Forget sending the kids to fancy private schools, forget ski holidays in Aspen, Hermes handbags and holiday houses at Portsea and Margaret River. If you really want to keep up with the smart set, see your accountant or financial planner about setting up a self-managed superannuation fund.

Until quite recently, DIY funds were the playthings of the self-employed and the rich, whose trusted accountants would readily recommend the schemes as a flexible, cost-effective way to save for retirement.

But this all changed in the mid 2000s. The government passed legislation allowing millions of Australians to choose the manager of their super savings, investors were given a one-off chance to inject $1 million of post-tax earnings into their super funds in the year to June 2007, and the share market collapse of 2008 exposed fee gouging by fund managers and advisers.

Suddenly, anyone who had any money and self-respect was leaving their large, pooled fund and going the DIY route.

Between 2004 and 2010, the number of self-managed fund trustees soared by 55 per cent.

Now it's kind of cool.

"It became a status symbol," the managing director of Announcer Financial Planning, Andrew Rocks says.

"For some clients who come to see us, other than as a status symbol, there is no other reason why they would have a DIY fund," he adds.

Referring to some of the clients who walk through his door, John Palermo of Perth-based accounting firm Palermo group says: "The feeling is that Joe Bloggs and his wife down the road have got one [a DIY fund] and we want one too."

Apart from social status, DIY funds have the added attraction of demonstrating to all and sundry that the trustee is in control of their destiny, and not some "patsy" prepared to outsource their financial future to a third party.

This is particularly true of the 50-plus crowd, say financial planners, and even more the case among retirees.

"I have clients who travel the country in their caravans and [DIY funds] are all they talk about. It's all the rage," says Sam Henderson, chief executive of financial planning group Henderson Maxwell.

It is also quite acceptable nowadays to discuss the asset allocation and individual investments, if not the size of one's fund, at barbecues and around dinner party tables.

Equally, issues such as how to maximise an allocated pension and strategies for receiving the age pension are hot topics among the retiree set.

A decade ago, who would have thought investing would have become so sexy?

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