Dec 13 2021
Lifetime Launch New Online Retirement Income Calculator
As the migration out of the workforce into retirement gathers momentum, the importance of understanding the differences between saving for retirement and spending in retirement becomes all important.
Ralph Stewart, Founder and Managing Director of Lifetime Retirement Income believes the savings industry is slow to support the transition from saving to spending in retirement.
“There is no doubt KiwiSaver is a tremendous platform for saving for retirement, sadly, little attention is paid to applying the savings to life in retirement. The newly retired have the potential for a drawdown period which could be almost as long as the time they spent saving for retirement. For many retirees, at least 25 years in retirement is a reality. An investment mistake early in retirement, or a poorly projected retirement income, will have serious consequences as there is no opportunity to replace the lost savings.”
Our product has evolved and is now the practical embodiment of fundamental retirement income disciplines. We have taken the core principles that support a retirement income for life best expressed in the New Zealand Society of Actuaries (NZSOA) publication “How to make a draw down a success”, and made these principles simple, practical and accessible to all retirees.
We have built a practical link between theory and practice. The NZSOA work on drawing down an income in retirement is excellent but lacked a practical mechanism to allow retirees to benefit from the knowledge.
We set out to build a tool that would allow retirees to calculate their own retirement income online in their own time, for free. Our online Lifetime Income Projection tool (click to view), launched in January 2022 and combines the fundamental variables required to calculate a safe retirement income through fundamental variables and personal variables.
Stewart said, “Calculating a reliable retirement income that will last a lifetime is deeply personal and anything but static or linear. Every saver in retirement deserves a dynamic personal projection that identifies their individual circumstances. This in turn should be regularly reviewed and recalculated to maintain accuracy and relevance.
The saving industry manages assets to support the accumulation of savings while working. The emerging retirement income industry does the opposite, it helps retirees spend their savings over their retirement lives with confidence. It’s time to recognise the difference.”