Superannuation

Thank you everyone so very much!

Hi Elaine, I was 55 when diagnosed, and on advice from my superannuation company, am now accessing an income stream as a fortnightly payment that helps with bills.
I also access lump sums yo pay for tests and treatments. Worth having a conversation with your superannuation company to see what options are available to you.
Hope this helps, Trace xxx

My super is less than $1000 and goes down in fees lately by $50 a year. I have not had a paid job in 27 years and I am 54 years old. They still won't let me have my super unless I produce some sort of hardship certificate.

Hi Elaine, 
one of my super plans had an income protection component to it which kept me going for 2 years. After that I had to consider toatal and permanent disability. Even with metastatic breast cancer, poorly controlled Rheumatoid arthritis, a broken neck of femur which 4 years on is still not properly and severely impacting my mobility, as well as chronic pain, the insurers still sent me for an independent assessment before agreeing to release my super. In other words, it's not an easy process. The financial reasons for allowing early release of super as set out in the Act and outlined on the Commonwealth  Services website are very limited. I am about to embark on my second application to another superannuation fund and dreading the process. 
So good luck, read your policy carefully and keep the names and contact details of every person at the superannuation fund you speak to.

Hi Elaine, I was able to use my Income Protection which is a part of my Super, they paid 75% of my wage each week.  They would keep paying for three years. Had to go two weeks without pay to access this but I could use long service for that two weeks.
Hope it all works out

Michelle

Hi @ElaineG
I accessed my super to pay for the medical bills as I ended up  going private for the dble mastectomy.  very happy with my surgeon but the whole process nearly sent us broke.  Essentially it is VERY hard to get anything out of them.  My surgery was last Aug, and because I had to keep reapplying I only got the last payment this week!!!

Happy to share more details in a private message if anyone knows how to do that.

Aine

@ElaineG I went through all of this at the time of Chemo, I had no luck with Superannuation, I had to be terminal to access it or financial hardship. I'm a single parent and was very ill in 2015 through chemo and had to stop working, thankfully I had savings, but Centrelink were useless and deemed Id have to spend at least $10,000 of my own hard earned money and wait about 11 weeks before I could access sickness benefits. USELESS! In 2016 thankfully one of my Superannuations had an inbuilt component for income protection. It was a 90 day waiting period but as it was mid way through 2016 and Id stopped working in September 2015 I served my 90 days and I even got back paid about 4 months. Its for 2yrs and finishes in Jan 2018, I've only been able to work 3 days a week and its been amazing! has helped me through a very difficult time. Hugs Melinda xo