20 SMSF-suitable retirement planning appointments in 60 days. Funnel already built below.

Thanks for booking your first meeting with us. If you've got a real balance sitting in a fund you've never quite felt in control of, then you're already asking the right question, and this next step is where you get a straight answer to it.

This first meeting is probably not what you're bracing for. One of our advisers will sit down with you, look at your current super, your balance, your situation, and what you actually want retirement to look like, and then tell you plainly whether a self-managed fund suits you or whether you're better off staying where you are. If the real answer is stay put, that's the answer you'll get. We turn people away for exactly that reason, and we'd rather do that than set you up with a structure you don't need.

Over the next few days you'll get a couple of short emails from us. They just answer the questions almost everyone has at this point, so nothing lands in your inbox as a surprise. Have a read when you get a moment.

And underneath this video there are a few more short clips. Each one takes a question we get asked all the time, what it costs, whether you've got enough for it to be worth it, what happens if it goes wrong, and answers it properly. Watch the ones that speak to your situation. It means the meeting can skip the basics and go straight to what actually helps you.

That's really it. There's no pressure here and nothing to prepare. When your meeting comes around, one of our advisers will take it from there, on the phone or by video, whichever suits you. We're glad you're here, and we'll see you soon.

Let's deal with cost first, because it's the question sitting at the front of everyone's mind, and it deserves a straight answer.

Our starting position is simple. A self-managed fund tends to make sense once your super balance is more than $200,000. Once you're past $500,000, it'll almost certainly work out more cost-effective than a retail or industry fund. Below that lower figure, we'll usually tell you to stay exactly where you are, and we mean it, because we send people away over this all the time.

On the setup side, there's a well-known industry cost table put together by the research firm Rice Warner, and it's published right there on our site so you can see it yourself. It puts the cost of establishing an SMSF at somewhere between $1,541 and $2,495. That's the industry figure for standing the fund up, not a number we've invented, and it's there so you can weigh it against what your current fund takes out as a percentage every single year, whether it does well by you or not.

What we don't do is put a price on your advice in a video, because the right figure depends entirely on your situation, and we won't pretend otherwise. When you sit down with one of our advisers, you'll get a clear picture of what working with us looks like before you commit to anything. The meeting itself costs you nothing and commits you to nothing, so the worst case is you walk away knowing where you stand. Bring your questions about cost to that meeting, and you'll get real answers pinned to your numbers, not a brochure figure.

This is the one that stops most people, so let's be straight about it, because it's the reason a self-managed fund goes wrong for the people it goes wrong for.

An SMSF is a real structure with real rules. Set one up for the wrong situation, or run it without someone who knows the compliance side cold, and it stops being the thing that funds your retirement and becomes an expensive headache. That risk is real, and we won't pretend it away. It's exactly why the first thing our advisers do is work out whether a fund genuinely suits you before anything gets built.

The fear underneath the question is usually that running your own fund means becoming a part-time administrator, forever nervous about the tax office. It doesn't work that way when it's managed properly, and managing it properly is the whole point of having a specialist on it. You make the decisions that are yours to make, what the fund invests in, how it fits your plan, and the team carries the compliance and the paperwork so a wrong move doesn't end up costing you.

That's really the difference between a fund that does its job for twenty years and one that becomes a problem. It comes down to who's looking after the structure. When you speak with one of our advisers, ask them exactly how the compliance side is handled, and how they'd manage yours, and you'll get a plain walk-through of who carries what.

It's worth checking, because plenty of firms will happily take on your super as a sideline to everything else they do, and self-managed funds aren't a place you want someone learning on the job.

So consider what we actually are. We're a financial planning practice with over 20 years specialising in one thing, self-managed super for people whose situation has outgrown the default fund. Specialising in SMSF advice is the whole focus of the firm, not a service line bolted onto the side. Between the two directors, one is a qualified SMSF Specialist Adviser with the SMSF Association, the other a Certified Financial Planner, and both have spent their careers on exactly this work. You're not handing your super to someone who does a bit of everything.

There's one more piece worth knowing, and it's the part a lot of firms can't offer. We combine that financial-planning advice with an accounting perspective, and we coordinate directly with your own accountant and lawyer, so your super, tax, succession and estate get handled as one plan rather than four disconnected ones. If you already have an accountant or an adviser you trust, good, we work alongside them.

When you sit down with us, ask about the specialisation directly, and about how we'd coordinate with the people already in your corner. You'll get specifics, not slogans.

Short answer, no, and this comes up so often it's worth its own few minutes.

A lot of people assume that bringing in a specialist for their super means firing the accountant they've used for years, or that the two will end up working against each other. Neither is true, and the opposite is closer to how we prefer to work.

The way we're built is around coordinating with the people already looking after you. When you engage us, we work directly with your own accountant and your lawyer so that your super, tax and estate move as one integrated plan, and nothing gets pulled apart in the handover. If anything, your accountant tends to be glad there's someone who speaks their language handling the super side, because it makes their job cleaner.

So you don't have to give up the relationships you already trust to get specialist advice on your super. You get to keep both. When you speak with one of our advisers, tell them who's already in your corner, and they'll walk you through exactly how the coordination works in practice.

Let's finish with the most important question of all, because answering it properly is what this whole first meeting is built around.

A self-managed fund isn't for everyone, and we'd be the last firm to tell you it is. It tends to be the right move for people with a meaningful balance, a situation with a few moving parts, a business, an estate, property, family, and a genuine wish to have control over how their retirement money is invested and structured. If that sounds like you, you're exactly who we do our best work for. If you're happy handing your super to a default fund and never thinking about it again, that's a perfectly reasonable choice, and we'll say so.

Over 1 million Australians have already moved to self-managed super, and they haven't done it for the novelty. They've done it because, past a certain point, a fund you control does more for you than one that treats you like everyone else. But past a certain point is the operative phrase, and the first meeting exists precisely to work out whether you've reached it.

So that's the job of the meeting. One of our advisers looks at your real numbers and your real situation and tells you, plainly, whether a self-managed fund makes sense for you or whether you're better off where you are. Either way you walk away with a clearer head than you came in with. Have a look through the other clips here if you haven't yet, and we'll see you soon.

Subject: Your introductory meeting is booked
Preview: What the first meeting covers and who you'll be speaking with.
Send: Immediately after booking (fires on form submission)

Hi,

Your introductory meeting is locked in. It's held by phone or video, whichever you booked, so there's nothing to install and nowhere to travel. There's no cost and no obligation attached to it.

A few things about who you'll be talking with, so the meeting isn't the first time you're weighing any of this up:

- Merit East specialises specifically in self-managed super. That's over 20 years of dedicated SMSF advice, from working out whether a fund suits you through to setting it up and running the compliance.
- You'll be speaking with a specialist SMSF adviser, not a generalist who handles SMSFs on the side. Both directors hold dedicated SMSF qualifications, one an SMSF Specialist Adviser with the SMSF Association.
- We work Australia-wide by video, so where you're based doesn't change what we can do for you.

On the meeting itself we'll ask about your current super, roughly where you're at, and what you want retirement to look like. From there we'll give you a straight read on whether a self-managed fund suits your situation or whether it would just add admin and cost for you. If it doesn't suit you, we'll say so.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: Whether an SMSF is worth it for you
Preview: There's a balance where a self-managed fund earns its keep, and a point below it where it doesn't.
Send: Day 1, morning

Hi,

The question sitting behind most of these meetings is some version of: is a self-managed fund actually worth it for me, or is it just more paperwork and risk I don't need.

Worth setting out how we think about it before we talk, so the meeting starts further along.

An SMSF gives you control. You decide what the fund holds, how it's invested, and how it's structured around your retirement. That control is the whole appeal, and for the right person it's genuinely valuable. It also comes with real responsibility, and it isn't worth carrying at every balance. As a rough line, a self-managed fund starts to make sense once you have more than $200,000 in super. Below that, the running costs tend to eat into the benefit.

So the answer turns on a few things, and none of them is a slogan:

- How much you have in super, and whether the fund's running costs are small enough against that balance to be worth carrying.
- Whether you actually want a say in how your money is invested, or would rather someone else simply handle it.
- What you want the fund to do that your current super can't already do for you.

Plenty of people who ask us this are better off leaving their super where it is, and we tell them that. The meeting is there to work out which group you're in before you commit to anything.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: How we work when the situation is complicated
Preview: A walk through how we handle a complex situation, from super to succession.
Send: Day 1, afternoon

Hi,

Most people who book these meetings don't have a simple picture. There's a business in the mix, or an estate to think about, or assets sitting in a few different places. So it's worth showing how we actually work through one, rather than handing you a result to take on faith.

Take a business owner heading toward retirement with super, a company, and a family to protect. Looked at in isolation, each piece gets a sensible-sounding answer that works against the others without anyone noticing. The super gets invested one way, the accountant structures the business another, and the estate plan assumes something different again.

What we do is put them on one table. We look at the super and whether a self-managed fund could hold the business premises, we coordinate directly with your own accountant rather than talking past them, and we make sure the succession and estate side lines up with the rest instead of contradicting it. Super, tax, and structure end up as one plan rather than three that don't quite agree.

That's the shape every one of these takes. We start with what you want retirement to look like, then work out whether your super, and possibly an SMSF, is set up to get you there. Your meeting will run the same way.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: What an SMSF actually asks of you
Preview: Control is the upside, and it comes with real obligations. Here's who carries them.
Send: Day 2, morning

Hi,

If we do end up setting a fund up together, it's worth knowing what you're taking on, because the appeal and the obligation are the same coin.

As a trustee of your own fund, you're responsible for keeping it compliant. That means an annual audit, ongoing record-keeping, and contribution and investment rules that apply to a self-managed fund and not to a regular super account. Get them wrong and there are consequences. It's the trustee side that puts a lot of people off self-managed super before they've heard how it's actually handled.

With us, you don't handle it. We run the compliance and the ongoing advice, so you're not sitting up at night learning super law. You stay the decision-maker on what the fund does; we make sure the decisions are sound and the fund stays on the right side of the rules. The control stays with you, the admin burden doesn't.

We'll walk through exactly what the ongoing responsibilities would look like for your situation on the meeting, so you can decide with your eyes open.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: Three things to check on your super this week
Preview: A short list you can run through on your own super today.
Send: Day 2, afternoon

Hi,

Something you can do this week regardless of how the meeting goes, because it's useful either way.

Pull up your current super and check three things:

- The fees you're paying, and whether you can tell what you're actually getting for them. A lot of people can't, and that alone is worth knowing.
- How it's invested, and whether you have any real say in it. Most default funds give you a handful of pre-set options and no more.
- Any old accounts you've lost track of. Plenty of people have a forgotten industry-fund account or two from an old job, still charging fees against a small balance.

None of that requires us. It's the same first look we'd take together, and doing it now means the meeting can go deeper than surface numbers.

If it throws up questions, bring them along.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: Are we a specialist or just another planner
Preview: What "SMSF specialist" means here, and how to check it before we talk.
Send: Day 3, morning

Hi,

A question worth putting on the table before we talk: is Merit East a genuine self-managed super specialist, or a general planner who takes SMSF work when it comes in.

The whole practice is built around self-managed super. That's over 20 years specialising in it, both directors qualified in it specifically, one of them an SMSF Specialist Adviser with the SMSF Association. It's the work we do all day, not a line on a longer menu.

That specialisation is the reason the integrated side works. Because we understand the fund's rules and its tax treatment in detail, we can coordinate with your own accountant on equal footing rather than leaving the two of you to reconcile advice that doesn't line up. You keep your accountant. We add the strategic super and financial-planning layer on top and make sure the whole thing agrees with itself.

On the meeting you can push on any of this. Ask what we'd do differently for your situation, or where a self-managed fund wouldn't help you. A specialist can answer that in specifics, and that's the easiest way to tell the difference.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: Your meeting is tomorrow
Preview: Your time and format, plus the one thing worth having handy.
Send: Day 3, afternoon (or morning of the meeting if it's early)

Hi,

Your introductory meeting is booked for tomorrow. We'll reach you the way you booked, by phone or video, so there's nothing to set up in advance.

The one thing worth having handy is a rough sense of your super. You don't need exact figures or statements in front of you. A ballpark of what you've got and where it sits is plenty for a first conversation.

We'll use the time to understand where you're at and what you want retirement to look like, and to give you a straight read on whether a self-managed fund, or a change to how your super is structured, would help you get there. If it wouldn't, you'll hear that too. There's no cost and no obligation either way.

If tomorrow no longer works, reply to this email with a day that suits and we'll move it, no trouble at all.

Talk tomorrow,
The Merit East team

Subject: Today's meeting
Preview: We'll reach you the way you booked, so there's nothing to do but be free.
Send: 2-3 hours before the meeting, recipient timezone

Hi,

Your introductory meeting is today. We'll reach you the way you booked, by phone or video, so all you need to do is be free at the time.

If something's come up or you're running behind, reply to this email or give the office a quick call and we'll sort it.

Talk soon,
The Merit East team

Subject: Looks like we missed each other
Preview: Easy to fix. Reply and we'll set a new time.
Send: 1-2 hours after a missed meeting (conditional)

Hi,

Looks like we missed each other today. These things happen, no trouble at all.

You booked in to get a straight read on your super and whether a self-managed fund suits you, and that's still worth a short meeting whenever it works for you. Reply to this email with a day and time that suits and we'll lock it in.

The Merit East team

Subject: When an SMSF is the wrong move

A question we get more than any other is some version of "should I set up a self-managed fund?" And the answer we give surprises people, because a fair number of the time it's no.

That's an odd thing to say for a practice that has spent over 20 years doing almost nothing but SMSF work. But it's the truth, and it's worth understanding before you go anywhere near setting one up.

A self-managed fund is a real structure with real running costs and real rules behind it. When your balance is small, those fixed costs eat a bigger share of your money than a percentage-based retail or industry fund ever would. So the fund that gives a person with a large balance genuine control and tax efficiency does the opposite for someone with a modest one. Same structure, wrong situation.

The rough line we use is a super balance of more than $200,000. Under that, we'll usually tell you to stay where you are. Past $500,000, a self-managed fund will almost certainly work out more cost-effective than a retail or industry fund, and the control starts to earn its keep. Between the two, it depends on the rest of your picture, whether you've got property to hold, a business, a partner you'd bring into the fund.

There's no reason to feel behind here. Plenty of people we sit down with are better served by leaving their super right where it sits for now, and we tell them so. Knowing an SMSF isn't right for you yet is a genuinely useful thing to walk away with, and it costs a lot less to find out early than to unwind a fund that should never have been set up.

If you've ever wondered whether you're on the right side of that line, the introductory meeting exists for exactly that question. It's free, there's no obligation, and you'll leave knowing where you actually stand.

Merit Planning East

Subject: The part of running an SMSF nobody wants

The single most common reason people talk themselves out of a self-managed fund is a picture in their head of themselves buried in paperwork, chasing lodgement dates, and lying awake worrying about a rule they didn't know they'd broken.

It's a reasonable fear, and it's why a lot of people with the right balance and the right situation never make the move. They want the control, they just don't want to become a part-time fund administrator to get it.

What that picture misses is that the control and the admin are two separate things, and they don't have to sit with the same person.

The decisions stay yours. What the fund invests in, whether you hold property, how it lines up with your retirement plans, when you bring a partner in. Up to six members can sit in a single fund, so for a lot of families it becomes the vehicle the whole household's super runs through, and those are the calls worth having control over.

The compliance sitting underneath it all is what we take off your desk. Paperwork, reporting, the annual audit, and the things that go wrong when nobody's watching them. That's why you'd have a specialist on the fund rather than running it alone. You carry the decisions; we carry the risk of getting the rules wrong.

Most of the anxiety about SMSFs is really anxiety about the admin. Move the admin to someone who does only this, and what's left is the part people actually wanted in the first place, which is a say in how their own retirement money is invested.

If you've held off for that reason, it's worth a conversation. The first meeting is free and there's no obligation to go further.

Merit Planning East

Subject: Your SMSF has an accountant, does it have a strategy

"My accountant already looks after the SMSF." We hear it constantly, and on paper it sounds like the fund is in good hands. Often it isn't, and not because the accountant did anything wrong.

Setting a fund up and running one well are two different jobs, and most people only ever paid for the first.

Your accountant lodges the deed, sorts the trustee structure, registers the fund, and files the return every year. That work is done properly, and it's genuinely their job. Then the fund gets handed back to you, and everything that comes after, the part where a self-managed fund actually earns its place, tends to just sit there.

We see the same fund walk in over and over. Someone's had it six or seven years, the balance has grown, and the only paper in the file is the annual return and the audit. There's no investment approach that maps to what the family actually wants, nothing coordinated with their tax position, and nobody's thought through the year a pension gets switched on or what happens to the fund when one member dies.

That's the strategy layer, and it was never the accountant's brief. They answered the narrow question they were asked. Nobody told the trustee that someone else was meant to be handling the rest, so the rest never got handled.

The way we work is built to sit alongside the accountant you already have, not replace them. We coordinate directly with them and, where it's relevant, your lawyer, so the super sits inside one plan that also takes in your tax position, how the business passes on, and where the estate ends up, instead of four disconnected ones. Your accountant keeps doing the part they're good at, and the strategy that was missing gets built on top.

A simple test. If your fund is worth more today than the day it was set up, and you've never sat down with an adviser to map out the next ten years of it, the strategy layer is the thing that's missing. It's usually the most valuable thing a fund could have, and the most commonly absent.

If that's your fund, the introductory meeting is a good place to see what's been left on the table. It's free and there's no obligation.

Merit Planning East

Subject: The second-biggest thing you own, run by strangers

For most people over 50, super is the second-biggest asset they own after the family home. For a fair few, it's become the biggest without them noticing. And it's usually the one they've looked at the least.

Think about how that came to be. For most of your working life the balance was small enough not to matter much, so it sat in a retail or industry fund you picked once and never revisited. That fund takes a percentage of the whole balance every year, whether it does well by you or not, and hands you an investment menu you didn't choose and can't change.

When the balance is small, that's a perfectly sensible arrangement. Fees are modest in dollar terms and the lack of control costs you nothing you'd notice.

Trouble is, the arrangement never updates itself as the balance grows. A percentage fee on a small balance is a small number. The same percentage on a large one is a real number, taken every year, in good years and bad. And the lack of control, which cost you nothing when there wasn't much at stake, starts to actually cost you once the fund is holding serious money and you'd invest it differently if you could.

This is the reason more than a million Australians have moved their super into a structure they control. Not for the novelty. Because past a certain balance, a fund you direct does more for you than a fund that treats you the same as everyone else in it.

Whether you're past that point is a specific question with a specific answer, and it depends on your balance, your situation, and what you actually want your super to be doing. If your balance has grown into real money and you've never once questioned the fund it's sitting in, that's worth an hour. The first meeting is free and there's no obligation either way.

Merit Planning East

Subject: Why your super and your tax never talk to each other

Most people's financial affairs are handled by capable people who never speak to each other. Your accountant does the tax while a super fund runs the super, and a solicitor did the will years ago and hasn't looked at it since. Each one does their piece well, in isolation, and no one is looking at how the pieces fit together.

That's fine when the pieces are simple. It stops being fine the moment your situation has a few moving parts, which for most people happens somewhere in their fifties, right when the decisions get expensive to get wrong.

We had a version of this land in front of us recently. Comfortable balance, a business, an investment property, a partner, a will written before any of it existed. Every individual arrangement was sound. Together they pulled against each other. The super strategy ignored the business, the estate plan didn't account for either, and a decision that made sense for the tax return created a problem three moves down the line that nobody had joined up.

What we take from those, over and over, is that no financial decision should be made in isolation. A super setting affects your tax, your tax position affects what you should do with the property, and what happens to the fund when one member dies is an estate question and a super question at the same time. Pull any one thread on its own and you can easily damage the other three.

The way we work is built to stop that happening. A self-managed fund tends to sit at the centre of it, because it's the one structure flexible enough to hold property, coordinate with a business, bring up to six family members in, and knit into an estate plan. We coordinate directly with your accountant and your lawyer so the whole thing moves as a single plan rather than four disconnected ones.

If your affairs are being run by good people who've never once been in the same room, that's the gap worth closing. The introductory meeting is where we'd start. It's free, there's no obligation, and you'll leave with a clearer view of how your pieces actually fit.

Merit Planning East