This is not financial advice

and I am not a financial advisor.

What we'll cover

• Kiwisaver
• Retirement & Retirement Calculator (NZ Super)
• How much do you spend? (and where?)
• FU Money (a.k.a emergency fund)
• FIRE (flavours of)

Kiwisaver

• Get your employer match (as long as it's not coming out of your base salary)
• Get the government match
• No point in doing anything more. Consider parallel investments.
• Also:

1. What provider are you with?  Is it low cost?
2. I like simplicity, there are lots of others.
3. Consider your risk appetite and timeframe

Retirement

• https://sorted.org.nz/tools/retirement-calculator/
• https://www.massey.ac.nz/documents/2145/new-zealand-retirement-expenditure-guidelines-2024.pdf

Retirement

Retirement

So, about $1000/week you want extra _above_ NZ Super (hopefully it still exists).  How much do you need to save to get that?

Retirement

https://supercalcs.co.nz/ris9/mst-kiwisaver/graphs

How much do you spend?

• Pocketsmith (I haven't used it, but, people talk about it)
• gnucash - because I'm old skoool
• https://plaintextaccounting.org/What-is-Plain-Text-Accounting

TLDR: consider doing something

Having an idea of your expenses is key to knowing how much you need to survive for X months without a job etc.

FU Money

for me, a years expenses in a cash account.  It's basically your emergency fund.

FIRE

Financially Independent Retire Early

Concepts:

• 4% rule (quite American based - FIF tax)
• But, basically, invest enough that you can live off the growth.
• Other fires:  Barista FIRE, Coast FIRE, Fat FIRE etc.

also for an NZ slant (and general decent financial stuff - https://www.thehappysaver.com/

Coast FIRE

https://walletburst.com/tools/coast-fire-calc/

Coast FIRE is when you have enough in your retirement accounts that without any additional contributions, your net worth will grow to support retirement at a traditional retirement age.

note: this calculator gets you to full FIRE at your retirement age, however, you probably don't need that much.

52K = 90K - Super (ish)

Thanks

And remember, I'm not a financial advisor. Stocks can go up as well as down, and do. You need to be able to sleep...