Will Gen X ever be able to retire?

Photo: ODT Files By Susan Edmunds of RNZ If you're a Gen X-er, there's a chance that the prospect of retirement is starting to become a very real one for you. But are you ready? Gen X is now aged roughly 44 to 59 - a stage of life where Massey University associate professor Claire Matthews said plans for retirement started to crystallise in people's minds. "It starts to become a bit more real.

.. 50 is really where it starts to hit.

"When you're younger, you kind of know that you're going to retire, you know you're going to hit 65 and all this stuff is going to happen but it seems so far in the future. At 45 and particularly at 50, people start thinking really seriously about it." Are you on track? The first question for a lot of people is whether they are on the right path to be able to ever sign off from work.

Research from the Retirement Commission found only 38 percent of those aged 45 to 54 said they expected to have a financially comfortable retirement. Matthews said Gen X was more of a "sandwich generation" than some previous cohorts - caught between their parents who were living longer and their own children, whom they may have had later in life. Data from actuaries Melville Jessup Weaver shows the average balance for a 46-50-year-old KiwiSaver member is $43,600.

For those aged 51 to 55, it is $50,446, and for people aged 56 to 60 it is $55,632. Assuming a 51-year-old earns $100,000 a year, if they have $50,000 in KiwiSaver now, they could be on track to save $160,369 .