Beware online services offering to find lost super, says local man, Paul Judd.
“I got an email offering to find lost super, pressed the button and ‘BOOM’ my super disappeared,” he told Westender.
Of course, the super was there somewhere, it just took a bit of a journey to find it, and along the way Paul discovered some of the pitfalls that can occur when you roll your super over.
“I was lucky that I bumped into Suzy. Yellow Brick Road went out of their way to get everything in place before they touched a cent.”
Independent research carried out for Yellow Brick Road indicates that people living within two kilometres of West End have one quarter of a billion dollars in lost super. Yellow Brick Road is running a campaign to help people find and consolidate that superannuation, carefully.
“It is often young people who are most affected,” said Ms Butterworth. She said because they are not carefully managing their superannuation, they do not notice when employees open new funds for them and they end up with multiple superfunds all with small amounts of money and all costing them annual fees.
“It is not until they start to calculate how much they will need when they retire, that they give it any thought.”
Paul Judd is one example of a local in exactly that position.
At 40, Paul is beginning to calculate the amount he can save over the years that he will enjoy working.
“I want to retire before seventy,” he said.
His mistake, though, was to respond to an email that offered to consolidate his superannuation money, automatically.
Ms Butterworth helped Paul find his super, sort out the insurance and invest more aggressively than the average managed fund, that matched his appetite for risk, to yield a higher return and give him a better lifestyle in his retirement.
“You have to choose between spending less now, spending less later, or working longer,” she said. As we age, the options begin to narrow, so the key is to start early.
“If Paul had come to me ten years ago, he would be in a completely different position,” said Ms Butterworth.