The story you’re about to read isn’t about shipwrecks, bearded pirates, sword-swinging marauders or ancient, rusted chests waiting for the adventurous, kind-hearted hero to dig them up. It also lacks flesh’n bone enemies, evil spirits and all that stuff.
However, it does include a massive amount of money and a thick veil of oblivion – very much alike every treasure story out there. Oh, and most importantly, it’s a true story and (here comes the good part!) perhaps you might be able to claim part of the bounty. Who knows?
If you are, or were ever employed, you must know about superannuation. It’s a tax mechanism that saves part of your paycheck into a retirement fund – called a ‘superfund’, or just super. Overall, it’s a good system, but like most systems, comes with a weak point. In the case of super, the weakest point is the result of our memory – or absence of it.
We are humans, and our memory is far from perfect. We change jobs, move from one city to another, sometimes we even change our names. Since super money isn’t available to most of us until we turn 65, there’s the chance that – in the wild course of our lifetime – we lose track of one or more super accounts we once had.
So, let’s suppose that years ago you got married or changed jobs and never thought of a particular super again. Where did it go? What happens when super is not claimed? Simple. It’s labeled as ‘lost’ and entered into a register within the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Lost into oblivion! If you’re wondering how much super money is currently labeled as lost, please grab onto something: as of 2015, the figure has grown to $13 billion. Something like $9,600 per working Australian.
After finding out about this, we conducted a little experiment: we asked around the office if anyone knew how to claim this money. Nope, nope, nope. The thing with bureaucracy is that we’re not really good with it – and we know we’re not alone here. So we moved on to plan B, googled and contacted Suncorp Superannuation, a company that offers its customers a free ‘lost super’ search service.
Cathy Duncan, Head of Suncorp Super, told us: “Based on the average Australian salary of $75,000 per year and the minimum super contribution of 9.5%, you could contribute $7,177 each year to your super account”.
Losing super during your working life means you’re likely to be paying multiple account fees, which is chipping away at your fund, and could even mean you remain in the workforce longer because you haven’t gained the full investment benefits of your funds. The more you can add to your super early on, the greater the return will be when it comes time to retire, and it really is so simple to locate lost super that we want to get everyone doing it.”
We were told that we’d get our results in a few days but, just to give you a taste of what we’re dealing with, in our city of Mandurah, WA, there’s $37 million worth of lost super. Unclaimed. Forgotten. Mind-blowing.
We don’t know if there’s any lost super out there for us, but one thing’s for sure: the chance of getting our cut of the bounty feels good. Who said you needed a beard and a wooden leg to feel this way?!
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