How spending 15 minutes on your super could be worth hundreds of thousands

**Jess** (0:00)
What if spending 15 minutes on your super today could leave you with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars more by retirement? Most Australians barely look at their super, but for many of us, it will end up being the biggest investment we ever own.
Thanks so much to MLC for sponsoring this episode and helping us keep all of our content free. Welcome back to Get Started Investing, a show that helps you make the most of your money. I'm Jess, and as a beginner investor, I have plenty of questions about investing, and as it turns out, so do you guys. Each week, I sit down with an expert to tackle them, so we can all become better investors together. Today, we're talking about one of the biggest investments most of us will ever have, our superannuation. I'm going to open up my own super account and give it a little health check, and I'd love for you guys to do the same alongside me. To help us, I am joined by Jen. She's Head of Technical Services from MLC. She's going to walk us through what we're actually looking at, explain the things that matter most, and show us how seemingly small decisions, like where your super is invested, or the fees you're paying, can make a very big difference over the long term. So, if you got your phone nearby, open up your super, and let's see if your biggest investment is actually working as hard as it could be.
Jen, welcome to Get Started Investing. Very excited to have you here today.

**Jen** (1:13)
Yes, I'm looking forward to it. Lovely to be here.

**Jess** (1:15)
Yeah, chatting all things super. It's good timing. I sent you guys an article that we sent around the team, like one third of Australians don't understand their super.

**Jen** (1:23)
Yeah, and look, I work in this space. I do this all day, every day, and the list of different jargon that's involved. And some of it doesn't really make much logical sense. So is it any wonder that people kind of disengage? So really excited to be here today.

**Jess** (1:37)
Yeah, I think it'll be an important chat, and it's going to be a bit of a health check for me as well.
Jen, we were talking about how like most people would know like roughly what's sitting in their bank account, but couldn't actually tell you their exact super balance. Why do you think we're so disconnected from our super?

**Jen** (1:56)
Jess, look, I think life is just so busy.
And when things are busy and there's a lot on our plates, and there's a lot we've got to keep on top of, and we're saving for houses and having children, I think super is just the easiest thing to push to the side. It's the one thing that people think when they've got a mental load, it's not a today problem. And there's nothing that I can really do today, and I don't have extra money to tip into super, so I'm just going to park it. If I move that money into your bank account though, and I said to you, hey, Jess, I've got a secret button I can click and your super is going to now be in your savings account, you're going to rush home and go, what's my interest rate? What am I being charged? Yeah. Suddenly, there's an interest in it just because it's accessible.

**Jess** (2:36)
Yeah, like what percentage is it making in my high interest savings account?

**Jen** (2:40)
That's right. Yeah, but it's all those concepts that we're going to talk about today and what a difference that can make to your super balance come retirement. So what I really want to unpack is all those little things that you can do, and how being young plays to your advantage in some of these cases.
If you leave these things to 50 and 60, you're just not going to see the same benefit.

**Jess** (3:02)
Yeah.

**Jen** (3:02)
Because I think it really is particularly with the cost of living, Christ, people trying to save up to buy homes. People say superannuation is being, to make a difference, I have to put money in and I just can't do that.
The difference you can make just through eyeballing your account, the confidence that brings, not necessarily because you think you're on track, but the confidence in knowing how things are and where things are, and then you can start getting a picture and work your way through. You could set yourself goals with this week, I want to understand this, this week I want to understand that. We're going to talk today about habit building and how bringing super in to become one of our financial habits is what we want everyone to do after today. Don't worry, we don't want you to be super experts, we don't want you running away going, right now I'm going to start picking my investments, we want this to be a habit, and we want that switch to flick for people where they go, this actually is no different to my savings account, this is my money, and I can make a real difference.