KiwiSaver After Your First Home

So, you’ve just bought your first house and used all of your KiwiSaver money for the deposit.

Should you keep contributing into KiwiSaver?

This is a question I get asked all the time, and the short answer is YES, you absolutely should.

Owning your own home is fantastic, and being mortgage-free by retirement is a great position to be in. But there’s an old saying - you can’t eat your living room. You still need cash in retirement.

Building up investments during your working life makes a massive difference over time. What I’m going to do today is walk you through some software I use with my clients. It’s very thorough, and I sit down with everyone I meet and run projections on it based on their personal situation. We can input a wide range of variables and build a solid long-term picture.

The best way to see this in action is to watch the video I made - click the link at the top of the page.

I do need to be clear upfront - this is not personalised financial advice. If you want personalised advice, book a meeting with me and we can go through this properly and create a plan specifically for you. Today’s example is purely illustrative.

Here's the transcript if you can't watch the video:

In this example, we’ve got someone who has just bought their first home.

They’re 30 years old, plan to stop work at 65, and we run the projection through to age 90, which is standard for these types of models.

They have $1,000 left in KiwiSaver - everything else went into the house.

Their salary is $60,000, which is about $1,154 per week before tax.

Their KiwiSaver contribution rate is 3.5%, which became the minimum on 1 April 2026. That works out to roughly $40 per week.

After buying their home, we place them into an aggressive fund. Given the long time frame until retirement, that would generally be the most appropriate option.

So what does this all mean?

On the left column of the software, we have their age. We can see employee contributions increasing over time as income rises. We include employer contributions, government contributions, tax on returns, and market-average returns based on the last 10 years across all KiwiSaver providers.

These are not the returns of any specific provider - they’re deliberately middle-of-the-road assumptions.

We also inflation-adjust the figures at 2% per year, which makes a significant difference over time.

Now let’s scroll forward to age 65.

At 65, under these assumptions, this person’s KiwiSaver balance could be around $992,000 in nominal terms - nearly a million dollars.

But once we adjust for inflation, that’s about $496,000 in today’s money. That shows the real impact inflation has over 35 years, and why it’s so important to keep your investments growing ahead of inflation.

Now let’s tweak one thing.

Instead of contributing 3.5%, this person decides to increase their contribution to 6%.

That takes their weekly contribution from about $40 to roughly $69 - an extra $29 per week.

What impact does that make?

At retirement, their balance increases to about 1.28 million dollars, or roughly $640,000 in today’s dollars. That extra $29 per week results in around $144,000 more in today’s money at age 65.

That’s a meaningful difference.

Now let’s look at another scenario. Instead of restarting KiwiSaver at 30, this person decides to do nothing for five years. They think, “What’s the rush? I’ve got plenty of time.” So contributions don’t restart until age 35.

By then, their balance has grown slightly to about $1,500, and their income has increased to around $65,000. They contribute at 4%, which is scheduled to become the minimum from 1 April 2028.

At age 65, their KiwiSaver balance is now around $712,000, or about $393,000 in today’s money.

That five-year delay costs them almost $100,000 in today's money!

This clearly shows how important it is to restart KiwiSaver contributions as early as possible, give your money time to grow, and let compounding do the heavy lifting.

KiwiSaver’s long-term structure actually works in your favour here.

So that’s a short, sharp overview of what I do and some of the software I use. If you’d like to book a meeting with me, we can go through this in a personalised session. I’ll ask you some questions, review your situation, and build a tailored plan.

These meetings are complimentary - my fees are paid by providers, similar to how a mortgage broker operates - so you’ve got nothing to lose and potentially a lot to gain.

I’m Cameron Steele from Solid Steele KiwiSaver Advice. Hope you found this helpful, and I look forward to talking with you soon.

For the full written guide, read KiwiSaver After Your First Home