How healthy is your super?

Its tax time so lets talk super!

You know your super, that letter that pops up every year that you open to look at later!

The reason I want to start with super is because now this time of year is probably about the only time of year that I ever look at my super. I'm about to put some money into my super, I can use the carry forward rule and I can put a greater concessional contribution than the maximum if I have not reached the maximum contribution in the previous three years. I can also add a non-concessional contribution (I’m actually not that wealthy this year, but if I did have a spare $100,000 sitting around I could be topping up more!)

The concessional contribution adds to my super and gives me  atax break on my income – something worth knowing about.

You can jump onto the ATO website or the money smart website and they will explain in detail the carry forward rule. Make sure you also speak to your financial advisor or your super fund and see if that's something that's going to work for you. Super.

In general, if you're making any of your own contributions, and I do recommend particularly for us women if you can afford it, put a little bit extra in, particularly once you reach 40. Because yes, it's true, we do have less super than men. Its an area we tend not to think about too much. So if you have not done anything this year, make a plan for next financial year.

I'd like to think that I'm living pretty well now, and I would like to keep living well when I retire.

The other thing about super that we've got to be very aware of is:

How is that money invested?

Is it in the right level of growth for what we want to achieve?

Are we on track to have enough money for retirement? And if we're not, what do we need to do about it?

As far as our investment portfolio goes, are we in high growth, are we in medium growth? Are we in mainly cash?

Are we going forward or are we going backwards?

Did you know you can compare your super fund against other super funds and then you can ring up your super fund and just see if you are in the right space for what you want to achieve.

Everybody's different. Everybody's got a different propensity to risk, but also every super fund has a different income outcome, fees, charges. Make sure that your investments are not being chewed up by massive fees.

Make sure that you've got the right insurances in your super.

I am not saying rush to change to a fund that's performing better because we all know that past performance is not an indicator of future performance,  all I'm saying is make sure that you're in the right  super for what you want to achieve.