What makes a good Kiwisaver fund?

At Super-Advice we are about all things financial, but more importantly, helping people understand so they can get ahead financially.

In today’s blog post, what makes a good KiwiSaver fund? There are a lot of choices out there, but here are some things you can look for.

Fees

One of the things you can take note of is fees.

How much are they charging you to manage your money, and is it fair?

You can do a comparison across the industry. You can come and ask us, and you can even ask them to justify their fees, which is a tough question to answer. But it is important to remember that KiwiSaver managers do a lot of work behind the scenes that you may not see deciding where and how to invest your money to get you the best return within the parameters that are set for them.

So it’s a lot of work and there’s a lot of investment in systems and so forth to make that happen.

Investment philosophy

For example, some fund managers might lean towards not investing in what we call sin stocks, which is things like fossil fuels, munitions, weapons, tobacco, pornography, and alcohol. So if that’s important to you, that investment philosophy is gonna really weed out who you wanna deal with and potentially who you don’t.

Communications

How are they talking to you? What apps or portals do they have for you to manage your money and, how are they educating you or are they educating you at all? Because once you get a better understanding of how KiwisSaver works, it becomes a lot more fun! If you stress about investing, that will dissipate with education.

Where can you get KiwisSaver advice?

A lot of KiwisSaver providers choose not to give advice because of the investment landscape. There are those that provide the KiwiSaver funds for you to invest in, and that’s all they do. And there are those that give advice on how KiwiSaver works and how to get the best out of it.

You can get KiwiSaver advice from us here at Super Advice, or you can go through to your fund manager and ask.