Young people urged to plan financially
Retirement boss reflects on her big-spending as a young person
“Iwas terrible with money,” says Retirement Commissioner Diane Maxwell. I didn’t think I was going to live to grow old.”
Maxwell, whose job is to promote financial capability and encourage saving, says the toughest part of her job is getting young people thinking about their retirement. She knows, from personal experience, what she’s up against.
Talking on The Economy Hub at the Pub video show, Maxwell, who grew up in London, got her first job when she was 13, shampooing at a local hairdressers.
“I finished my Saturday and I had six pounds and they gave me a Farrah Fawcett flick. My first big purchase was a Hawaiian shirt.
“I look back and I could weep over all the money I’ve wasted.”
Young people, says Maxwell, struggle to project forward a few weeks, let alone 50 or 60 years.
“The problem is trying to talk to young people about ‘tomorrow’ when every message they are getting is ‘today’. We want it now, have it now, if you don’t have the money, borrow it. You go on social media and everyone has got everything.
“Our retirees — broadly — they own their own homes, they are mortgage free — our children and grandchildren will have lower rates of home ownership and they’ll reach retirement in a different time and they’ll be facing different challenges.”
At the moment there are around 750,000 New Zealanders over the age of 65, she says. By the middle of this century that figure will almost double. “We are having too few babies and we’re living longer. If you retire in your mid-60s-late 60s and you live well into your 90s as our children will — then the question is who pays?”
NZ Superannuation was currently costing $30 million a day and in 20 years it will cost $98m a day, she says. And there was a divide opening between those that were preparing to cover some of the cost themselves and those that wouldn’t be able to.
“We’ve got 13,000 interviews, done over last year, that tell us about 52 per cent of us are doing ok and 48 per cent of us are not.”
The results showed that home ownership put people firmly on the positive side of the divide.
“So we’re in schools now. If you can get someone young to think about getting the ‘here and now right’, then actually the rest will follow.”