All the experts, at Treasury and elsewhere, who project the country’s future finances always include Super payments.
They also factor in using money from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. This fund is huge. It holds about $87 billion in assets – more than half the $143b total in all KiwiSaver funds.
And, by the way, the Super Fund was recently named the world’s best-performing state-owned investment fund over the past 20 years.
Withdrawals from the Super Fund to help pay for NZ Super will probably start in 2034 and gradually increase. At its peak, the fund’s money is expected to pay for nearly 12% of NZ Super in 2084, “averaging 6.4% for the 50 years between 2040 and 2090”.
“The fund will also be paying tax to the New Zealand Government,” it says. “On current forecasts, capital withdrawals and tax payments combined will equal 19.4% of the total annual net cost of pensions in 2084.” That’s a pretty big helping hand.
The fund notes that withdrawals “cannot be used for other purposes (such as economic development or fiscal stabilisation)”.
So the presence of the NZ Super Fund pretty much guarantees Super payments will continue for you and younger people, although it’s likely they will be modified somehow.
Possible scenarios are: raising the starting age from 65, slowing down the pace at which payments grow each year and means-testing Super so better-off people receive less. Some of these are discussed in Q&As below.
That leads us to your point about penalising those who have saved. It’s one of the strong arguments against means-testing, partly because of the message it would send younger people. Nobody benefits if the young reduce or stop their saving because they think people with higher retirement balances will get less from the Government.
By the way, NZ Super is not a Ponzi scheme. I can see where you’re coming from. Ponzi schemes are scams that pay existing investors with funds collected from new investors, which is sort of what happens with Super.
But NZ Super is really just another Government expense, like health or education. We use some taxpayer dollars to ensure old people aren’t in poverty. And I’m confident you’ll get your turn at being on the receiving end!
Raising NZ Super age
Q: In all the debate about superannuation affordability, there is one aspect that affected me. My father died at 63 and my mother at 37, and as I entered my 60s, I wanted some time to myself.
I quit at 62, having worked since 17 and my decision was made easier by the pressure of “new brooms” at my work, with the unspoken agenda of inserting graduates in all management positions. I was fortunate having some savings that could fund me until I was 65.
There will be many who face the age of entitlement slipping away and simply want to quit while they are ahead.
PS I had to wait five years longer for Super compared to some of my senior colleagues born a little earlier.
A: I haven’t heard anyone suggest that if they raise the Super age, those already retired will still get the money from 65, which you seem to imply.
However, I can’t imagine any government raising the age without lots of warning.
In March 2017, Sir Bill English, then the Prime Minister, announced an increase in the Super age from 65 to 67, but it was never enacted as National lost power in the election later that year.
The change would have started a full 20 years later, and wouldn’t affect anyone born before June 1972.
In the meantime, many other countries are going through the process, or have already done so, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany and the United States.
And recently, National again said it will gradually raise the age to 67, starting in 2044. The change wouldn’t affect anyone born before 1979. Act has also supported raising the age, but New Zealand First has opposed it.
Meanwhile, Labour, the Green Party and Te Pāti Māori want the age to stay at 65.
Who knows what lies ahead? But I’m sure people would be given plenty of notice.
On your older colleagues starting Super at a younger age, on average, they had a shorter life expectancy than you, and so didn’t necessarily receive Super for more years than you will.
How many apply?
Q: With regard to NZ Super being paid to people who don’t need it, every New Zealander over 65 is entitled to receive it. But that doesn’t mean they do receive it. You have to apply.
Does the Government know the numbers? Also, a lot of people quietly donate their Super to charity organisations.
A: It seems not many over-65s don’t apply for Super.
I asked Dr Claire Dale at the Pensions and Intergenerational Equity (PIE) research hub at the University of Auckland.
Her reply: “From MSD [the Ministry of Social Development]: As of the second quarter of 2025, over 941,000 people were receiving NZ Super. From Stats NZ: As of mid-2025, there are an estimated 924,823 people aged 65 and older in New Zealand.”
How come? Some of the first group will be people under 65 who are married to over-65s. While under-65s can no longer receive Super, some people used to be eligible. And since that changed, those already getting the money continue to get it.
Adds Dale: “These numbers suggest very, very few people eligible for NZS [NZ Super] are not claiming it.”
Read on for more about donations.
Generous pensioners
Q: On means-tested Super, some don’t think outside the square. Who are all the pensioners who donate every week to churches, St John, hospices, cancer, etc? And support hospitality by eating out and taking friends and family out?
I live in a retirement village, and listening to others, they give generously. Today, we are having a piano recital by a young boy who wants to attend a performing arts trip to Australia. I know residents will give generously, as they’ve done on previous occasions for enterprising students.
They’re the ones who place food in the Mission Basket every week. And hold BBQs to raise money for prostate cancer, breast cancer and others.
Don’t want to blow my own trumpet, but I take a chap with no family out for a meal every week, plus give him a meal and take him shopping. He was never allowed to drive, ride a bike, swim, have friends. Only child, selfish mum dies. Left on his own to face the world at 50. I see such a difference in the last 13 years, with more confidence.
When interest rates drop on their savings, these are the people with less spending power. Not all are going on overseas trips.
A: Well done on your support of the man. It’s great to hear how it has helped him. And thanks, too, to all the other generous souls you write about.
The only bit I baulk at, just a little, is your comment about supporting hospitality by eating out. When we spend on anything, we support the people who provide the product or service, but we get something back. It’s not quite the same as charity!
Another correspondent commented: “Your readers who feel so strongly about NZ Super being available to all regardless of means might be slightly mollified to know about Share My Super, a charity that facilitates donation of Super funds to charities.”
Indeed. Through Share My Super, over-65s can give part or all of their NZ Super payments to support children. The charity says “children are three times more likely to be living in material hardship than people aged over 65”.
Ebenezer lives again!
Q: I am 90 years young. What people ignore is that for every six people on NZ Super, we pay one person’s pension, because we pay taxes on the pension.
Means-testing penalises saving. Hard to police. To help alleviate costs: give people over 75 placebos instead of medicine that prolongs life. Halve the people in Parliament and government offices. Look seriously at top wages in government and councils.
A: Gosh – especially to your suggestion about placebos! Perhaps we should call you Ebenezer Scrooge, after the character in Charles Dickens’ book A Christmas Carol, who argues the poor should be left to die off, to “decrease the surplus population”.
If you have reached 90 without any use of life-prolonging medication, you’re doing remarkably well.
I have more sympathy for some of your other arguments. Means-testing would, indeed, be hard to police. And the issue of penalising saving, mentioned earlier, is a tricky one.
Okay. I’ve let NZ Super dominate the column again. After all, it’s important and it affects pretty much everyone.
I still have a few other letters about the topic that I’ll run next week. But, please, no more correspondence on this topic for at least a few months! There are too many other good letters waiting impatiently in line.
When ‘growth’ is not growth
Q: Why would a high-growth fund have bonds or cash in it? With 15 to 20 years until the money is needed, it seems strange that the funds seem to want to invest in these low-risk investments?
A: A really good question – that applies equally to KiwiSaver and non-KiwiSaver funds. It’s something every fund investor should be aware of.
Many growth funds always hold between 63% and 90% growth assets, such as shares or commercial property. Those are the cut-off points for classifying a fund as growth on the Retirement Commission website, sorted.org.nz.
And many aggressive funds always hold 90% or more growth assets.
However, some fund managers attempt to time markets, selling growth assets when they think prices are going to fall and putting the money into lower-risk cash or bonds. Then they buy shares or property again when they expect price rises.
So, while they call their fund a growth fund, at a given time, it might hold just 30% or 40% shares or property, possibly less.
How does the Sorted website deal with this?
“To categorise funds, we’ve chosen to base the groupings on their actual allocation (ie, not just their stated target) in order to be as transparent as we can and for investors to know what’s really being held in their fund,” Tom Hartmann, personal finance lead at the Retirement Commission says.
A fund’s label – defensive, conservative, balanced, growth or aggressive – is decided twice a year by its investments as reported on the Disclose register every six months, on September 30 and March 31.
Hmmm, I said to Hartmann: “This could presumably lead to quite big problems if, soon after they have reported to Disclose, a fund manager makes big changes to the asset mix in a fund.
“An investor could find themselves in a higher or lower-risk fund than they intended.
“It would be good to be able to tell readers how to look out for this being a possibility. Do you know if fund managers have to tell investors if/when they make more than minor changes to their asset mix?”
His reply: “To our knowledge, they are only required by law to disclose their portfolio holdings twice a year.”
I hope, though, that fund managers who vary their risk level considerably make that clear to their investors. At least their fund descriptions on their websites should point this out.
As a general rule, these will be active managers, as opposed to passive managers who run index funds and similar. One way to tell an active manager is to compare fees, which you can do on the Smart Investor tool on sorted.org.nz. Their fees are usually higher.
* Mary Holm, ONZM, is a freelance journalist, a seminar presenter and a bestselling author on personal finance. She is a former director of the Financial Markets Authority, the Banking Ombudsman Scheme and Financial Services Complaints Ltd. Mary’s advice is of a general nature, and she is not responsible for any loss that any reader may suffer from following it. Send questions to mary@maryholm.com. Letters should not exceed 200 words. We won’t publish your name. Please provide a (preferably daytime) phone number. Unfortunately, Mary cannot answer all questions, correspond directly with readers, or give financial advice.
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