Photo: 123RF
Elon Musk says you might not need to worry about saving for retirement soon - but New Zealanders are being told to be very wary.
The US billionaire told a recent podcast that he thought people did not need to be "squirrelling money away for retirement in 10 or 20 years".
He said AI would reduce the cost of everything so much that everyone would have "universally high income".
"It won't matter ... If any of the things that we've said are true, saving for retirement will be irrelevant."
Dean Anderson, founder of Kernel Wealth, said this was poor advice and a major risk for most people.
"Handing over your financial security to the whim and hope that future governments or trillionaires will reliably redesign centuries of incentives, tax systems, capital ownership, and welfare ... in a way that's reliable, fair, and works for you personally is not a plan."
He said the irony was that Musk was the ultimate reminder of why capital ownership mattered.
"He places all value on owning assets, not just earning an income. He's accidentally proving exactly why we should save and invest."
Rupert Carlyon, founder of Koura, agreed: "This is very rich coming from the person who has $720 billion squirrelled away.
"We have seen over the past 20 years the gap between rich and poor accelerate as technology has advanced. I struggle to see why that will change all of a sudden.
"A UBI still needs to be funded and we haven't seen a desire from the wealthy to pay higher taxes to fund it."
Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said there was a difference between wealth being created and the distribution of the wealth.
"We just don't have the mechanisms to make everyone equally well off. And so we should always prepare ... why would you not? If it turns out better than you expected, yay. But if it doesn't, you're still good. I think there's a difference between what might be good for Elon Musk versus what might be good for the population of the world. They're not the same things."
MoneyHub founder Christopher Walsh said people needed to look after themselves.
"No one is going to underwrite or provide for your retirement other than you. Be careful of gurus, experts, podcasters and/or YouTubers who promise you otherwise.
"The next five to 20 years will be significantly different for working and retiring New Zealanders. The best thing to do is to be prepared, not rely on the chance of robots or profits from a moonshot. The changes to come in AI will benefit some more than others. It's unknown right now."
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