Retirement Savings

by Martin Hawes

Many people, especially those of the baby boomers generation, want to work less and live more. They want to ease back; not exactly retire but to make time available to do the things that they have always wanted to do (but never really had time for). They want to start enjoying some good summers. To do this they have to rearrange their finances. In particular they need to set a whole new investment strategy because they will be reliant on their investment capital to some extent at least to give them the income on which to live.

Each decade the baby boom generation (helped along by increasing wealth and new technologies) has challenged and reshaped the way society does things. Well, now the baby boom generation is hitting age 60, what can we expect?

Did you know that almost a third of working New Zealanders want to retire in their 50s?* We don’t want to wait until we’re 65 – we want to retire early and enjoy it.

And why not? If we're that clear about when we want to retire, the only other thing we need to be clear about is how.

Trouble is – most of us are nowhere near clear. We've no idea how much we'll need when we retire. Which means we've no idea how much we should realistically be saving. It's no wonder we put off doing anything about it.