Long-horizon super planning tool

Where your super lands, decades out.

A planning tool that projects an Industry Super option against a self-managed fund (SMSF) over a 20-year horizon and estimates the fee and tax drag on each — admin and investment fees, annual earnings tax, and the unrealised CGT a pooled fund crystallises when it moves you to pension phase. Tune the returns, contributions, horizon and every fee to fit your own plan.

Industry Super · net after transition

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SMSF · net after transition

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Difference

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Scenario (applies to both)

Gross return p.a. i

Income / growth split i

Starting capital i

Projection horizon i

Super contributions paid into super each year

Annual contribution i

Contribution years i

Industry Super

Admin: $1.10/wk + 0.10% on the first $500,000 (capped at $500/yr).

Admin fees current annual $0

Fixed admin fee i

Admin fee % p.a. i

Admin % balance cap i

Investment & transaction % of balance, charged each year

Investment fee p.a. i

Transaction cost p.a. i

Crystallises unrealised CGT at transition i

SMSF

Set your running costs below. No exit CGT at transition to pension phase.

Annual admin cost i

Investment fee p.a. i

Transaction cost p.a. i

Where the money goes, year by year

Each bar = your end-of-year balance (the money you keep) plus the cumulative fees & taxes paid to that point — so the full bar shows how the pie has been divided. The exit-CGT slice appears only in the final year (Year 20), the moment of transition to pension phase.

Industry Super

SMSF · index ETF

Balance kept (Industry Super) Balance kept (SMSF) Admin (cum.) Investment (cum.) Transaction (cum.) Earnings tax (cum.) Exit CGT

Per-year ledger (20 years)

Every year, for the selected vehicle: the contribution in, each fee/tax line, the total cost for that year, and the resulting principal (end-of-year balance). The opening row is your starting capital; the Total row sums each column over the 20 years. Exit CGT lands once, in Year 20.

Year	Contribution	Admin	Investment	Transaction	Earnings tax	Exit CGT	Total cost	Balance (principal)

Show calculations

Live working for the Industry Super ledger with your current inputs. Pick any year for the per-year recurrence; the right block shows the one-off exit-CGT calculation at transition.

Per-year recurrence — Year

Exit CGT at transition (Year 20)

Formula reference — worked with your numbers

The trade-off in one line: with both fees set low, the running-cost gap is small — the decider is the exit hit. A pooled fund hands back ~10% of unrealised gains on the way into pension; an SMSF held into pension phase doesn't. So the SMSF tends to win by more the larger the embedded gain has grown.
The CGT premise is yours, and worth verifying. Not every APRA fund crystallises a member's full unrealised CGT on an internal accumulation→pension switch — some pool deferred tax across members. Confirm your fund's actual treatment before relying on the gap; it's the entire ballgame (toggle it off to compare on fees alone).
Same gross return assumed for both to isolate cost/tax drag. A 100%-equity index ETF is fully growth, so in reality it would carry slightly higher expected return and volatility than a diversified option.
Simplifications: contributions treated as the net amount invested (15% contributions tax applies equally to both, so it's omitted); earnings tax = 15% on income with franking credits ignored (also roughly equal). All four fee lines are sliders — set them to what your fund / ETF / broker actually quotes.

General information only — not financial or tax advice, and I'm not a licensed adviser. Super and CGT outcomes are highly individual; confirm fund-specific tax treatment and your own circumstances with your fund and a licensed professional before acting.