How much do I need to retire in New Zealand?

The crazy thing about retirement is that the best time to think, and plan for it, is when you're young.
Ironically, when you're young, you think you're going to live forever and the very idea of 'retiring' is repugnant because it's another word for getting old. As a consequence, most people fail to plan when they should and therefore lose the opportunity to get on top of it when they are in their 20s and 30s.
If we hope to get a future generation ready for retirement, I think we need another word for retirement that encapsulates a far more attractive idea.
I also think we also need to de-stigmatise ageing by portraying more positive images and stories of people past retirement age because increasingly many choose to work past 65 because they want to, not need to.
This past week on Smart Money we talked retirement readiness and heard plenty of good examples.
One caller worked as a chef his whole life but returned to the kitchen to earn a bit of cash washing dishes. Having worked in a restaurant myself back in high school, I know the pecking order of this business and washing up was the least glamorous position of all. So going from being the chef to chief  bottle washer must come with a fair bit of humility. You could tell this fellow was egoless in that regard.
As well as getting him out of the house, he enjoyed the socialising with younger folks, the residual health benefits of being more active.  The payment was almost a bonus. 
Another was a retired teacher who went back to do some relief teaching. He said it afforded him trips back home annually to the United States but you could also sense the buzz he got from being around younger people and being useful.
Another chap, who drove a truck for a living, came back out of retirement to earn a bit of money after having suffered a stroke. He'd conceived a plan to sell the family home and retire more affordably, in Thailand! How awesome is that?
These kind of stories may come as a relief to those in their 50s or 60s who are panic stricken about their lack of prepardedness. Sure, retirement seems the best thing in the world when you hate your job but if you find something you enjoy doing, and get a lot  back from it, not dropping tools at 65 to stay home may seem less daunting.
On the other hand, if you are determined to stop trading your time for money by age 50, or earlier so you can travel the world, you're going to need a shrewd plan to get there. The FIRE (financial independence retire early movement) was all the rage a decade ago and still has a strong following. It was popularised by the Canadian-born engineer turned blogger Mr Money Moustache, who extolled the benefits of biking, fixing and making your own stuff and eschewed consumerism and wasting money.
His no-nonsense methods put him on the path of early retirement and inspired of personal finance fans to follow suit.
He was/is a talented writer and his methodology a sound one too. Mr Money Moustached proved that you don't have to be born-rich, a tech-entrepreneur-turned billionaire, or an early adopter of Bitcoin to stop paid employment. 
If you're a determined individual, with discipline, a plan and some consistency, you can move mountains in most area of your life.
Where money is concerned, the vast majority of people are simply not awake to what it is they want to achieve, and how their daily habits and choices are shaping their reality. Unfortunately, the wake up call comes some time around 40 or later when you start feeling weary and then turn your mind to the retirement issue. 
At that stage, if you haven't planned, it can be ugly. All the more so with interest rates being so high, and the cost of living too!
A simple plan to avoiding this horror is doing some basic work early on. 


Step one

Decide when you would like to give up paid employment and calculate how much you think you would need to live off.  Run two sets of number; one that includes NZ Super or your government pension if  you are domiciled in another country and one that doesn't. Factor in inflation too. 


Step two
Look at current savings balance in KiwiSaver, or with whatever investments you currently have. If you don't have a workplace retirement savings investment, consider opening one smartly. Most providers have projection tools which show you how much you're on track to have by retirement age. Read the assumptions because they are also important. They include things like; your fund type, your tax rate, your level of contribution and time frame. Most of these tools tell you what you can expect to have per week as a result of your current investment strategy from age of retirement till 90 or so.

Step three
In most instances, the exercise above will elicit gasps of horror when you realise how far you have to go to bridge the gap. DON'T panic.  If you have any wiggle room in your budget, consider increasingly your contribution rate and see what impact that will have on the 'terminal' amount. You can also think about cutting back on other expenses to increase your savings, take on other types of work (side hussles), reinvest in yourself to study or train at something you may enjoy better or earns you more money, both preferably. 
Take comfort from the true stories of some of the folks above who are working in their '70s and getting a lot more out of it than simply money.