#2. The average person wants a $100,000 retirement.
Property investors aren’t trying to live like kings.
The median household that creates a plan earns around $201,000 a year. That’s above the $139,000 average in New Zealand (according to Stats NZ).
But here’s where it gets interesting. The typical retirement plan targets roughly $100,000 a year of spending.
In other words, they’re aiming to retire on about half their pre-tax working income.
But you do see a lot of what I call “round-number retirement”.
The most common retirement spending goals are (in order):
- $100,000
- $150,000
- $200,000
- $120,000
That $100,000 target isn’t miles away from what independent research suggests some retirees spend.
Massey University’s 2025 Retirement Expenditure Guidelines put a “choices” lifestyle at about $92,500 a year. That’s for a couple living in one of the cities.
#3. Investors want to travel (but not just to lie on a beach)
I also analysed the goals New Zealanders wrote.
Of those who gave highly detailed goals, 57% mentioned travel.
But often “travel” isn’t really about sitting on a beach in Fiji.
It’s about seeing family and friends who have moved around the world.
It’s when your kid moves to London on an OE, then ends up marrying a Brit. Suddenly, your grandchildren are growing up on the other side of the world.
Now you want to fly over regularly without worrying about what else you have to sacrifice at the supermarket to pay for it.
One investor put it perfectly: “We don’t want to be the richest people in the graveyard. We want to enjoy our lives. We’re not wanting to be land barons.”
Property isn’t the goal. The life it can help pay for is.
