retirement savings

11 March 2018
The absurdity of asset-based fees

Most investment advisers in New Zealand charge asset-based fees — a percentage of your portfolio. On $1 million, that's typically around $9,000 a year, every year, with no obvious link to the work bei…
8 March 2018
Build wealth by being lazy!

You're lazy sometimes. I know this because you're human. The trick is to use that laziness — or, more charitably, behavioural inertia — as a feature rather than a bug. Set things up once so wealth-bui…
29 December 2017
Should I contribute more than the “minimum” to KiwiSaver?

Once you've captured the employer match and the Government contribution, the tangible benefits of putting more into KiwiSaver largely stop. So why does my wife contribute 8% of her income? Behavioural…
29 July 2016
Biases that keep you from saving money

Two biases stop us saving: present bias (we weight now over later) and exponential-growth bias (we underestimate what a dollar today becomes). KiwiSaver's opt-out, locked-in design fights both.

The absurdity of asset-based fees