Do you make salary-sacrificed super contributions?

If the answer is a resounding "NO", you are far from being alone.

It seems that a large majority of fund members can't afford to make salary-sacrificed super contributions or just aren't interested. And of members who do make salary-sacrificed contributions, relatively few contribute large amounts.

That's the reality of salary-sacrificed super - despite all of the attention it is currently recently with the annual concessional contribution caps (comprising salary-sacrificed, SG and any eligible personally tax-deductible contributions) being halved in last week's federal Budget.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that of the estimated one-fifth of members who make salary-sacrificed contributions, perhaps only 4.5% of them make salary-sacrificed contributions of $5000 a year.

And it seems that most of the members who do make extremely large salary-sacrificed contributions have pretty small fund balances that they are clearly trying to rapidly super-charge with some big contributions.

It seems obvious that one of the new frontiers of superannuation will involve large super funds really stepping up their drive for members to make salary-sacrificed into super. And funds will further encourage their members to begin to make those salary-sacrificed contributions as early as possible in their careers.

Certainly, most large super funds already place a high priority on encouraging members making salary-sacrificed contributions if they can afford it. But with the latest Budget removing the ability to make blockbuster salary-sacrificed contributions late in a member's career, the pressures to contribute early have suddenly risen quite a few notches.

Welcome to yet another new frontier of super.