These are good places to visit and books to read to keep educating yourself on super and finance.
- MoneySmart
- Bogleheads Australia Wiki
- The Barefoot Investor
- The Intelligent Investor
- Passive Investing Australia
- Retirement Income Review, Treasury, 2020
- Superannuation: Assessing Efficiency and Competitiveness, Productivity Commission, 2019
- Superannuation fees cheat sheet, Reddit user u/onevstheworld, 2021
- Super comparison – fees & performance, Reddit user u/SwaankyKoala, 2022
Let me know below or get in touch if you think something is missing.
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Any analysis on the Direct Investment options? I’m seeing a lot about very large fees on large balances but surely with capped fees in some funds the fees for large balances would be a lot lower.
I’m currently transitioning to the $180pa Member Direct within Australian Super with capped admin fees at $350pa. Brokerage and ETF MER on top of that of course.
Hi Mike, I haven’t looked in detail at DIOs but I would urge caution on straying away from index funds. If you plan to buy the same index fund ETFs as the super fund’s indexed option through the DIO to reduce fees it could make sense. But it looks like most people using DIOs want to invest in individual stocks or sectoral funds, which is more risky.
For Australian Super’s DIO, you could e.g. put 80% (the maximum) of your total super balance into VDHG (0.27% fee), which would cap your annual fee for that 80% of your balance at $180pa. If that annual fee is lower (when factoring in the one-off 0.1% transaction cost of buying VDHG), DIO could be worth it. This difference would be more significant for larger balances.
Thank you for this!