The great super balance divide

The gender superannuation gap has been evidenced in recent Savvy research with almost half of men having a balance of more than $100,000 compared to 24% of women.

The survey of over 1,000 adults found 44% of men had a super balance of more than $100,000, 16% had a balance of over $200,000 and 7% had more than $400,000.

This compared to 24%, 9% and 4% of women for the same balances respectively.

Almost half of women had less than $50,000 in their super accounts.

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The national gender pay gap was 14% with women in Australia earning $263.90 less than men which was having a knock-on effect of reducing their super as well as their salary.

Over half (57%) of people said they were not making any additional contributions to their super. For those who opted to make extra contributions, 15% added an extra 1%-5% of their income while 8% contributed 6%-10%.

There was also a lack of confidence in securing a comfortable retirement with 52% of people aged 45-54 and 40% aged 55-64 feeling unconfident or not confident at all that they would have enough to retire with at 65.

Youthful optimism reigned, however, with only a quarter saying they did not feel confident in achieving a comfortable retirement.

Savvy said more needed to be done to educate people on how they could grow their super to achieve a comfortable retirement.