Super, just super
Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 2:08 pm by Wally
The other day a couple of large letters arrived from my friendly not-so-local Superannuation Industry Fund. It’s not-so-local cos they are based in Queensland.
One contained yet another of those damn credit-card size friendly happy here-are-our-contect-details cards. Why? I can look the phone number up on the web site, or in the phone book.
So many organisations seem to think that their contact or other details are of such vital importance that I must carry them at all times: membership cards, credit cards, health insurance cards, drivers licences, the list goes on. Some are important. But the phone number to ring my super fund? If we all carried every card we were ever sent, we’d have wallets and purses 4 cm thick, and walk Quasimodo-style with a limping gait becuase of being unbalanced. Sack the PR flacks and cut your expenses!
So, I’ve ceremonially filed the card. I should just throw it out but the bower-bird in me struggles.
Then came the even bigger envelope, the one I’ve been putting off opening. Putting off because of expecting it to be yet another announcement of their terrible results: telling me how much money they’ve lost.
But no – it was not to be. Instead, it announces that one of the myriad of fund options is closing, and I need to either accept their default change or nominate a new allocation.
Now, folks, I consider myself to be moderately financially literate. But when I get a 40 page book from a super fund telling me the methods to allocate risk, select a set of up to 10 fund options, evaluate past performance, yada yada yada, well – my brain turns to mush, I lose the will to live, and seriously consider poking an eye out with a fork because it’s more fun.
Most people don’t understand share markets, risk/return trade-offs, or finance in pretty much any form. I struggle wading through the waffle. It is completely beyond me how others who know less can make a sensible decision about allocating their super contributions into different fund options.
I have several (well, lots, really) customers who DO seem to carry every single card they’ve ever acquired. Seriously, it takes them several minutes to locate the credit card they want to pay for their groceries with. And they don’t start looking for said card until the groceries are fully bagged and I’m waiting for payment. Meanwhile the rest of the queue starts looking a tad impatient.
I never read the stuff my super fund sends me. I look at the bottom line of the statement to see how much or how little money is in the fund, then file it.