Inside Money: Steep curves, rough surface, dead ends - on the retirement road

I don't think I could stomach the "stunning double DVD set" on offer: a fantasy featuring two people who have worked hard their whole lives enjoying a simple on-the-road retirement. Photo / Thinkstock

Out in the foyer of the Hilton Hotel a financial adviser was bemoaning the dearth of youngsters in the industry.

And looking around the room I could see his point: it would take an actuary to figure out the combined age of the assembled advisory industry figures balancing plates piled high with lamb chops and poached fish in one hand while yakking about the issues of the day with old friends.

There was, in fact, at least one actuary hanging around the petit fours table who could have supplied calculations based on his intimate knowledge of death tables.

Instead, we talked about the petit fours: which, kudos to the Hilton catering crew, were delicious.

But the subject of aging was inescapable. Inside the conference room speaker after speaker at the Perfecting Investment Portfolios symposium rammed home the point that getting old is no joke.

Some, like Alan McFarlane of Edinburgh-based funds management firm Dundas Global Investors, raised a few laughs, though.

McFarlane showcased 'Sid & Sandie do The South Island' as a centrepiece in his demonstration of why the engines in most retiree investment vehicles fire on two cylinders (capital and dividends) rather than the straight four (the previous two plus contributions and the supercharged compounding effect) typical of working life portfolios.

While McFarlane was making an important point about retirement investment strategies, I was repressing feelings of insane jealousy towards Sid & Sandie who, as far as we know, may still be roaming the stunning South Island in their campervan, doing stuff. I don't think I could stomach the "stunning double DVD set" on offer: a fantasy featuring two people who have worked hard their whole lives enjoying a simple on-the-road retirement.

Meanwhile, NZIER economist, Shamubeel Eaqub, was providing graphic evidence why the road to retirement for the current working population is likely to be a potholed, twisting chicane rather than a straight, smooth motorway with perfectly merging traffic.

"Long-term trends are accelerating," Eaqub said. "Long-term pressures are mounting."

We're right in the steep part of the demographic curve that will see almost 25 per cent of the New Zealand population aged over 65 by 2037, his graph showed.

I left immediately after, spilling out into Hilton dockside, not a financial adviser in sight, feeling arguably wiser; definitely older.