We’re currently preoccupied with the present day cost of living but a series of new reports from the Retirement Commission bring the future into much closer view, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday morning, sign up here.

40% of retirees paying rent by 2048

Last week I recommended Charlie Mitchell’s excellent feature on New Zealand, the hyperaging nation (here if you missed it). I said I think we constantly kick this can down the road far too often. New reports released from the Retirement Commission this week paint a future of vast inequity and a doubling of the number of renting retirees. Bernard Hickey breaks down the commission’s forecasts of the rates of homeownership in retirement and assesses the future fitness of a superannuation scheme designed at a time when 87% of people in their 60s were homeowners with their mortgages paid off. The balance of home ownership is expected to shift to 60% homeowners and 40% paying rent by 2048, according to the commission.

Māori, Pasifika, and women have disproportionately lower savings

The focus of this latest review from the commission was Māori, Pasifika and women because they have disproportionately lower savings.  Retirement Commissioner Jane Wrightson confirmed that women, on average, have 20% less in their Kiwisaver than men “at all age groups, from the under-17s through to the people that are over 65”. In a beautifully recounted story by Stuff’s Ripu Bhatia, kaumātua Hemi Pene talks about saving for his own funeral because he worries about burdening his family. He is doing so out of his superannuation payments and what remains of his Kiwisaver. Pene, a former te reo Māori teacher at schools around Tāmaki Makaurau, is spending his retirement sharing his cultural knowledge with the community. “I like to get out there and do things for people,” he said.

National stands by policy of lifting retirement age to 67

I covered the recommendation from the commission that the retirement age remain at 65 yesterday, based on the disadvantage women, Māori and Pacific peoples would find themselves at if it was increased. Opposition leader Christopher Luxon is standing by the National party’s policy of lifting the superannuation age to 67 despite the findings. The report found that while Māori and Pacific peoples are expected to become a larger proportion of the working-age population over the next two decades, they will remain a “small proportion” of those who eventually get superannuation due to shorter life expectancies.

Taranaki man stages protest about cost of death

As the cost of living rises, so too does the cost of death. The costs of burial plots across 17 local authorities has gone up by 9% in two years. Caskets are not immune from inflation. Last Thursday, Taranaki man Dave Devenport sat outside the New Plymouth Public Trust office with a portrait of a woman, and a skeleton in a wheelchair. The woman in the photo is his wife who died in 2018 and Devenport was there staging a protest about the cost of death. According to Devenport, the cost to wind up his wife’s estate with the Public Trust office was $9,500, which he thinks is outrageous. It’s an odd subject matter to be commending Devenport, reporter Elijah Hill and photographer Andy MacDonald on, but it’s a pretty striking way to illustrate a point.