Blood, sweat and tears

During an audit of my accounts last night, trying yet again to work out where my money goes, I saw a random deposit into my account with the decription DIVIDEND. This got me just a little bit excited because it seems the investment in blood, sweat, tears and cold hard cash I have made into my company's shares is slowly starting to pay off!

So what if it was only $14.96 and I spent pretty much all of it today*? It's a better turn over than my superannuation.

Last year $4,388.07 was added to my superannuation fund as per the law in Australia that requires my employer to contribute a minimum 9% of my ordinary earnings to my nominated account. The idea is that the money is locked away in an account I can't touch until I am of a certain legislatively-nominated age where people, with better brains for figures that I, play with my money with the intention that they will invest it wisely and over time I will see an exponential growth in my investment that outstrips my meagre annual contributions so that I can be kept in the manner to which I have become accustomed after I become too old to be a productive member of society. Great in theory...

The $4k or so added to my account over the course of the financial year brought the total of my super fund to $26,880. However, as at 30 June 2010 my account balance was $25,753.91. As you know I suck at maths and have no head for numbers but even I can work out that this is heading in the wrong direction. My super fund mismanaged to lose $1,275.40 of my hard earned money and still charged me $435.62 in fees and costs for the privilege.

I get the whole 'the share market is a long term investment' and that the general long-term direction of shares is an upward motion - just like this pretty graph says... It's just that being in a slump hurts and I feel that for every two steps forward I am taking one step back.

*Today my BUYS were $3.50 - pizza and drink for lunch and then $11.30 for a beer and chips at the pub with work colleagues for a Friday night drink.