Get your hands on your slice of $17.5 billion

GETTING your hands on more money could just be a few clicks away. Find out if you’re missing a slice of the unclaimed $17.5 billion sitting in ‘lost’ super accounts.

IF you dropped a $100 note in the street, would you pick it up?

If you lost $1000, would you be annoyed with yourself?

I think the answer to both of these questions is “yes”. Anyone who loses money unnecessarily is never really too pleased with themselves.

New statistics released by the Australian Taxation Office this week revealed Australians have a massive pot of $17.5 billion in lost and unclaimed superannuation.

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And what will probably blow your mind is there’s even someone out there with $2.1 million that has never been claimed.

I reckon most of us would know if we were missing a few thousand dollars, let alone a few million.

If every Aussie did a quick search online to recover their lost super, there would be a good chance they would find themselves some money they may never even knew they had.

The new ATO figures from the 2017-18 financial year found there are 6.2 million super accounts with an average balance of $2933 sitting in them.

That’s a fair chunk of cash that would be better off in your hands than the ATO’s or your super fund’s pockets.

For many of us, retirement is a long way off so worrying about money that we can’t touch for decades doesn’t really bother us. But we do need to start caring.

Finding lost or unclaimed super takes just a few minutes.

The cost of living is only getting more expensive and the more money we have in retirement, hopefully the better lifestyle we will have once we stop work.

Lost or unclaimed super accounts often occur when we switch jobs, change our name or even move house. It can easily happen.

Just last week, I was told of a colleague who had eight super accounts floating around. It was only when he was bugged by a friend to consolidate them he finally took action and rolled all the accounts into one.

These lost or unclaimed accounts do not earn the healthy rates of return that many super funds get – which can be towards the 10 per cent mark.

Instead they only earn interest at the rate of inflation – so just a measly 2 per cent.

Why hand over your money or let it go missing in action because you can’t be bothered clawing it back.

I did a lost super search a couple of years ago thinking I had no chance of having an odd super account left untouched. But I was proven wrong. I did. A few hundreds bucks was sitting in a super account I could not even recall having. It took me just a couple of minutes to claw it back.

I could consolidate it into my main account super within just a matter of minutes. It was so simple.

You can also ring up your superannuation fund and they will help you do a search and track down any of your money that may be missing.

Or go to your MyGov account online and look in the super section to see all your super accounts and balances.

Or if this is all still sounds a bit to too hard, you can simply ring the ATO on 13 10 20.

I would love to hear any tales of those of you who can track down some of your missing cash.

@sophieelsworth

Originally published as Get your hands on your slice of $17.5 billion