which credit card ?

Hi we are interested to know which credit card people have chosen and why ? With the amount of choice out there depending on what type of spending habits you have you could save a lot of money by having the right card. The choice of card depends of whether you pay off your entire balance every month (and if so how much you spend on your card every month) or if carry a balance over from month to month. High spenders what pay off their cards every month might be better off looking at a card with a rewards program which allows them to accumulate points for their spending. Many small business owners use these cards as they can accumulate points for their business spending.
If you carry a balance over from month to month a low interest rate card with a low annual fee might be the best option for you. There are also specials offered by various providers such as the current 1.9% for 15months on balance transfers offered by Citibank on their Emirates platimum card. Only use a balance transfer card if you are planning to pay off the entire balance before the end of the promotional period. After the promotional period the interest rate usually reverts to a much higher interest rate, in the order of 19-20% !
So post your comments on which card you use and why, you might be able to help some of our other readers save some money !!

setting up a Self-Managed Superannuation Fund (SMSF)

A lot of our clients are fed up with the less that impressive returns from their superannuation funds. A self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF) allows the members to control what the fund invests in, this can include residential or commercial property.  Some of our business clients use their SMSF to purchase the premises from which they operate their business.

We believe some of the advantages are:

• control over one of your largest assets (after the family home superannuation is usally peoples next largest asset)
• wider variety of investment choices – most employer superannuation funds cannot investment in investments such as residential and commerical property

We believe some of the disadvantages are:

• You have more responsibilites to ensure your SMSF is compliant and lodges it’s tax returns on time etc.
• You need to have sufficient funds in your SMSF to make the costs of running the fund worthwhile (you can pool superannuation funds with upto 3 other people)
• As trustees you have to ensure that the fund invests in line with it’s investment strategy

These are areas that we work closely with our clients on.

What do you see are some of the advantages and disadvantages of running your own superannuation fund ?

Have you considered setting up your own SMSF ?