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Sunday, June 24, 2007

Ripoff Kiwisaver

Helen continues the Kiwisaver spin, pushing Mr Cullen's little baby, by comparing it to Norm Kirk's half-decent super scheme in the mid 70's that did not fly.

As Mr Trotter reports this morning, there are a number of major differences between the schemes. Mr Kirk's Scheme was reasonable, but failed because it did not get enough spin doctoring to sell the product. The opposite is true of the effort being made by Labour to get their hands on your money through another tax. The current product is total crap, has not been well thought out and is being implemented on the fly to meet the end of the month startup.

Some differences are noted below;
  • Your money (capital and interest) is NOT government guaranteed.
  • Managing your money will attract presently undefined 'reasonable fees' as decided by the provider.
  • Your provider is not under any pressure to make any profit on your money.
  • Your provider is not compelled to invest ethically.
  • It is not a freebie top-up from your employer, it is a direct tax on your nett wages.
No doubt there are many more small differences and as the fund progresses, more laws will be passed to cover presently unforeseen loopholes, which will be fully exploited until closed.

On top of that, a future government will look at the funds and say goodbye NZ Super, we do not need to provide that anymore. At that point your funds in Kiwisaver will be your only super, they had better have made heaps to take you through your dotage. Also you can be sure that your current tax rate will drop because it is no longer supporting NZ Super from general taxes - Hell Yeah!.

Definitely not for me, I will continue to manage my own super funds, picking and choosing where I invest, not with some money grabber who put in the lowest bid to the government.

1 comment:

Waymad said...

You should perhaps relent a little and look at Gareth Morgan. Having said so much about the iniquities of the 'others', GMK is honour-bound to avoid those very same traps. Plus, there's a couple of very useful fees and trust deeds comparisons on that site. Solo investing ain't for the faint-hearted, and you should cut a little more slack to financial novices.