Your projected balance and income at 65.
Balance at 65
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Income at 4% a year
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Years to 65
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Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Age | Projected balance (today’s dollars) |
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Two pillars hold up a New Zealand retirement
Retirement income here rests on two things working together. The first is NZ Super, the universal pension paid from age 65 regardless of how much you have saved, which gives almost everyone a base to build on. The second is your own pot: KiwiSaver plus any other savings and investments. This calculator models that second pillar. It takes your current balance, the amount you add each year, and the return you expect after inflation, then grows the lot forward to age 65 and estimates a yearly income you could draw on top of Super. Because the return is entered after inflation, the balance it shows is in today’s buying power, which is the honest way to think about a figure you will not touch for decades.
How contributions and growth stack up to 65
Each year the tool adds your contribution to the balance and then applies the return to the whole amount. Run the defaults: a 40 year old with $80,000 already saved, adding $7,000 a year, earning 4 percent after inflation. Over the 25 years to 65 that grows to about $516,449 in today’s dollars. Drawing 4 percent of that a year gives roughly $20,658 to supplement NZ Super. What is striking is the split: you contribute $80,000 to start plus $175,000 over 25 years, a total of $255,000 in, yet you finish with over half a million. The other quarter-million is compound growth. The table tracks the balance every five years.
Why the 4 percent drawdown is a starting point, not a rule
The tool estimates income at 4 percent of your balance a year, a widely used rule of thumb suggesting a portfolio can sustain that draw for a long retirement without running dry. Treat it as a conversation starter rather than gospel. It was built on historical market returns and assumes a balanced portfolio, and a long, low-return stretch early in retirement can strain it. In New Zealand it sits on top of NZ Super, which changes the maths: because Super covers your essentials, you may be able to draw more aggressively from your own pot early on, then lean harder on Super later. For a sense of what your total income needs to be, Massey University publishes retirement expenditure guidelines for thrifty and choices lifestyles across main centres and the provinces, and they are worth checking against your own number.
The levers you actually control
You cannot control market returns, so focus on the two inputs you can move: your contribution and your time horizon. Starting earlier is the most powerful lever by a wide margin, because the early dollars compound the longest. The KiwiSaver structure helps here, since employee contributions of 3, 4, 6, 8, or 10 percent of pay are matched by at least 3 percent from your employer, and the government adds a member tax credit of 50 cents for every dollar you put in, up to $521.43 a year. That government top-up is effectively a guaranteed 50 percent return on the first $1,042.86 you contribute, which no market can promise. A practical tip: if you are not contributing enough to capture the full member tax credit, that is usually the first gap to close before chasing higher returns. One common mistake is entering a nominal return like 7 percent while thinking in today’s dollars; if you do that, deflate it to a real return of around 4 to 5 percent so the projection is not overstated.
Is my KiwiSaver balance taxed when I withdraw it at 65?
No. KiwiSaver is taxed as it grows, through the prescribed investor rate on the fund’s earnings, which is capped at 28 percent. Because tax is paid along the way, withdrawals from age 65 are not taxed again. There is no lump-sum exit tax, which is one reason the after-inflation balance this tool shows is broadly the amount you can actually use.
Does this calculator include NZ Super in the income figure?
No, deliberately. The income figure here is only what your own savings could provide. NZ Super is paid separately from 65 and sits on top, so your total retirement income is this drawdown plus the Super rate for your living situation. Add the two together to see your full picture, and use the NZ Super tool to find the current weekly rate for a single person or a couple.