Personal debt and superannuation seem strange bedfellows. But unfortunately the two are indelibly linked.

Savings expert Dr Vince FitzGerald is quoted in the cover story of the latest Superfunds magazine as saying: The value of superannuation is being "white-anted by debt".

FitzGerald, the author of the landmark study National Savings: A Report to the Treasurer, released in 1993, and principal author of National Savings Revisited, published late last year by the Allen Consulting Group for the Investment & Financial Services Association (IFSA), speaks of an apparently growing and worrying phenomenon.

This is to accumulate personal and housing debt right to the time of retirement and then to use super savings to pay it off.

FitzGerald, who is the chairman of the Allen Consulting Group, tells Superfunds that he doesn't know if many borrowers incur debts with the intention of repaying the money with their compulsory super savings. "[But] if the debts are still around when they retire, that is the outcome. How else are the debts to be repaid?"

That's a telling question.

The purpose of superannuation savings are to provide for our retirement or to subsidise the age pension - not to pay for widescreen TVs and overseas holidays.

The superannuation system would have truly backfired if it ever became standard practice for debts to be repaid in this way.

Of course financial planners should take into account the level of their clients' debts when measuring the adequacy of their retirement savings. And surely really smart advice would be to try to enter retirement with little or no debt. And least that should be the aim.