KEY POINTS:
Ever wanted to know if the boss of your KiwiSaver provider puts his or her money where their mouth is?
KiwiSaver guru and Qantas Media Award-winning columnist Mary Holm puts the question to 31 providers in her second book, KiwiSaver Max: How to Get the Best Out of It.
It's one of 83 questions she has put to the companies now in charge of managing the money of 750,000 Kiwis in a bid to help people to decide which provider they should invest with.
The new book, which follows KiwiSaver: How to Make it Work for You, is about three times the size of its predecessor and is designed to be more of a reference book than a cover-to-cover read.
"I don't expect people to pick up the book and read it from page 1 to 333 because it's boring - well not quite boring, but it's dry," Holm says.
But it has been broken down into sections so people can read the part that is relevant to them.
KiwiSaver Max aims to address the reasons why people might be holding back from investing, while giving tips on creative ways to use KiwiSaver and help answering the big question: "Which provider should I choose?"
Holm says the idea for the second book came from the deluge of KiwiSaver questions she gets sent every week.
Although it has been more than a year since KiwiSaver was launched in July last year, she says there is still a lot of misinformation about the scheme.
She hopes the second book will clarify much of this while also clearing some of the stumbling blocks many people have when it comes to joining.
That includes addressing the four key concerns of what might happen to KiwiSaver if National wins the election, worries about KiwiSaver because of finance company collapses, concerns about not all providers being around in the future and fears poor returns from KiwiSaver funds could see investors lose all their money.
Holm believes there are few excuses not to join KiwiSaver and those who don't do so now may regret it later. But she says she can also understand those who just want to join KiwiSaver and not have to think about it too much.
"I think that is cool. It's like asking me to fake interest in rugby - I'm just not interested. If some people feel that way about managed funds, that's fine. But I think KiwiSaver will make New Zealanders much more savvy about investing."
As to that question of which top executives are in KiwiSaver, ABN Amro Craigs, Kiwibank, Medical Assurance Society and Mercer declined to answer while the chief executives at ANZ National, Axa, NZ Credit Unions and Westpac said they had not joined KiwiSaver because they already had superannuation schemes in place.
Unsurprisingly, all of those who were in KiwiSaver had joined schemes run by their own companies.
KiwiSaver Max is available in bookstore's from August 22 and costs $16.99.
GIVEAWAY
The Herald has 20 copies of Mary Holm's new book KiwiSaver Max: How to Get the Best Out of It to give away. To enter write your name and address on the back of an envelope, mark it "Mary Holm Giveaway" and send it to Business Herald, PO Box 3290 Auckland.
Entries close Friday, August 22. Winners announced August 30.
