Charity events

$12,000 given to Grantham Flood Appeal.

The SMSF Review is proud to announce that we have just donated $12,000 to the Grantham Flood Support charity.

This amount is made up of the net proceeds from the SMSF Strategy day we recently held, plus an amount from some advisers on the SMSF Directory, and a small top up from ourselves to make it a nice round $12,000.

 

Grantham was devastated in the disaster, and we hope these funds go some way to helping out.

SMSF Strategy Day for charity a great success.

 

Our inaugural SMSF Strategy day for charity was held on the 15th March 2011 in Sydney at Doltone House.

 

The event sold out and was a great success, with the net proceeds of the day coming in at just over $11,000, which will be given away to charity to assist those who were hit hard by the recent round of natural disasters.

In what was a wonderful day of learning, we had a full house of SMSF trustees in good spirits and the speakers did not disappoint, with some inspiring performances.

 

Stuart Forsyth (ATO Assistant Commissioner) kicked us off with an excellent overview of the role of the ATO in SMSFs, and dispelled the myths that the ATO is "out to get you".

 

Meg Heffron gave us a great overview of pension strategies and showed us examples of how the transition to retirement strategies work.

 

Roger Montgomery gave his usual excellent performance, showing us how to identify great companies, and how to buy them for less than they are worth.

 

Alan Kohler provided us with an overview of his views on where the current investment opportunities are, and then expertly chaired the panel discussion and took a number of questions from the audience. Jeremy Cooper was outstanding in the panel discussion, providing us with an insight into his findings from chairing the recent Government review into the superannuation system and his views on SMSFs.

 

After lunch, we were treated to a wonderful presentation from Jonathan Pain, who took us on a journey from east to west, via the middle east, and gave us his expert insight into the investment ramifications of the current situation in the middle east.

 

Phil La Greca then showed us the in's and out's of the common SMSF contribution strategies, and how to avoid excess contributions tax.

 

David Busoli then explained a best practise step by step process to borrowing in a SMSF to buy property, but also showed us the many little traps along the way that can trip you up.

 

And, finally Denis Barlin had the graveyard shift to round out the day by showing us the key concepts involved in estate planning for your SMSF, and explained the impact that the Family provisions in NSW can potentially have on binding death benefit nominations.

 

All in all, it was a great day out and we thank everyone who came along and supported it.

 

Thanks again to all our speakers who all gave up their time and participated free of charge: