That Home Loan Hub

What To Do When Your KiwiSaver Drops Before Buying A Home

Zebunisso Alimova

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0:00 | 6:02

Your KiwiSaver balance is meant to help you build a future, so why does it feel like it’s working against you right when you need it most? When markets wobble and global news turns ugly, we hear the same fear from first home buyers across New Zealand: “I’m buying soon and my KiwiSaver is tanking, what do I do?” We’re not giving financial advice, but we are sharing the real-world decisions and timelines we’re seeing, plus the questions to ask so you can move from stress to a plan. 

We break KiwiSaver members into three simple groups based on time horizon: the red-light crew who need KiwiSaver soon for a first home deposit, the orange group who won’t touch it for decades, and the green group who are at or near retirement. For first home buyers with settlement coming up, we talk through a practical option many people miss: starting the KiwiSaver first home withdrawal process earlier, with your lawyer holding the funds until settlement so you can reduce last-minute market risk. 

We also dig into fund choice and risk level, because being in a high growth fund might suit a long-term saver but can be painful if you need cash in the next few months. You’ll hear why it’s worth logging into your provider, checking whether you’re in a conservative or higher risk fund, and getting help from a KiwiSaver adviser if you’re unsure. We then zoom out to a bigger issue: how fees, fund settings, time out of work, and lack of review can leave women with far less in KiwiSaver at retirement, and what to do now to protect your future self. 

If this helped, subscribe for more practical NZ property and money chats, share it with a mate who’s house hunting, and leave a review so more KiwiSaver members can find it. What KiwiSaver question do you want answered next?

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SPEAKER_00

If you're worried about what's going on in the world right now, and especially when it comes to your Kiwi Savers, this is the episode for you. Listen up. Hello, Kunch. Kioda, how are you?

SPEAKER_01

Uh well, let's start with disclaimer.

SPEAKER_00

This is not advice on Kiwi Saver. This is not a financial advice. But what we're seeing is the trend with a lot of our first-time buyers, they're getting quite worried, especially when it comes to, oh my God, I'm buying a house soon and my Kiwi Saver's stanking. Yeah. What am I gonna do? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, Kiwi Saver is quite a hot topic at the moment, as we all know. With a man in a country that started a war with another country, so a lot of people are worried that it will it may hit your KiwiSaver. So, well, for me and you, we've already used our Kiwi Saver to buy our first home. So for us, we're kind of like, I'm just not gonna look at my Kiwi Saver for the next three to six months, right? Yeah. But if you're gonna buy your house literally next week or something like that, or within the next month or so, what you know, it's like, what do I do?

The Red Orange Green KiwiSaver Groups

Locking In A First Home Withdrawal

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So let's break down into three categories of people that have Kiwi savers. People that are will be using it in a short distance. So this is our first group of people, yeah, and they're the hot red traffic light people that I would, you know, really put all of my attention to in this episode. The second one are the orange ones, like me and you, we don't need it for the next um you know, 30 years of our lives. At least for me. I'm just gonna say 30. So, guys, the orange ones, don't worry about it. Yeah, just park it. Just park it, forget. Said and forget, you know, it is what it is. But my piece of advice here would be reach out to your like us. We can refer you to our friends that do investment advice and they can review what sort of KV save are you in? I just did it myself a few days ago. What sort of fund I'm in? You know, am I in the right fund? Am I a socially responsible investor? You know, do I want to be investing into guns and war? No, I don't, you know. So, how can I be ethical about my investments as well? Even though I don't need it for the next 30 years. And that's why I'm placing you in the orange category because you still want to be in control of that money to make sure by the time you retire you've got enough, you retire with at least 500k more than what you have right now. Correct. So I would suggest go and reach out to an investment advisor or talk to us and we can refer you. And then the green ones, I guess they already have their Kiwi savers, they're retired, and you know, they can do whatever they want with that. So again, reach out to investment advisor if you still got your Kiwi Saver going. So let's return for a moment to our red, red, red flag category right now. So the first time buyers. My piece of advice here would be is if you're buying a house in the next um three to four weeks, a month, you can actually do a Kiwi Saver withdrawal form now to lock in. Like if you already have a house under offer, you can go to your lawyer now and you can do a withdrawal. And the lawyer gives the personal guarantee that they will hang on to your Kiwi Saver and they will only until settlement. Until settlement. And they'll pay it out at settlement. But you can do it now. You don't have to do it 10 days before settlement. So that would be my suggestion. Yeah. It's to try to go and get it out now.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. And generally, if you are going to use your Kiwi Saver for your first home, our red light ones, you should be on make sure you're on the correct fund. So you should be on the low risk side of things, conservative um side rather than the high risk, high reward side of things. So, yeah, definitely if you're planning on buying a house soon or anything, definitely have a look at your provider and what fund you're in, but reach out to a KiwiSaver advisor or even to your provider. They've obviously they've got advisors there. Some providers let you change your fund as well. So you can do that on the app and things like that. So yeah, make sure you just quickly log in, have a quick look to see if you are you on the conservative or are you on a high risk one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And if you're on a high risk and if you're buying a house in the next few months, I would suggest changing. Even if it may not be the correct fund for you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

The KiwiSaver Gender Gap Warning

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Even if it's tanked a little bit, you know, you just don't, you can't risk waiting for it to recover. Yeah. Sometimes. Unless you're not gonna planning on buying at a later stage. Exactly. And it's really interesting about the whole Kiwi Saver thing. I'm just gonna die divert here for a moment, as there was an article about how women are actually the ones that are getting the worst off results of the Kiwi Savers. Because often we don't pay attention to what fund we're in, we don't pay attention to the fees we get charged, and by the time we retire, we actually have 300k less than men. Yeah. So I'm I'm a prime example of that.

SPEAKER_01

Because if I can compare mine to my husband, there is a huge difference. But also, us as women, we took time off, right? To go on maternity leave and things like that. And that's when our Kiwi Savers got paused or stopped or something.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I would highly recommend if you're a woman and you're listening to this, go and check out your Kiwi Saver. Yeah, go to go and talk to an investment advisor because this is important, this is your future. And you can't just wait until you turn 65 and go, Oh, I didn't think of that earlier. Yeah, you know, this is your prime time.

Get Expert Help And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, definitely have a chat to a Kiwi Saver expert or reach out to us and we can put you on to an expert. Beautiful. Awesome. Thank you, Kunj. Thanks. Bye.