retirement / super

Take care, investment expert warns
The "investment adventurer" and wife Joanne, spoke to a three quarters full Theatre Royal for two and a half hours on subjects ranging from their motorcycle tour through back blocks America last year and their move into philanthropy, to the state of the New Zealand housing market and warnings on KiwiSaver....
2 May 2007 - Gareth Morgan

Keeping the bastards honest
The way to make corporates honest is to make their officers personally liable. No ifs or buts....
30 March 2006 - Gareth Morgan

Money for Michael .. to do what with?
Michael Cullen knows far more about investing than you ever will. That's why for every dollar he takes from you for his fund, 80 cents will be shipped out of New Zealand....
14 August 2003 - Gareth Morgan

Baby Boomer Riches
Having enough hasn't got any easier with stocks crashed and house prices looking vulnerable....
4 June 2003 - Gareth Morgan

Losing Government Servants' Super
The GSF has lost money on its offshore investments. It's liabilities have increased a lot more than that though as taxpayers underwrite this cesspool of privilege....
2 October 2002 - Gareth Morgan

Cullen's Big Superannuation Idea: Another Hoax
Some of us have written for years about the folly of governments trying to shelter the citizenry from the personal choice each of us face over whether to "party up" now or set more aside for retirement. Still governments won't leave it alone and there continues to be an enormous waste of energy as regime after regime pursues futilely...
7 November 2001 - Gareth Morgan

Fear works, mollycoddling doesn't
So Michael Cullen thinks that fear is an inadequate motive to save. He should study Japan where after decades of an avaricious government that has taxed and spent, households are saving so much the economy can't sustain any recovery. The Cullen argument that the government needs to enforce people to save is one Japanese governments have used for an...
29 November 2000 - Gareth Morgan

Cullen can't save himself
One of the primary reasons Michael Cullen has mounted for the pre-funding of New Zealand Superannuation is that people cannot be relied upon to save for themselves and that the country has a shortage of savings. The inference from his remarks is that state pensions for Boomers will be able to be afforded so long as the government "makes" us...
1 March 2000 - Gareth Morgan

The Cullen Fund: Labour's Think Big
The road to hell is paved with good intentions - so the experience with the Big Cullen superannuation fund will ultimately attest. Despite an intention to remove doubt over the tenure of an adequate state pension, the recipe Labour has come up with is itself inadequate. Start with the goal. The government wants to ensure that future...
1 March 2000 - Gareth Morgan

The Retirement Tsunami
The graph should be familiar. It's derived from New Zealand's age distribution data but it could just as easily be that of the United States or Australia. The problem is well known - how the hell are we going to support the elderly when each has only 1.6 taxpayers supporting them as opposed to today's 3.7 ? If the current level of pension's to...
1 July 1999 - Gareth Morgan

State Pensions: Towards Reality
The Government has made a long overdue move to contain the cost of state pensions. But rather than choosing the cauldron of an economic meltdown, it would have been better to have opted for a quieter period where the rationale for the change was given a chance to be understood. As it happens, the not-altogether-incorrect...
30 September 1998 - Gareth Morgan

Income Testing the Children of the Elderly
Today's elderly should not be excused from playing their fair part in the necessary reform of state pensions. While any imminent change has to take cognisance of the limited capacity of the already-retired to adjust, there is no ground to absolve current retirees from a share in the burden of reform. That NZ Superannuation...
15 September 1998 - Gareth Morgan

Of super and old folk and poor person's benefit
The avalanche of responses (some published, some not, most anonymous) to my accusation that the retired generation has become too greedy, confirms that weaning them from the state pension is no taking of candy from a baby. Given our numbers, how much harder this will be when my generation gets its hands into the same jar. The quality of...
25 November 1997 - Gareth Morgan