Are you listening to them?

Look, yes.

I mean, it's really encouraging that this year seems like it's shaping up to be the KiwiSaver election.

We've seen National come out advocating that they want to make KiwiSaver compulsory, enrolment from birth, bringing back, I guess, a throwback to the Kickstart contribution we used to get, $1,000.

They're talking about $1,500, which would be great.

And they're talking about moving contributions to 6% from the employer and 6% from the employee.

New Zealand First, they've gone a step further.

You need to figure out, am I

Why is it risky to wait for the government or a political party to tell you how much you should be saving?

Yeah, it's a good question.

I think it's very topical at the moment as we head into an election and a number of the parties have come out with KiwiSaver policy and I think more will follow.

But ultimately, you know, governments can help create a framework for retirement savings and KiwiSaver is a great example of that.

But they can't tell you what retirement will cost for you personally.

Policies change, political priorities change and everyone has different goals and lifestyles.

So if you rely solely on a government target, you could end up saving too little or even more than you need.

okay easier said than done though what does it actually mean for people to do your own numbers what does that look like when you're planning for your retirement

How long do long-term investing principles like compounding and dollar cost, gosh, that's a lot of big words, dollar cost averaging, change the way people should view their KiwiSaver?

Well, those principles are key to understanding why short term movements don't matter as much as people may think.

So compounding, it just means that your returns generate their own returns over time.

So growth builds on itself.

Think of a snowball rolling down a hill, getting bigger and bigger over the years.

dollar cost averaging on the other hand that means you're regularly investing buying more units when prices are low and fewer when prices are high together they help smooth out volatility and turn market ups and downs into an advantage over the long run but these benefits only really show up if you stay invested so chopping and changing in and out of the market erodes those benefits so focusing on the long term is crucial Yeah,

But why might a fund underperform in the short term, but then still deliver over the long run?

Well, some funds are designed to manage risk across the full market cycle rather than chase short term gains.