to the broker and $1K to their profit line.
A few years later when it regained my losses, I withdrew it. During that time, I made sure that I expressed my dissatisfaction to anyone who was interested.

The biggest misconception of Super is that it is for old people.
20 year olds don't realise it is 'their' money being put aside by their employer. They don't see the 9.5% SGL as being part of their wage package. They just want the 5.1% wage increase so they can spend it. Financial education is not the answer, because they just are not interested.
My eldest grandson, 22yo uni student, has been working for 4 > 5 years casual, cash in hand, no tax, no workers comp, no super. Can't be told. Doesn't want to know that he and his employer are breaking dunno how many basic rules.

Another problem is that the Fed Govt of the day keeps changing the rules about how much you can put in per year, what can be taxed, what is tax exempt, withdrawal amounts when eligible, inheritance ......................... etc.

 

[UTE042_NZ]

Wow, some mad and sad stories here, here's mine.
While living and working in QLD in 1989 I purchased an AMP combined voluntary superannuation & life insurance product, around the time the compulsory superannuation legislation was being written into law there in Australia. I paid about 9-10 grand into it over 3-4 years and then invoked the premium suspension clause and just left it. After another 6 or so years I cancelled the insurance portion as those annual costs were partially eating into and reducing the amount of the interest that was compounding. It was always in a middle-of-the-road "balanced" investment profile with around 50%-60% in AU (business, corporate) real estate rental properties, 20% in AU & 10% US equities, and 10%-15% cash. In 2008, I rolled $16,000 built up from compulsory contributions to Suncorp from 5 years working at Golden Circle (2000-20004) into it, just in time to see that disappear along with another 4 grand in the great Global Financial Crisis swindle.
Still, when all is said and done, at the time I cashed it in some years ago (seven years before retirement age - because way back then to encourage us to become early superannuation adopters the powers-that-be allowed for us to cash out from age 55) to park it in term investments, my initial $10,000 stake had multiplied 9-fold. It effectively bought me the 1940 flathead hotrod Ford, shipped it here to NZ from the US, and paid for the shed it is going to live in, despite the the shenanigans of despicable scumbags selling their derivatives. Apart from a poke here and a squirt there, all I had to do was sit on my arse and leave it alone for 30 years.