Gemma Dale

So they're not obligated to contribute for you above 250.

So you don't automatically get 36 grand.

You have to have an employer who's willing to pay over and above the maximum contribution base.

So I would ask that question first.

You may not be getting anything over 250 because there's no obligation under the law to pay that.

No.

And so you would say, may I please take that in salary instead?

Although I should note that if you were taking it in salary instead, you're going to be paying 47 cents in the dollar, which is worse than you would be paying if it were going to be up to you.

No, I would call out something else as well, which is you can't put into a calculator, or you can, but in a way that is very difficult to make it easily understood by the average person.

It's a thing called sequencing risk.

So they assume a standard return every single year.

Unfortunately, that's not how the world works at all.

Yeah.

And so in COVID years, it's absolutely terrible.

And in other years, it's amazing.

And there's really good research that the year in which you retire, the first couple of years are absolutely critical to how long your money lasts.

So if you happen to retire just before a massive downturn, and a colleague of mine did this, retired just before the GFC, lost 40% of his portfolio in year one.

And he hadn't taken onto risk or anything like that.

He had a standard portfolio.

It was just an incredibly bad year in an anomalous sense.