It's never too late to start thinking about your retirement savings.
KiwiSaver isn’t serving a significant chunk of the population well in preparing for their retirement.
While employers of those contributing to the retirement savings scheme are required to match 3% contributions, that doesn’t apply to the hundreds of thousands of self-employed New Zealanders.
“This is undoubtedly one of the areas [where] we would like to see better coverage,” says Retirement Commission personal finance lead Tom Hartmann.
He joins Nadine Higgins this week on The Prosperity Project, the NZ Herald’s personal finance podcast, to address a listener’s concern that, aged 57 and self-employed for most of her life, she has left it too late to save for retirement.
While it’s designed for those who are employees, he says there are still incentives for the self-employed to be in the scheme.
“Obviously there is the Government contribution, that maximum of $521 every year, and over a career that can add up to – I think we estimated once about $35,000. So that can make a difference.”
While the benefit of starting to save for retirement as early as possible to maximise the benefits of compounding returns is always advisable, Hartmann says starting at any age is better than nothing.
“What we repeat is: It’s really never too late because everything that you can do to prepare will make a difference.”
There are many reasons why we delay preparing for retirement – but recent research has added another potential one.
“When you spend time thinking about your future self, the way our brain works, it actually sees that person … as a stranger, someone you don’t really know. So actually setting aside money for that person to retire on can feel like giving money away to someone else, someone who you haven’t met,” Hartman says.
The latest research also shows the nature of retirement is changing.
“If you go back to the year 2000, those aged 60 to 69 – only about 15% of that age group were still working, but today it’s close to half.”
He says the most common retirement question is, “How much will I need?” – and it’s a figure that’s hotly debated.
Listen to the full episode of The Prosperity Project for more on how much you may need and if you are on track.
The podcast is hosted by Nadine Higgins, an experienced broadcaster and a financial adviser at Enable Me.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Monday.
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