Yes, Superannuation. Do you know what I think? You can stick it in your arse, the reason why, everyone that has super is losing big time. Most superannuation funds give a wide range of investment options eg Balanced Growth, Balanced direct, moderate growth, capital growth high growth, diversified share, cash, property. These are all invested around the world and most people would expect some sort of return but because of what unfortunately happened on September 11, the HIH Insurance fiasco 95% of people will get a rude shock when they get their statements. Some investments eg in the technology sector have lost 41%, that means in simple language if you had $100,000 superannuation in there you are $41,000 down the gurgler. Its just lucky that my superannuation was not invested in technology stocks but I still lost over 6% and my wife 9%, now shit thats a lot of money. Could you imagine if you had a half a million invested in technology and you lost 41% of that, its time to visit a bridge. And yet what bothers me is the CEO's collect their bonuses on huge negative returns. Our politicians are trying to get rid of the cash trade but that made positive gains of anywhere between 3 - 5 % profit. The only other investment that made good profit was Australian property but this is closed to new investors (maybe just looking after their own buddies), they made an average gain of over 8%. So what does all this mean? If you did the right thing years ago and did what you were told, to put massive money away in superannuation, you are now being pork barrelled.<br />For the younger people of today: yes interest rates for a loan are down to record lows of around 6% but this unfortunately affects people with superannuation who get poor returns, its very simple, if the interest rates go up, it hurts the young people with loans, but makes investors happy, if the interest rates are low, it makes young people happy but makes me unhappy. There must be a happy medium of around 9-10%.<br />Thumbs down to superannuation, its been going down for the last 6 years, not just the last 12 months.<br /><br />Phil <img border="0" title="" alt="[Mad]" src="images/icons/default/mad.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Mad]" src="images/icons/default/mad.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Mad]" src="images/icons/default/mad.gif" />

Yes,,,,,,, Phil my old man is big time complaining he also has lost out,well this is what he said "WHAT EVER GOES UP COMES DOWN" Regarding interest rates whetever goes down will go up,it only takes someone or something to sneeze around the world and the rates will go up and if they ever go up to the 10%+ bracket you watch the shit hit the fan with loan defaulters<br />Fred <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/default/confused.gif" />

Fred <br />My Wife reminds me the days 10-12 years ago when we moved to St Clair Sydney the Interest rates were 15.50 % and they rose to 17.50% in 9 months and stayed like this for a year before they slowly came down now those days the average loan was around $45,000 I borrowed less than that but it still hurt me and in our street 3 families had their houses reposessed.<br />Now these days where the banks are throwing money around and the average loan in St Clair is around $180,000 shit if the rates went up to 10% the queue of defaulters would be long.<br />What gets me how in the F..K can a couple borrow $250,000 when John Howards Gorvernment is pushing Part time/Casual/and contract work,ask the banks what group is the highest in the defaulting bracket.Yes this massive loan is over 30 years and once you get over 40 years old you will see how hard it is to get employment.the old days were good you were guaranteed employment for life till you collected your gold watch on you 65th birthday,now forget that<br />The big house I bought here in Cashmere was Repossessed from a family that could not make their repayments,,,arrrrr well this is my saying where there is confusion there is profit <br />Phil <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/default/smile.gif" /><br /> <br /> <small>[ 23. September 2002, 07:26 PM: Message edited by: P Debono ]</small>