Greg Smith

But preparing for what might happen, that's certainly a way to look at it and sort of future-proof.

A bit of this budget, as it often is, is about sort of future-proofing and building real stuff that we can rely on.

But yeah, there's certainly headwinds against it.

We've got an ageing population, the ratio of...

retirees to workers is increasing at pace from where it's been 10, 20 years ago.

That's only going to, I won't say worsen, it's only going to increase.

There's going to be that burden on us as a nation.

Nicola Willis called out what superannuation is going to cost you in terms of

NZ Super, I think $1.8 billion extra over the next 12 months, $31 billion by 2030.

There's some more funding of NZ Super Fund as well.

So yeah, but really, really important to go back to that original point, how fortunate are we that we have KiwiSaver where it is now, over $120 billion, 3.4 million members thereabouts, probably more actually.

So, yeah, we should certainly celebrate that because it is going to be an increasing burden and that's why this conversation is going to keep coming back, you know, and it's down for, as I mentioned, it's down for the government to decide whether the super age goes up, you know, a year or two, whatever it might be, or even if it's around or, you know,

even when politicians talk about means testing, it came down that sort of rabbit hole.

Yeah, so yeah, households need to play.

And the best thing you can do is, I suppose, as a household, if you're in any position able to, is take away the reliance, if you can, ideally, and this is not necessarily an easy thing, from others and including the government.

I mean, yeah, we hope that the government is there in our retirement to provide us a sort of,

okay you know retirement if you like but you know most people worked really hard for a long long time you deserve a comfortable retirement right so I think it's really important to sort of to think about that

Yeah, the power of compounding, it's like a financial wonder of the world, really.

And it's just really probably underappreciated by some people.

So whether it's KiwiSaver, whether it's being in the right fund, it can have a dramatic effect or even manage funds, as you say.