Cooking The Books

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's why you can't just sign up to KiwiSaver, and leave it at that. Hosted by Frances Cook.KiwiSaver is great, in that it's helped those of us who aren't used to handling money put together investments for our retirement. But there's the risk that once you've got it, you think you're all done. After all, the government wouldn't spend all that time creating this scheme, and then not make it fit for purpose, right? Well, the problem is they designed it for the starting point to do the bare minimum, and after that, you can adapt it to your own personal situation. Yet many of us haven't taken that second step. Most people contribute just three percent of their pay into their KiwiSaver. Far better than nothing, but definitely not enough to avoid a tough retirement. Many say you should put aside at least 10 per cent if you want to enjoy your golden years. And then there's the fact that the default setting i