Superannuation is money your employer must pay on top of your wages, currently 12% of your pay, into an investment account you generally cannot touch until retirement. The superannuation companies that run those accounts are called super funds. The decisions that matter are simple: have one fund instead of several, know what it is invested in, check the fees, and tell the fund who gets the money if you die.
inaam is an ASIC-regulated impact investing app for Australians. The subscription is $10 a month, which is $120 a year, and the minimum to invest in the fund is $100. Sign-up happens in the app. inaam is not a super fund. It is a managed investment you can hold outside super. General information only, not financial advice. Consider the PDS and TMD before investing.
Super is locked away for decades and the industry explains it like a tax seminar. Fair enough that most people never open the app.
A handful of ten-minute decisions now compound across those forty years. Here is the whole thing in plain english.
what superannuation is
Every pay cycle your employer must pay the superannuation guaranteeThe compulsory employer contribution, set by law. It has been 12% since 1 July 2025. From 1 July 2026 it is worked out on your qualifying earnings and paid each payday., 12% of your qualifying earnings, into a super fund. That money is invested in shares, property, bonds and infrastructure, and taxed at concessional rates. The deal is lower tax in exchange for not touching it until retirement.
It is your money. The fund manages it, and charges you for the privilege.
start here
the account you already own
Plenty of people have never opened their super fund app, and it holds more of their money than everything else put together. It is an investment portfolio with your name on it, already running.
the four things worth doing early
| why it matters | |
|---|---|
| consolidate to one fund | Every job that opened you a new account left a fund charging you fees. Several funds means several sets of fees eating the same retirement. |
| check the fees | A one per cent difference in superannuation fees, compounded over forty years, is a startling amount of money. Fees are listed in your fund’s PDS. |
| know what it is invested in | Most people sit in their fund’s default option. Superannuation funds in Australia also publish what they hold, so if where your money goes matters to you, look. |
| nominate a beneficiary | Super does not automatically follow your will. Without a valid nomination, the fund decides who gets it, slowly. |
All four live in your fund’s app or on myGov, which also shows every account you have ever opened. The government’s own MoneySmart is the best neutral explainer if you want to go deeper.
The third one is the same question this whole site is built around. Reading what a fund holds, rather than what its name suggests, is covered in the three pillars of sustainable investing.
the death benefit thing nobody mentions
If you die, your super plus any life insurance inside it becomes a death benefitThe payout from your super fund when you die: your balance plus any insurance held inside the fund. Paid to your nominated beneficiary or your estate.. Two things almost nobody is told.
- Your will does not control it. The fund pays whoever you validly nominated, and many binding nominations expire every three years.
- Funds have been bad at paying these out. The regulator publicly called out trustees for slow, poorly handled death benefit claims.
Both are reasons to spend five minutes setting your nomination properly.
the actual task
five minutes, once every three years
Open the fund app, find beneficiary nomination, name the person, and put a reminder in your calendar for three years’ time.
super against your other money goals
In a 2026 NGS Super survey of education workers aged 18 to 35, 79% called saving enough for retirement important, against 55% for a home deposit. Whatever your own ranking, it helps to know the system has some flex: the first home super saver scheme lets eligible first-home buyers withdraw certain voluntary superannuation contributions, within caps, for a deposit, using super’s tax setting to save faster.
Super is not the only place investing happens. Money you might want this decade, for a home, a career break or a business, lives outside super. That is the space inaam plays in: values-aligned investing you can reach.
inaam is not a super product. It is a registered managed investment scheme. The subscription is $10 a month, $120 a year, and the minimum to invest in the fund is $100. How companies get picked is set out on how it works, and the five themes are on investment areas.
the one-line summary
Super is a forty-year compounding machine someone else is legally required to feed. Your job is to make sure it is one machine and not five, that the fees are not eating the engine, that you know what it funds, and that the right person gets it if the worst happens.
Super stories come up constantly in hang on, our weekly money news, from regulator crackdowns to fee changes. That is where this stuff gets pulled apart each week. If you want the investing version of the same basics, what i wish i knew when i started investing covers the money that sits outside super.
