You have made a 25 per cent profit on your loan, and since you have been paying interest of 5.39 per cent for over five years, you are probably in a breakeven situation, although the tax deduction on interest would have helped. The problem with insurance bonds is that, even after tax considerations, many have not been good performers, although there are some exceptions.

I would prefer you invest in a line of direct shares in your wife's name, focusing on blue chips offering above-average franked dividend yields and a dividend reinvestment plan (DRP). The latter allows you to reinvest the income before tax, thus growing the investment, and you then pay any tax out of your pocket as a further subsidy of your child's education. Just be sure to keep good records of how many shares are bought initially and through the DRP, when and for how much. You'll need that for capital gains tax purposes. Can your wife upgrade her skills and earning ability? Or maybe start her own cleaning service with her own employees?

We are a 60 and 63-year-old couple earning $150,000 between us annually and planning to work for a further five years. We do not have a mortgage and can save about $2000 a month in addition to the $1000 a month we each salary sacrifice. We currently have $720,000 in a large industry fund, some of which is in its Member Direct option, which allows us to buy and sell shares in the ASX 300 Index as well as invest directly in term deposits with two banks. The joint spread is currently 40 per cent in its balanced fund, 27 per cent in term deposits, and 32 per cent in direct shares. Outside of super we have $100,000 in high-interest online savings accounts (all in my name as the lowest income earner) and $22,000 in shares that provide fully franked dividends. I am likely to inherit about $400,000 in the next few years and would like to use it to buy an investment property. Should we start a self-managed super fund (SMSF) so the investment property could be purchased within super, which would be tax advantageous, particularly once we retire and switch to pension mode? I am a little frustrated that the industry fund's member direct option only gives us access to two banks' term deposits whose interest rates are lower than we could achieve putting the money in online savings accounts if it was in a SMSF. The disadvantage of leaving the industry fund and rolling our balances into a SMSF is that we would lose access to cheap life insurance, and fees would be higher. Paperwork and compliance is not an issue as I believe I am sufficiently financially literate to implement an investment strategy with a little advice. How can we maximise our retirement savings and investments and would it be advantageous to start a SMSF?

You seem to have the experience of running a portfolio of shares and term deposits and so you arguably get over the first hurdle I erect when someone asks whether they should start an SMSF. So if all you are looking to do is to access term deposits and shares (no art collection, yachts etc), I suggest you go ahead. At your age, you have life expectancies of decades but you should still plan what to do with the SMSF if one of you falls ill, or under a bus. For what it's worth, I prefer a corporate trustee to two individual trustees, it gives you more flexibility in the future.

I am not generally in favour of buying a property within an SMSF that is about to start a pension as you could quickly run into liquidity problems trying to meet the minimum pension requirements. Remember that between 65 and 74, the minimum pension to be paid is 5 per cent a year of total assets, so I would prefer that you stuck to shares offering healthy franked dividends and a raft of term deposits with staggered maturities. The best approach may be to salary sacrifice the maximum (up to $35,000 per annum each) into your super fund. If you want to start an SMSF and rollover some or all of your existing benefit into it, remember there will be brokerage costs for selling and buying and you may be better off running both funds.

From July 1, 2014, and under the planned SuperStream system, all employer super contributions to all super funds will need to be made electronically via an electronic service address, which is different to an email address. (The deadline for employers with 19 or less employees is July 1, 2015.) For example, Australia Post will charge $50 a year, with a special 50 per cent reduction at present. An SMSF is not affected if it does not receive employer contributions, or only receives contributions from an employer who is a related party of the fund. A register of 13 SMSF messaging providers is on the tax office's website.