Super Is Not A Joke | The Big Picture

Adam: [00:01:39] Welcome to Super Saturday and Equity Mates media series on superannuation proudly brought to you by Super Hero. With recent government changes to super legislation here in Australia, 100 billion dollars of Australians money is in underperforming super products. And a lot of people are feeling a little in the dark when it comes to their super Equity Mates media in partnership with superhero are going to shine a light on the super industry with the aim of making Australians wake up and take control of their super over three Saturdays and four different shows will be bringing you all the information you need to help you take more control so you don't miss it. Make sure you're also subscribed to Equity Mates Get Started Investing feed and you're in good company. My name is Adam and I'm joined as always by my little older brother and real life economist Thomas Thomas. [00:02:24][45.8]

Thomas: [00:02:25] Good, Adam. Great to be here on a Saturday. [00:02:27][1.5]

Adam: [00:02:28] Yes, indeed. Already to talk super, I hope. [00:02:31][3.1]

Thomas: [00:02:31] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Pages of. Yeah, yeah. [00:02:33][2.2]

Adam: [00:02:34] Pages of notes. Well, I'll try and try and make those pages somewhat entertaining for the listeners out there. We are, of course, your regular hosts of comedian versus economist. And we thank you for tuning in to this very special episode all about superannuation. And I think it's really important, actually, because there's been a lot of changes to super recently and often people don't really think about it enough, if at all. So we're going to look at some of the recent changes, what they mean, you know, what new opportunities might come about because of them. We like to try and give you the bigger picture on comedian versus economist. So, yeah, we've got to get super what it is, why it's important and why it might be Thomas the sleeping giant in your investment portfolio. Mm hmm. It is it is huge. But before we get into into the why and the changes and all the big stuff that's happening in super, I thought we could go back to basics. Can you tell us what is super? Where did it come from? [00:03:28][53.7]

Thomas: [00:03:28] Yeah. So I guess people have the basic handle on it. So super is something that for most people comes out of their wage job, goes into a super fund, sits there until retirement and then after retirement, it's used to fund fund their lifestyle in retirement. So that's the the best basic over very basic overview of super is something everyone knows is basically super is a solution to a problem. And the problem historically was that poor people started living too long. [00:03:57][29.2]

Adam: [00:03:58] Was what poor people started living too long. [00:04:00][1.5]

Thomas: [00:04:00] Yeah, that's where that's where it came from. So. So back in the olden olden times, if you were old enough to live in your 70s, you were probably wealthy enough to support yourself in that time, or if you were were poorer, you just moved in with your kids. That's sort of how we did things. But until the late eighteen, hundreds of life expectancy started increasing and governments took took that on. And governments in Australia, least around nineteen hundred introduced the age pension after federation. They introduced the age pension where they said, if you live over 60, 65, we'll give you some money to support you and your in your old age. [00:04:42][41.7]

Adam: [00:04:42] That seems a low bar, doesn't it? Like if you live over 65. I really like I'm banking on I'm expecting to these days to make it past 65 pretty comfortably. Yeah. Like I mean barring some sort of illness. Yeah. Unexpected illness, tragedy dare I say it. [00:05:00][17.8]

Thomas: [00:05:00] And I'm going to look at your lifestyle a little bit. Lay off the pies a bit. You know, [00:05:06][5.6]

Adam: [00:05:06] they say some things that some things are non-negotiable in this world. Dollars of pauses that every one of them. [00:05:12][5.6]

Thomas: [00:05:13] Yeah, it is now but in nineteen hundred sixty five was old and most people didn't make sixty five. And so when that, when the age pension was set up as being 65 plus it was for a very small percentage of the population, the government was a bit like er would just fund everyone over 65 because what is it, 10 percent of the population is going to get there. [00:05:32][19.3]

Adam: [00:05:33] I might have two good years left after that. Yeah. Yeah that's right. I can cover [00:05:37][4.1]

Thomas: [00:05:38] it. Yeah. And so like and so now so that was set back then that retirement age. But now the, the great majority of the population reaches that sixty five threshold and then a huge number of them live for thirty, forty years after that. Not forty but you know like for a long time after that. So funding retirement. So you know, we used to have a very short life expectancy after retirement. We didn't we didn't live for very long. He didn't need a lot of money to fund retirement. Now, relatively retirements are very long. And so the government sort of looking at this and going like this, we're on the hook for a lot of money here and it's only getting worse. [00:06:16][38.5]

Adam: [00:06:16] I mean, they could use our taxes that we've paid our whole life to to pay for some of it. You would have thought, hey, easy, Hugo Chavez. I mean, we've only worked for when they worked for forty five years, paid thirty eight per cent taxes or whatever, and come the end, now you're finished or you can go. You've been putting some of your some of the money we. Didn't take I hope you would be putting it away, [00:06:40][23.4]

Thomas: [00:06:41] but I mean, that's not the only thing taxes, taxes are going to fund everything else the government does. [00:06:44][3.4]

Adam: [00:06:45] They're good to a site like Dollars. [00:06:46][1.0]

Thomas: [00:06:48] Yeah, well, and it's not like they were rolling in cash and then but it's like it's a big shift, you know, over the last 100 years at that level, it's a huge shift in life expectancies and the the bill that the government's got to pick up the funding funding everyone's retirement. So there was so there was a push then to sort of push this back onto private citizens and like so superannuation as a as a financial product has been around for a long time. Like, you could always go and and, you know, start stashing money aside to come out at a later stage of life that was always available to you. But what we saw in Australia happened in the 80s with the Hawke government is that that then they set up a super system where it came directly out of wages into superannuation funds and actually started the initial start was with the with part of the accord is they wanted to give workers a pay rise. They wanted to give them a three per cent pay rise. But inflation was running a bit hot and they're worried that inflation was going to get away from us. And so they were worried that if I gave everyone a three per cent pay rise, they'd all go out and spend it. And that would fuel further inflation, more inflation. Yeah. So the agreement that they came up with is it will give everyone a three per cent pay rise, but we'll tuck it into a super fund and they can't access it until they retire. [00:08:04][76.7]

Adam: [00:08:05] Oh, so this isn't right because this is a big kind of misconception, at least on my part is super is always part of your sort of salary, almost, you know, like it's this kind of part of the package or part of whatever your employment condition is. But you're saying it didn't used to be like everyone had a salary to begin with. Now, look, we really want to give you more money, but we're worried that you'll just go and blow it, you know, or do whatever, but ultimately push up inflation. So instead we take the money we were going to give you and and make you. Make you save it. [00:08:38][32.4]

Thomas: [00:08:38] Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:08:39][0.7]

Adam: [00:08:39] That go down. [00:08:39][0.3]

Thomas: [00:08:40] It worked. People were happy with that. Yeah. I, I think people, some people would have liked the cash but the unions were able to say that they got a win, they got a three per cent pay rise which is pretty decent. Government was able to say that they weren't fuelling inflation. Everyone was pretty happy [00:08:54][13.5]

Adam: [00:08:54] and it forced people to save the money too, you know. [00:08:56][2.1]

Thomas: [00:08:57] Yeah, well, [00:08:57][0.4]

Adam: [00:08:57] it's got to set up a new a new sort of, dare I say, paradigm time. One of your favourite. [00:09:01][4.0]

Thomas: [00:09:03] Yeah, yeah. It really was. A lot of things came out of it. So, yeah, the initial agreement just Covid award workers. So people on the award system probably about like a third of the labour force or something at the time. And and that also created the industry super fund. So that money went into industry super funds. So you got to in Australia, you got two super funds, you got the retail guys, which is are the for profits out of the financial sector. And then you've got the industry super funds, which are the not for profits based around certain industries. So, yeah, they were born out of that that period and it started at three percent, three percent contribution, then three [00:09:40][36.8]

Adam: [00:09:40] per cent it's just gone up to it's just gone up to 10 per cent [00:09:44][4.1]

Thomas: [00:09:45] that erm something of that on its way to [00:09:46][1.8]

Adam: [00:09:46] 12. We'll talk about that in a moment. But you left out self managed super funds. So we've got retail super funds which are run by the banks and investment firms and they run, as you say, for profit. So so the profits that they make, they they take a cut of those profits and then give those back to shareholders. Then the industry funds are more like, you know, they run not for profit the where everything goes back to support the members. But then there's also a self managed super fund, which I think that's I don't know a lot about them, but I think it's only for the brave, really. Like I had a quick look at it before and I watched the little video on the website and it said something like, you've got to keep documentation and maintain records for over ten years. And I just thought, you know, I'm out this like unless you're, like, enthusiastic about admin, I just feel like super self managed super funds might not be for you because. Well, I mean, and that's a lot a lot of that's changing. And and we're talking about changes happening with super. And one of those things is about having more options to control your super now. So it used to be certainly when I started, you know, which is probably twenty, twenty five years ago, super was just a thing where you just put your money in and you hope that you had money when you retired. You might have had like three options. It was like a low risk balanced and then a sort of high risk, high growth option. But there's a lot more options now without necessarily going to like a self managed super fund. [00:11:13][86.3]

Thomas: [00:11:13] Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's super super is really followed the the finance industry in the sense of the opening up and making it much more customisable experience. You know, the technology's just empowered that. Yeah. And I think it was the super funds were on a pretty good wicket for a long time in the sense that it was a mandated contribution. Like know came in like it came in the wards in. The 80s, but then in 90, it became compulsory for everyone working a sort of wage and salary job. [00:11:43][30.0]

Adam: [00:11:44] This is amazing. We can't convince people to wear masks on the train. Also, people on Facebook today, they're up in arms because someone recommended we should in South Australia. We should be wearing masks on public transport. Isn't that right? I mean, it's like we'll get back a few years to when they told you you had to hand over three percent of your money in superannuation and that was mandatory. And so I was curious, though, how it went down at the time, because by today's standards, mandatory or compulsory anything seems like that's a tough pill to swallow. [00:12:17][33.6]

Thomas: [00:12:18] Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it was there was no real opposition to it. The unions were backing it. The finance industry liked it because it was guaranteeing money coming into them to manage funds. The infrastructure developed like it was great sort of union for funding infrastructure and a lot of development of the Australian economy, because now there was this huge pool of money that was investing for long time horizons because it's all super. So it's like, you know, building infrastructure with a 20 year horizons. Like a no brainer for a super fund. Yes, I'd like it create a lot of capital for that. Yes, it was a lot of winners and no real the only real losers were if you wanted the money now to spend on stuff and you found it was getting locked away and you couldn't you couldn't actually. But it was still your money at the end of the day. [00:13:03][45.5]

Adam: [00:13:03] So, you know, true. That's hard. That that was hard, though, for 20 something me to understand to really, you know what I'm earning. It was a bit like tax, though. You know, people I feel a bit the same way, like with tax. It's like, well, I have to soon as you start earning, you realise you see your first paycheque and it's like whatever it is, a thousand dollars and you go out got a thousand dollars. Like what, 30 percent of that's gone straight away to tax you. I never say that. And then and then super as well. So but I think forced savings is a good thing. [00:13:34][30.4]

Thomas: [00:13:34] I think so. I don't think that's that was sort of like one of the lessons. And I think I think it's true. Like if you have the money, you just tend to spend it. I mean, I definitely noticed this being self-employed. Now it's really hard to make make money go into super to to to find it is hard is it tough times being in economically. [00:13:52][18.3]

Adam: [00:13:53] So through tough times [00:13:55][1.8]

Thomas: [00:13:56] with unforgotten, we're the forgotten victims of of the Australian economy, economic concerns. But no, like you got it. You got to like you got to set it aside, you got to put it away. You got to do the paperwork. You've got to line up with your super fund to let them know you're going to put some money in. [00:14:13][16.8]

Adam: [00:14:13] I'm the opposite. I was I was really lucky. Like, I've always been in salaried jobs, I guess, but I spent like twenty years working at different universities. And UniSuper, which is an industry fund who I was with for a long time, they at the time unis like it was twenty one per cent that went into super by default. Twenty one. Wow. Yeah. And so I was like early twenties working at a uni and at that age started putting in twenty one per cent until I realised that that was just the default setting and seven per cent of that was actually optional. So mid 20s I got a nice seven percent uptick in my Take-Home Pay of which I can safely say I held on to Nannerl. So if I had access to the other fourteen percent, pretty confident that I would also have none of the other fourteen percent. My fourteen was still good, right. I was still above what the super guarantee was, which was I don't know, probably nine point five percent. So. So yeah I had a sort of very different experience. Yeah. [00:15:13][60.0]

Thomas: [00:15:14] Yeah I went a bit. I mean you're the perfect case of life and it's kind of a lifestyle thing. It's hard to think about your retirement when you're twenty. Like it just seems like it's forever away. And I totally [00:15:23][9.2]

Adam: [00:15:24] but you know, I'm glad I did. And that was that was I've got to thank Mum for this. My mum gave me the advice. She's like, go like high growth early. Like, you should have a look at it, go and see what it's what it's doing. And you're young and it's not financial advice, obviously, but you young go and put it in like high growth because you will be able to ride out the peaks and troughs. Yeah. And and it should grow and through the the the wonder that is compound interest, you know, it'll turn into something, something pretty good. And, you know, with us at a higher rate of, you know, a high percentage of the salary going in. Yeah, I think it's worked out it's worked out fairly well. But I reckon it's a really good thing, too, is we often think about cash, you know, especially at the moment in a really low interest environment. Cash is worth nothing like it's you know, potentially inflation is going to grow faster than cash. So having that money invested over all those years seems to me, you know, in hindsight, it definitely did make a lot more sense. Imagine if I'd just taken that and put it in the bank. Oh, yeah. Well, um. [00:16:23][58.5]

Thomas: [00:16:23] And disaster. [00:16:24][0.5]

Adam: [00:16:25] So was that a consideration, do you know, at the time when the government was bringing in super and they they gave it to these funds, who then invested it, or was it initially like a we're just going to hold onto it for you so you can't spend that and we'll put it in the bank. [00:16:37][12.8]

Thomas: [00:16:39] Yeah, I don't know about that, I'm pretty sure it was always invested, that was always the idea. They weren't just sitting on. It wasn't I mean, he has a lot of regulation around super funds. They going to do certain things like, you know, hold a certain percentage in cash and liquid assets and and invest in certain asset classes and things as it's regulated. And they are pretty, you know, slow and steady and stable. They're not they're not out there looking for like 20 percent per year returns. They're looking for, you know, pretty stable, stable sort of return. Yeah, but I think I think that was always the always the thing. And and it's sort of like this is a huge social shift that it sort of engineered in the sense that it made everyone an investor, everyone became very interested in in the share market and what equities were doing because, yeah, now they were now invested. They are now in the game. And you remember back in 1993, it was very difficult to invest in shares. [00:17:39][60.3]

Adam: [00:17:40] Yeah, definitely. I wanted to buy Apple at the time. [00:17:42][1.9]

Thomas: [00:17:42] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was sure about it at all. Yes, yes. Not everyone could be a share investor wasn't just opening up an app, a superhero app. And where you go is big, big story in a process. And so super sort of made that happen for four people and got people into the share market and then became people became very interested in what happened to shares. [00:18:05][22.7]

Adam: [00:18:05] And I know people now, though, that still don't kind of make that connexion. They still don't kind of realise that. They just think soopers is this place where your money goes. People I know. Yeah, I know people that work in the IT industry that don't know their login details for their super fund. It's like, no, I didn't I [00:18:26][20.9]

Thomas: [00:18:26] didn't write it down. That's what I do. [00:18:27][1.2]

Adam: [00:18:29] I never had of it. No, but, you know, that's just not because I never set it up. That is like I set it up ages ago. I set it up when I started work. I didn't really I just like some people, I reckon, wouldn't know who they're in, who their super is with. If they did, they probably haven't logged in in a long time to see what it's doing, how it's divided. It's probably just in the balance portfolio. And I mentioned at the top of the show there's like a hundred billion dollars of Australian money in underperforming super products. And then they're products that are kind of right down the bottom. That's where you've got what you're putting. You're putting money in if you think about it as like, yeah, yeah. Dollar cost averaging into your investment portfolio. Right. Every week or every fortnight, you're putting a bit of money into your into your portfolio. You want to be knowing how that's performing. Surely like you don't want to be. [00:19:17][48.3]

Thomas: [00:19:17] I think I think people just don't get that, that they think super is a different thing. But Super is just a managed fund that it's. Yeah. That you have to contribute money to. And so the question. Yeah, that's a big question. If like if you if you've got a man and you have a managed fund, someone has money that they're managing on your behalf, if you have super, there's someone managing your money on your behalf. So you really want to know, well, are they doing a good job of managing my money on my behalf? Are they getting good returns? [00:19:43][25.3]

Adam: [00:19:45] And there's a lot of other things coming in now to like, you know, there's a lot of, you know, and I'm my super fund. There's a lot of there's like sustainability options and things like that. And like, if that's what's important to you, you can go, well, actually, I don't want to just invest in, you know, I don't know, big coal mining companies, for example. I want to invest in renewable energy companies. And so you can start to take even more control over the types of companies that your super is invested in. And you can read already there's one super fund. I forget which one it was giving you the option of like 145 different ETFs that you can put your super into. Like self managed super fund is ten years of paperwork and document maintenance. Or you could go with, you know, something like that. That's a pretty granular level of control of your super. So it's definitely changing, that's for sure. [00:20:35][50.3]

Thomas: [00:20:35] I mean, yeah, that's right. I mean, when I started at the bank, you had you could you could only adjusted every quarter or something like where your money was going. And even then it was like, yeah, as you say, broad, high growth or conservative or whatever. But yeah. But now like you can you can change it every day of the week, which you did during the GFC. [00:20:51][15.4]

Adam: [00:20:51] I just did one about fifteen times during my Covid crash and rebounds. I certainly would not recommend, would not recommend. I did so well in the early days with my uni job putting money into super and then Covid came and I thought, I'm going to try this. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about a bit about the changes. So the super guarantee is increasing. So it's gone from nine point five percent. The first increase, which was point five percent, just happened. And that's taken that to a super guarantee of ten percent. We're going to keep chipping away at this until we get to twelve percent, which is the target, is that right? [00:21:31][39.7]

Thomas: [00:21:31] I think that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not big on the numbers, but yeah, that's the idea. We're increasing the guarantee. [00:21:36][5.2]

Adam: [00:21:38] Economists don't leave the numbers to me. So what's what's driving that? Why is the government why did the government kind of decide it's it's the right time to to push that up to 12 percent? [00:21:51][12.9]

Thomas: [00:21:52] Yeah, it is. I'm not entirely sure about this. Like, I don't know what the sweet spot is in terms of, like, what the optimal rate of super guarantee contributions are like. And it's not something that's modelled by economists that I've seen. I think people think that it more more is better. Generally, saving more is better. Yeah, you have more in retirement. I think that was the idea. And people retirements becoming more expensive. So people need more maybe lower interest rate environment means that returns are growing at a smaller rate. You need need to inject more earlier on. That might be sort of part of the [00:22:28][36.3]

Adam: [00:22:28] logic, which is all well and good. But doesn't that then come at the expense of wages? I mean, the money is going to come from somewhere and [00:22:37][8.6]

Thomas: [00:22:37] it depends on your contract. So with that recent increase in the guarantee, there's some workers with some contracts with that would then come out of their take home pay so they don't actually get a pay rise. So there's nothing in that increase in the guarantee that means that people are going to get a pay rise. It may mean it may just mean that you get more taken out of your salary and your Take-Home Pay is goes down as a result. And that we are seeing that happening with some people, right? Yeah. So that's something to watch out for. Like if if you your take home pay goes down, that that could be the reason why. [00:23:08][30.9]

Adam: [00:23:08] Yeah. I think. Does it come down to does it come down to like I heard something about if you're on a package that includes super then maybe it's like yeah it kind of is going to come out of your take home pay. I think some companies, by the way, are also just just making the decision to kind of go, look, we're going to where it even though technically we could. Yeah. Come out of your pay. Well, we'll we'll chip in the extra point five percent. [00:23:31][23.2]

Thomas: [00:23:32] Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's good in the sense that it's happening at a time of competitive jobs market. So there is more incentive for firms to wear and go like, OK, we're going to give you a hey guys, we're giving you all the Peyro. We're just going to bump your salary up with this. Yeah. So that I think that's definitely happening. But I think it just depends on the contract you have with your employer. [00:23:51][19.1]

Adam: [00:23:52] So I've heard about I've heard something about stapling. I don't know what stapling is can need to explain stapling to me. Yeah. [00:23:57][5.3]

Thomas: [00:23:57] So this is the one of the one of the one of the things that came out when they reviewed superwomen the Productivity Commission reviewed super a couple of years ago, is that they found that there was a lot of people who had multiple super funds set up with money, money in multiple funds. And because each each funds charging you fees, it's a really inefficient way to you know, you really don't want your super distributed across three different funds. But what and when they looked into it and the reason why is that every time someone changed jobs, the employer had a preferred super fund that they were working with. And so when you change started a new job, they just your employer just set you up with your super fund. They said this is this is a super fund we use. This is your account and this is where your super is going. And then and it was up fee up to you then to roll your super over from your previous super into your new super. And people just weren't doing it. And so particularly in like the hospitality sector and that sort of thing where people are changing jobs pretty regularly, people could end up with, like, you know, four or five different super funds that they're the money and they're all each fund is charging them fees. And so it's a really, really inefficient way to do that. So go on and say, hey, we need to try and put a stop to this. So what we're going to do is staple the fund to you. So you're the first fund that you start working with that stapled to you. So if you then change jobs, your employer, the default setting has to be that they start paying super into the fund that stapled to you, not into their it's not their choice anymore, [00:25:22][84.4]

Adam: [00:25:22] which is good is good if you if you lock onto a good one. The first employer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:25:30][7.6]

Thomas: [00:25:30] If you get a good good super product with your first [00:25:32][1.9]

Adam: [00:25:32] name and even more reason I guess to the, you know, as we say, wake up and have a look at what super funds you've got. Hopefully you've only got one. If you haven't got if you've got more than one, then maybe have a look at what you can do to consolidate them into one, because. Yeah, like if if you've only got one and you get that when you joined your first, you get a casual job serving coffee down at the local coffee shop. They put you into a super fund that the one that they use. When I have a look at that and make sure that it's, you know, it's right for you. [00:26:02][29.4]

Thomas: [00:26:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah. You want to make sure it's performing. And that's the other that's the other big change that's coming up now is the ATO is going to name and shame underperforming super funds. Are they going to really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're going [00:26:15][12.4]

Adam: [00:26:15] to say, you see [00:26:17][1.5]

Speaker 1: [00:26:17] if you [00:26:18][0.8]

Adam: [00:26:19] go right to what end. Just to just shaving exercise. General shaving. Yeah. [00:26:25][6.5]

Thomas: [00:26:26] Yeah. Throw some rotten fruit at the fund managers just just because it was, it was a bit of a good week for the finance industry because it was mandated contributions. And particularly with the retail funds, the fees charged, people just didn't really know what they were paying for and there was a lot of fees and things attached to their super. This is what the Productivity Commission found, that there were some high fees there and fees for stuff that wasn't really, you know, anything. And historically, the finance industry has really relied on people finding finance too complex to really deal with. And you had a lot of the things that came out of the royal commission, a lot of fee for no service like this idea that all these fees for things that people didn't actually receive any benefit from. And with super fees really eats into the performance of your of your super. And so to sort of the idea with this legislation is to just try and bring that out into the light and to use the super funds underperforming the benchmark by a certain amount. I think it's like zero point six percent or something like that over six years. Like if it's consistently underperforming, then it gets named and shamed. And that should encourage the super funds one to perform better, sort of make sure, like after fees that they are delivering good results. But if they don't, then it should encourage people when they see in the paper that their super fund has been named and shamed because like she maybe I should just roll it over to somewhere else and, you know, do you know, take take more control of it. Yeah. And so sort of like knowledge is a great disinfectant is something like that, like, you know, just sort of open that up and bring it into the light. So that's sort of it's a regulation sort of philosophy. Rather than saying regulating the super funds directly say you've got to do this, you've got to hit these benchmarks just like you do what you want. But if you underperform, we're going to let people know about it. [00:28:22][115.9]

Adam: [00:28:22] I heard that it was the default. One of the one of them was the default super fund of the AFL Players Association, the footy run. So, yeah, that kind of a lot of that's what you want to do, is upset a bunch of, like, you know, burly AFL players. I find out that. I mean, you know, they probably do. I think the salary is not too bad compared to the rest of us. But still, you know, the career is arguably a lot shorter in the AFL than it is for most of us on a normal salary job. So. All right. So are there any other trends that we kind of want to be keeping an eye on when it comes to super? [00:29:02][40.4]

Thomas: [00:29:03] Probably. Probably the one that's interesting, I think, is the there's a few MPs now on both sides are talking about releasing super for housing deposits and. Right. Yeah. So have the idea, like if super is there to set you up later in life. Probably the key thing these days are probably less so when houses were cheaper relative to incomes, but particularly now if you financial security in retirement really hinges on home ownership like you can, you can survive pretty comfortably on the age pension, which isn't massive internationally. If you own your own home outright, if you're still renting, then you're in kind of trouble, like the age pension is not going to go very far. And so there's sort of an idea emerging that what you really want to be doing is if you're talking about, you know, securing retirement, then you want to help people get into the to the housing market and get their own home. And having money locked up in super if they don't have a deposit isn't isn't that helpful. And if super is just money for the future and you that kind of make the argument that a deposit is money for the future, too. It's not you know, it's not discretionary, irresponsible spending. So we should, you know, open it up for. [00:30:21][77.3]

Adam: [00:30:21] Yeah, well, I think if you if you can if you can choose from one hundred and fifty eight if you like, because surely it's a very, it's a kind of it's a bit of a risk thing. Isn't that like it's about kind of going we don't we don't. We want you to put money away for the future. We don't want to let you sort of you can't you can't use super to buy crypto or anything like that. And so our house fits into that kind of asset or real estate. It fits into that asset class of pretty safe ish, you know what I mean? Like, it's real safe as a as a ASX 200 ETF, for example. [00:30:56][34.3]

Thomas: [00:30:56] Yeah, I think you could say that. Yeah. I mean, there's this sort of. Yeah, there's a lot to sort of you. [00:31:01][4.9]

Adam: [00:31:02] You can't have a party and trashier ASX 200 ETF [00:31:04][2.5]

Speaker 1: [00:31:07] or giving it a crack and [00:31:10][3.1]

Thomas: [00:31:11] there's there's a lot to iron out with that and to make sure people are investing in homes and setting themselves up. But yeah, but I think there's there's a growing sort of push for it. I think the finance industry might push back on it, but it is something to watch. I think isn't is not is not happening this year or next year. But, you know, maybe down the track, that could be something to watch out for. [00:31:34][22.3]

Adam: [00:31:34] And so that's different to what happened with Covid when the government. You can have access to 10000, obviously, but that was just to help people through, yeah, help help pay the bills, pay the rent. That kind of thing was it wasn't about setting it. You know, that was kind of nice. Just letting people dip in are supposed to. [00:31:52][18.1]

Thomas: [00:31:53] Yeah, yeah. No, that's right. That's right. Though. Yeah. I mean a lot of my mates rated their super and plunged it into crypto. How that worked out. Lessons, lessons learnt. [00:32:06][13.4]

Adam: [00:32:07] Lessons, lessons learnt. Don't don't fly. And you're super into crypto if you, if you should, if you should be able to access your super for whatever reason, strongly advise you're not putting in crypto. All right. Well, feels like a good night to finish. Hopefully by now we've been able to help you wake up and feel like you can take more control of your super. For more information on how superheroes are giving Australians more control, head to superhero dotcom you. Thank you, Thomas, for your insights, as always. Thank you. See you again next time on comedian versus economist. [00:32:07][0.0]

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