This article discusses how major life events can impact your superannuation and how you can protect it. It highlights the importance of beneficiary nominations, legal considerations, and seeking professional advice to ensure financial security in retirement.

The introduction of compulsory superannuation in 1992, embedded the concept of retirement saving into our investment psyche.

While Australia’s superannuation scheme has its complexities, the idea is simple: regularly contribute a percentage of earnings to a complying superannuation fund to provide financial support upon retirement.

Well, that’s the plan. But what happens if your savings strategy is disrupted before you get to retirement?

In this article we specifically focus on low income earners, reinforcing that even a modest balance can make a big difference in retirement and listing six tips to assist in growing their superannuation savings. The article finishes with a recommendation to seek professional advice.

While it's easy to be discouraged by superannuation and fear you will never have enough money saved to stop working, remember even a modest superannuation balance can make a big difference in retirement.

For every $100,000 saved in superannuation, you can expect these funds to generate a return of 6%, or $6,000, a year. When this is paid out as a pension, it equates to $500 a month tax-free. Of course, this is doubled if both you and your partner have $100,000 each in super. Depending on your overall financial situation, this can be paid in addition to you receiving a full age pension.

Here are six super hacks to help you maximise your super balance:

Positioning your portfolio when markets are on the rise is easy, right? Load up on growth assets and enjoy the ride. But we all know that investing isn’t that easy. This article identifies a number of key strategies that investors should consider when markets are at their most volatile.

As any experienced investor knows, all investment markets have their ups and downs. Regardless of investor experience, turbulent times are a cause of anxiety, and that can lead to poor decision-making.  So if turbulent markets are inevitable, even if their timing is not predictable, how should portfolios be positioned in anticipation of, and in response to market volatility?

What’s your objective?

First up, it’s important to go back to your investment objective. Is it to grow wealth over the medium to long term? Or are you more concerned with preserving capital? Your objective also needs to take account of your risk profile. How would you feel if, for example, the value of your portfolio dropped by 20%? Would it lead to you dumping volatile investments such as shares, or would you see it as an opportunity to pick up some quality shares at a discount?

There’s an acknowledged disparity between men’s and women’s retirement savings. This article discusses the reasons and explains how planning and strategy can help bridge the gap and provide retirement security for women.

Ask any woman juggling career, home and family and she’ll tell you it’s a hard slog. Yet as retirement looms, dreams of enjoying the rewards of all that work are shattered as the retirement savings don’t support the vision.

According to an inquiry into Women’s Economic Security in Retirement entitled “A husband is not a retirement plan: Achieving economic security for women in retirement”, on average, women retire with approximately half the retirement savings as men. The inquiry also found that the majority of Australians on the age pension are women. Of that number, the majority are single, meaning that these women are struggling alone on an income that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines as poverty.

What about super?

Picture this... when you were 21 years old your well-meaning but financially inept uncle put $1,000 into an ordinary bank account for you with instructions to leave it there and “let the bank’s interest turn it into a fortune”. You followed his directions only to discover 30 years later the balance of your ‘fortune’ was a paltry $6,023! What went wrong? Well, to put it frankly, you didn’t give it any attention.

This is a classic mistake that many Australians make when it comes to their superannuation.