How to manage super in your 30s

By the time you hit 30, your superannuation becomes more serious. You probably started work in your teens or early 20s, so by this age you’ve had many years of building up your super. But are you managing it well?

By following the four smart, easy actions outlined below you can make sure that you are as you head toward your 40s.

Have you thought about what you want to achieve with your super? Or how it is invested. At this younger stage of life taking on more risk in your investments to achieve higher returns is a typical strategy (and how smartMonday MySuper is designed).

But even if you’re invested in MySuper, as most smartMonday members are, it’s still worthwhile reviewing your options. The following steps can guide you:

• Check out our range of investments and consider if some of them may suit you better.

• To help you in this, look at their investment performance.

• And judge what level of risk you’re prepared to take to achieve the returns you want.

• You can manage your investment choice through your smartMonday homepage.

“Reviewing your investment choice is one step. To build your super, extra contributions can play a critical role in your 30s. While this is a time when money can often be tight and you face competing financial demands, what you add to your super now will compound over the decades ahead to boost your balance,” explains smartMonday senior smartCoach Patrick Howard.

You can also contribute to tax effectively save toward your first home – an important goal for many Australians in their 30s.

Think carefully before starting a new super account with a new job. Multiple accounts likely increase the fees you're paying with no benefit.

“Another step to manage your super purposefully is to consolidate it into one account. It will help you more easily track your super, reduce fees and grow your balance. It’s perhaps the simplest step to take and will deliver over the long term,” explains Howard.

• For more detail, including impact on insurance, find out how much multiple accounts cost you.  

• Use smartMonday's super consolidation tool to find your super and bring it together.

A further step toward simpler super is to make sure you stay close to it by getting online access to your account. Then log in at least every few months to review your balance and other details and make sure your contact information is up to date with your fund.

For Australians, 30 is the median age to get married and average age to have babies. While providing for a new family is probably top of mind for you, covering yourself for possible accidents and illnesses is usually not. But super is really useful for this.

“Insurance, covering death, total and permanent disability, and income protection, is cost effective within your super, and as premiums are deducted from your account, they don’t impact your hip pocket,” says Howard.

• Log in to your smartMonday homepage to check if you have cover, and if you don’t contact a smartCoach to discuss options and get quotes.

Just as important is controlling who gets your super if you die – if you don’t then your super fund (through the trustee) will decide.

“Setting up a ‘binding beneficiary’ is the surest way to do this, and if you have dependents (such as spouse and kids) then it’s as simple as filling out a form. If you don’t have dependents, it’s still worthwhile but will be more complex,” adds Howard.

• Find out how to control who will get your super.

This is also a decade you want to consider the long-term outcome you will need from your super so you can live the life you want after work.

“It’s not the easiest task to do on your own, so we have smartCoaches who can guide you through any superannuation issue you have (a service your fees already pay for). So please call and chat with one, or your financial adviser, to get more peace of mind about where you are headed,” says Howard.