not so superannuation

So I am obliged to hand 9% of my salary to some form of superannuation fund in order to build a retirement nest egg. I got my statement today.

In the last year my fund lost 8.39%
Over 5 years it returned 2.08%
Over 10 years it grew by 2.96%

So, even over 10 years, and funds are always keen to tell you that super is a long term investment, the fund has returned under 3%, or as I prefer to call it, less than it would make if they simply put my money in a fucking bank.

It gets worse. I am an investment coward and elect to place my hard-earned cash in a conservative fund. That means 23% of the fund is invested in cash and 28.8% in international fixed interest. That suggests over half cannot be lost. So, my investment fund managers have managed to really fucking bollocks things with less than half of the money the law requires me to hand them.

I've been in the fund since early 2007 and they have managed to lose 5.07% of all the cash I've handed them. Fuckers.

Time to look into a self managed super fund. For fucks sake, I'd have more cash left if I'd shoved it in a sock instead of handing it to these twats.

An addendum; I have a friend who works in the investment game. I asked if he was in the shit and he said no, he was doing well because his company was doing relatively well. Oh yes, they were still losing our money, but had no lost as much as their competitors. Oh, well that's alright then.