Money Matters It's Never Too Early To save For Your Retirement

It’s important to live in the moment, but only after you’ve got a solid retirement plan in place so you can enjoy life after 65 too

- Donna Fleming

In the years leading up to retirement, Aucklander Helen and her husband Mike* barely talked about how they’d cope financially once they stopped work.

“Mike has always looked after our finances and he said we’d be okay as we could sell our house, buy somewhere smaller and live quite nicely on the money we made,” says Helen.

“We also had some savings, a small amount in KiwiSaver, and we knew we could get NZ Superannuation as well, so I wasn’t too worried.”

However, by the time they retired from their retail and hospitality jobs six years ago, those savings had dwindled from contributing to the university educations of two grandchildren and going on the holiday of a lifetime. Then when they put their large family home on the market, it took a long time to sell thanks to an apartment block being built next door. Meanwhile, they were chewing through their savings.

Eventually Helen (71) and Mike (73) accepted a house offer much lower than they wanted, then ended up paying more than they’d hoped to for the townhouse they bought.

“In the last couple of years we’ve gone through money much quicker than we thought, which is scary, especially when you think we could both live for another 20 years,” Helen says. “We had some unexpected expenses associated with the new house, plus the cost of living has gone up. We’ve really had to tighten our belts. We very rarely buy anything new now, we don’t have holidays and we’ve gone down to one car. I’ve become strict about things like saving power. We put on extra clothes now, instead of switching on the heating.”

Helen regrets not putting more thought into how far their money would go.