Loving that stranger in your bed

Here’s someone you should know by now: that individual you wake up with every day, that special person you’re closest to.

But you find it hard to relate. You reach out, they withdraw. You try to imagine what it’s like to be them, feel what they feel. Yet in your mind, their face fades from focus.

No, it’s not your partner, not your spouse – it’s you. It’s your future self. It’s that far-off version of you who will be profoundly affected by the everyday decisions you make now.

It can be difficult to see your future self – so much so that in our minds our future selves rate on a par with total strangers. This poses some real challenges for building long-term wealth.

“When it comes to setting money aside for our future selves, the fact that we see them as strangers makes it more difficult, since saving feels like giving money away to someone you don’t know,” says Retirement Commissioner Diane Maxwell.

Conversely, if you show someone a rendering of what they’ll look like 30 years from now, they start to connect. Your choices, especially the ones you make with money, will have a lasting impact on the way that person will live. What will their lifestyle be like?

We surveyed New Zealanders to see how well they could visualise their future lifestyles. When asked if they could estimate what groceries might add up to (the basics, a few frills, not counting booze) during their years of retirement, people really couldn’t say.

Only 11 per cent guessed correctly that the sum would come to close to $290,000. For more than half of those surveyed, that estimate was either “more” or “a lot more” than they expected. 

The good news is, while the amount we may need in the future for the basics may be shocking in total, we also tend to underestimate what we can achieve in the long run in terms of savings and investments. With the right settings in place, we may very well be able to meet those seemingly overwhelming costs of retirement.

As part of the same survey, we asked New Zealanders how big a nest egg they thought they could build with KiwiSaver. Overall, most didn’t expect how large a KiwiSaver balance could grow over the long term.

For example, let’s say your average salary over your career is $65,000. You contribute 3 per cent to KiwiSaver, beginning from age 18. How much would you have by age 65?

Just over a quarter (28 per cent) thought it would be $100,000 or less. Just over two-thirds (69 per cent) estimated the balance to be under $300,000. Only a small number (13 per cent) guessed fairly accurately, estimating the balance between $300,000 and $400,000.

Our estimate put the balance at $357,000. Hearing this, over half of respondents (55 per cent), said that amount was either “more” or “a lot more” than they anticipated.

What if the scenario was the same, but contributions were lifted to 8 per cent? Our calculations came in at $651,000. However, only 22 per cent of those surveyed correctly picked it would be between $600,000 and $700,000.

How many New Zealanders would pay more attention to their KiwiSaver contributions if they could see how much it could be worth to them in the future?

The stranger in your bed, after all, should really be no stranger at all. One way to bring the future in focus is to set goals and targets. Sorted’s new goal planner makes it easy to do just that – you can simply swipe some into the short, medium and long terms to chart where you’re headed and what’s important to future you.

Because the only distance between us and our future selves is time, it also helps if we remove time from the equation sometimes. So let’s ask: “Which would you rather see yourself with – $600,000 or not?” It’s an easy answer.

With a few savvy choices, our future self’s lifestyle is looking better all the time. Don’t be a stranger…