Quote Originally Posted by minimoke View Post
Ordinarily I prefer to keep government mitts off my money. But with Kiwsaver I have an exception. The biggest problem with Kiwsaver is that it has no government guarantee. So your money is at much risk as putting it into a safe as houses insurance company. If we remember back to when accident insurance went totally to the private sector MMH (or was it MMR or MMI - cant recall but something like that) went bust.

For retitment I think we need a more secure model as the aged don't have time to try and recover lost loot.
Make kiwisaver compulsory, and have the the percentage of the contributors investment that is in invested in low risk investment classes (cash, govt bonds etc) scale with age. so at 20 you can put all your investment into risky high growth asset classes, but by the time you hit 60 well over half of your kiwisaver is in a portfolio of stable but low return govt bonds and similar. Otherwise you end up with people like my brother who will not save for their retirement.. I think his kiwsaver plan is the Lotto Powerball plan.