Analysis by the Retirement Commission shows that for those earning less than $30,000 a year, the Government tax credit will go from making up 15-20% of their KiwiSaver balance at retirement, to between 6-11%.<\/p>\n
Financial advice guru Mary Holm. Photo \/ Babiche Martens<\/p>\n
Holm warns<\/a> that those on very low incomes are often unable to contribute and therefore miss out on both employer and government support, too.<\/p>\n \u201cI actually think that employers should have to put the money in regardless of whether employees put it in too … the employees who have stopped are probably the ones who are struggling more financially and need the employer help more than other people,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Otherwise, she argues: \u201cThere\u2019s actually an incentive for an employer to talk an employee out of contributing.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a raft other changes Holm would like to see to make the scheme fairer, including a change first proposed in 2019 but never progressed \u2013 government contributions for beneficiaries, paid on top of their benefit payments.<\/p>\n \u201cIt gives them a stake in their future … something to be thinking about in the longer term,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Hardship withdrawals applications have spiked in recent years \u2013 which is why Holm also backs the introduction of \u201csidecar\u201d savings, to provide a more accessible emergency fund attached to KiwiSaver, to prevent unexpected events plunging people into short-term high-interest debt.<\/p>\n \u201cThe debt just balloons and people go right off the rails financially and it\u2019s awful,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Holm is equally critical of employer practices like total remuneration, where both employee and employer KiwiSaver contributions are paid out of the salary, rather than the employer contribution being on top.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not fair … it\u2019s not playing ball on the part of the employers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Watch or listen to the full episode of The Prosperity Project<\/a> for more.<\/p>\n The Prosperity Project is hosted by Nadine Higgins, an experienced broadcaster and financial adviser.<\/p>\n Follow the show at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis by the Retirement Commission shows that for those earning less than $30,000 a year, the Government tax…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[12067,138,4500,7123,52331,127,219,1601,7053,3911,6964,13620,7052,111,139,69,3263,20586,8244,7192,59860,24117,98829,223,1455,8218,59039],"class_list":{"0":"post-376293","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-aimed","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-changes","11":"tag-current","12":"tag-deepening","13":"tag-despite","14":"tag-economy","15":"tag-expert","16":"tag-holm","17":"tag-inequality","18":"tag-kiwisaver","19":"tag-leading","20":"tag-mary","21":"tag-new-zealand","22":"tag-newzealand","23":"tag-nz","24":"tag-project","25":"tag-prosperity","26":"tag-recent","27":"tag-risk","28":"tag-schemes","29":"tag-settings","30":"tag-strengthen","31":"tag-the","32":"tag-warning","33":"tag-warns","34":"tag-worsening"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}