You may have worked hard all your life and feel you have earned your retirement, but you never squirrelled away your earning in some big Scrooge money pit.

OPINION: Dear baby boomers,

You and I, we need to have a little talk. You, of the post-war baby bulge, have been pitted against me, the millennial and I think we should sort this out before all-out generational war erupts.

You'll know my generation as the one that wants it all. I know yours as the one that has it all already and is charging rent.

CHRIS McKEEN / FAIRFAX NZ Nadine Chalmers-Ross emptied her superannuation savings account to help buy an "exorbitantly priced, modest first home", because that seemed like the first step to a secure retirement.

The planned changes to the pension announced this week will ensure we young 'uns can want it all as much as we like, but you'll be the ones keeping it.

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It's great it's finally been acknowledged something has to change, but instead of sharing the burden, the Prime Minister only wants to shift the retirement age once every single boomer, including himself, is safely ensconced in the local bowls club and enjoying free Super Gold Card ferry trips to Waiheke.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF David Seymour may not be quite the White Knight of intergenerational equality I had envisaged, says Nadine Chalmers-Ross, but you take what you can get

That is, if it comes into effect at all.

You baby boomers are such a big, wealthy, influential voting bloc that almost every voice in Parliament seems to be about protecting your rights, not ours.

You have Winston Peters; we now apparently have Act's David Seymour. He's not quite the white knight of intergenerational equality I had envisaged, but you take what you can get.

You've worked hard all your life and feel you have earned your retirement, but those earnings have not been squirrelled away in some big Scrooge McDuck money pit.

The SuperFund, even at $33 billion, would foot the bill for all of about-two-and-half years, so I'm expecting its carcass will have been picked clean by the time I retire.

This letter isn't a whinge about when the Government will allow me to do that, it's a whinge about how much more they will want out of my pay packet to allow you all to do it at 65, or maybe 67.

I've long since acknowledged my retirement will have to be funded primarily by me. I started paying 5 per cent into Kiwisaver when the requirement was 2 per cent and I was the ripe old age of 21. (While I still had a student loan, something you never had).

Then I all but emptied the account to help me buy an exorbitantly priced, modest first home, because I figured owning your own home is key in retirement.

Problem is the bulk of your generation does; my generation will not. You took the tax-free wins on phenomenal capital gains while most of us are left stuck paying the mortgage on your generation's investment properties.

With things already looking a bit grim for us, add in the tax rates we'll likely have to pay to keep a million retirees in hip replacements and on the pension and you can expect to watch your grandkids grow up on Skype, because we'll be living somewhere else where we can make ends meet.

Then who knows who will pay for your retirement.

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