The fund you were auto-enrolled into when you started your first job is almost certainly the wrong one. Fund choice, contribution rate, first home withdrawal, retirement transition. We sort all four in plain English.
KiwiSaver is the simplest piece of your money picture that still gets ignored most. Your provider sends you one statement a year and otherwise leaves you alone. That suits the provider, not you. A 30-minute conversation usually changes the fund, sometimes the provider, and almost always the contribution rate. The difference, compounded over 30 working years, runs to six figures.
KiwiSaver advice is not complicated. It's just rarely done. Most New Zealanders signed up to KiwiSaver at the same time they signed an employment contract, ticked the default box, and have never looked at it since. The five questions below are the ones we work through in a first conversation. Most clients can answer two of them. The other three are where the value is.
1. What's your stage of life? If you're 28 with no kids and a 35-year horizon to age 65, your fund profile should look nothing like a 58-year-old's. The single biggest KiwiSaver mistake in New Zealand is people in their 20s and 30s sitting in conservative or balanced funds because that's what the bank put them in at the counter. Time horizon should drive risk appetite, and your 20s and 30s have decades of recovery time built in.
2. What's the goal? Retirement at 65 is the obvious one, but it's not the only one. First-home buyers withdraw at age 28 or 30. Self-employed members use KiwiSaver as a forced-savings discipline. Members near 65 may want to keep contributing well into their 70s. Each goal changes the right fund and the right contribution rate.
3. Who's your provider? There are fifteen or so KiwiSaver providers in New Zealand. The fees, the fund construction, the customer service, the digital tools and the long-run performance vary substantially. The two or three largest providers manage most of the country's KiwiSaver money, partly because of bank distribution rather than performance. We compare your current provider's funds to the credible alternatives on the Sorted Smart Investor tool and the Morningstar quarterly reports.
4. What's your contribution rate? The standard rates are 3%, 4%, 6%, 8% and 10%. Most members are on the default of 3% because that's what the form said. For households who can afford it, 8% is often the right number, particularly in the high-earning decade between 35 and 45.
5. Are you getting the free money? If you contribute at least $1,042.86 a year by 30 June, the government tops you up by $521.43. If you're self-employed, on parental leave, or contributing through a non-PAYE method, this is the single most common $521 left on the table in New Zealand finance.
In rough order of how often we see them.
Member in their 20s sitting in a conservative or default balanced fund because that's what the bank ticked at counter sign-up. Over a 35-year horizon, the cost runs into six figures.
Get a fund review Mistake #02Self-employed or low-PAYE member not contributing the $1,042.86 needed by 30 June. Leaves the full $521.43 government contribution behind. Year after year, sometimes for a decade.
Sort the top-up Mistake #03Member panicked during a market downturn, switched from growth to conservative, then forgot. Locks in the loss and misses the recovery. Costs more than the dip itself ever did.
Reset the fund Mistake #04Buyer tells the bank about their KiwiSaver withdrawal after the loan application has been submitted. Servicing test redone, settlement delayed, deal sometimes lost. The fix is a checklist we run before the application goes in.
Avoid the trapThe KiwiSaver First Home Withdrawal lets eligible members withdraw almost their entire balance to buy a first home, leaving just $1,000 in the account. It is the most-used and most-misunderstood feature of the scheme. The mechanics are simple, but the timing is not.
Eligibility, in one paragraph. You need to have been a KiwiSaver member for at least three years. The home must be your principal place of residence, not an investment property. You must not have owned property before, or if you have, you need a "previous home owner" determination from Kāinga Ora confirming your financial position is roughly equivalent to a first-home buyer. You apply through your KiwiSaver provider with a copy of the sale and purchase agreement.
What you can actually withdraw. Your contributions, your employer's contributions, the government contributions, and the investment returns on all of the above. The only money that stays behind is the $1,000 minimum balance and the original $1,000 kickstart (if you received it before 2015).
The timing trap. Most buyers tell their mortgage broker or bank about the KiwiSaver withdrawal at the wrong moment in the application. The bank's servicing test treats KiwiSaver as a one-off deposit, not as ongoing income. If you tell the bank too late, the application is rebuilt, the offer is delayed, and you sometimes lose the property. The fix is to surface the withdrawal amount, the provider, and the expected release timeframe in the very first conversation. We have a checklist for it.
Combining with First Home Loan and First Home Grant. The Kāinga Ora First Home Loan scheme lets eligible buyers purchase with a 5% deposit at standard interest rates, instead of needing a 20% deposit. The First Home Grant was a separate cash payment that was phased out in 2024. If you're using the First Home Loan, your KiwiSaver withdrawal becomes part of the 5% deposit. We model the full picture in one place.
Source: Kāinga Ora and Sorted.org.nz, current as of 2026-05. Eligibility thresholds and scheme rules change periodically; we confirm the live rules at the point of advice.
At age 65 (or after five years of membership, whichever is later), KiwiSaver stops being a locked-up retirement account and becomes a regular managed fund you can draw from. Three things change at once, and the decisions you make in the 12 months either side of your 65th birthday set the next 30 years.
Decision one: lump sum, drawdown, or stay invested. You can take the lot in one transfer. You can leave it invested and set up a regular monthly withdrawal. You can move it into a different product (a non-KiwiSaver managed fund, an annuity, a term deposit ladder). Each option has different tax, different fees, different flexibility. There is no single right answer; there is a right answer for your situation.
Decision two: keep contributing or stop. You can keep contributing through PAYE after 65 if you're still working. You no longer get the government contribution or the employer match (those stop at 65), but the tax-efficient fund structure still applies.
Decision three: the new fund profile. If you're going to draw $30,000 a year out of a $400,000 KiwiSaver balance, the fund needs to be defensive enough that a 30% market drop doesn't force you to sell at the bottom, but growth-y enough that the balance lasts 25 years. This is the classic "sequence of returns" risk, and it's the single biggest planning question of the retirement decade.
We start this conversation about 12 months before the 65th birthday. Earlier is fine. Later is also fine, but earlier gives you the option of glide-pathing the fund profile rather than switching it in one move.
We map your current fund against your stage of life and risk tolerance, then compare to credible alternatives. Sorted Smart Investor and Morningstar data, plus our own model.
Book a fund review Contribution strategy3, 4, 6, 8 or 10 percent. PAYE or voluntary. Salary sacrifice or after-tax. We model what each combination buys you at retirement and what each costs you in the next paycheck.
Run the rate model First homeEligibility, application, timing the conversation with your bank, combining with Kāinga Ora First Home Loan. End to end, with the checklist that keeps the settlement on track.
Plan the withdrawal RetirementLump sum vs drawdown vs stay invested. Fund glide-path in the five years before 65. Sequence-of-returns risk modelling.
Plan the transition Self-employedIf you're a contractor, sole trader or company director, KiwiSaver isn't deducted from PAYE. We set up a regular voluntary contribution that captures the full government contribution every June.
Set up the top-up Annual reviewMost clients have us check in once a year as part of their broader financial review. Fund performance, provider fees, contribution rate, balance against goal. 30 minutes, year-on-year clarity.
Book an annual reviewIllustrative examples drawn from common patterns in the book. Final published case studies to be drawn from Craig's real client files with each client's written permission.
Member auto-enrolled at age 22 into a default conservative fund. Ten years later, balance roughly half of what a growth fund would have produced over the same period and contributions. Switched fund profile, kept the same provider for continuity. Indicative compounded difference to age 65: substantial.
First-home buyers, Tauranga, conditional offer accepted. We sequenced the KiwiSaver withdrawal application with the lender's pre-approval so the deposit landed in the solicitor's trust account two clear weeks before settlement. Application went through clean, no rebuild, no delay.
Member three years out from 65, full growth fund, planning to draw down at retirement. We mapped a three-year glide path moving roughly a third of the balance per year into a more defensive mix, with the rest staying in growth for longer-horizon spending. Reduced sequence-of-returns risk without locking in a low long-run return.
Almost never. Default funds are designed to be safe for the provider, not optimal for you. For most people under 50, a default conservative fund leaves significant returns on the table over a working lifetime. We map your stage of life, risk tolerance and goals to the right fund inside 30 minutes.
At minimum, enough to get the full employer match (3%) and the full government contribution ($521.43 per year if you contribute at least $1,042.86). Beyond that, contribution rate is a personal cashflow question. We model what each rate (3, 4, 6, 8 or 10 percent) actually buys you at retirement.
Yes, after three years of membership you can withdraw almost all of your balance for a first home, leaving $1,000 behind. The trap is the timing: most buyers tell their bank about the KiwiSaver withdrawal at the wrong moment in the application. We have a checklist for it.
Often, yes. The difference between the best and worst growth fund in NZ is around 1 to 1.5 percent of annual return, compounded over 30 years. That's a six-figure difference at retirement. We compare your current fund to the credible alternatives using Sorted Smart Investor data.
From age 65 your KiwiSaver becomes a regular investment you can draw from. The question is whether to take it as a lump sum, leave it invested, or move it into a different product. Each option has tax, eligibility and behavioural implications. We walk you through the trade-offs about 12 months before your 65th birthday.
Without PAYE, you have to make voluntary contributions directly to your provider. The threshold to get the full $521.43 government contribution is $1,042.86 by 30 June each year. We set up a regular monthly direct debit that captures this every year and frees you from having to remember.
In limited cases, yes. Significant financial hardship, serious illness, life-shortening congenital conditions, and permanent migration overseas are the main categories. Each requires evidence and a provider sign-off. We don't take a fee to help with hardship withdrawals; it's something we do for existing clients as part of the relationship.
30 minutes, no pitch. Craig will tell you whether the fund you're in is the right one for your stage of life, or whether it's costing you future money.