Hi VYBerlinaV8,
I think we discussed a similar topic before, if the money's already in there (and it is your money, even though your employer made most of the contributions) you may as well take control of it and make the most of it, financially and from a long-term learning/educational point of view.
It doesn't really take much time if you adopt a relatively passive approach and whether you pick individual stocks, LICs, ETFs or index funds.
If you're 35 now, by the time you're 70+, you will have had 35+ years of experience in investing and managing your own long-term retirement fund and future inheritance for your family.
If you think you're a good investor now, you're surely going to be a lot better in time if you pursue this self-directed path.
And the knowledge and experience you gain from this can help you improve your investing outside super as well.
The proviso though is that you have a certain minimum amount of knowledge and an appropriate strategy/plan in place on how to initially invest before doing so, and it sounds like you probably already do.
As oracle mentions, the costs are much cheaper these days.
You would pay about $1000 pa in fees for accounting/audit/levy/ASIC fees with a low-cost SMSF administrator like e-superfund, plus brokerage on top of this, so maybe $1200 pa depending on how often you trade.
This works out to be just 0.6% of your $200k balance... so even less than what you are paying now.
Add your wife's super balance into the mix and the next 12 months of employer contributions for both of you and it will be even less than this.
Personally, I ignored all the usual advice on this subject and started my own SMSF with just 30k!
- though the balance and my own confidence investing in the stockmarket has improved significantly since.