Speaker 1: You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News talksbe.
Speaker 2: And welcome back to the show. This is a Weekend
Speaker 2: collective on Tim Beverage and this is Smart Money. Now
Speaker 2: we have a new guest in the studio. It's always
Speaker 2: exciting to get a new guest. She's not necessarily a
Speaker 2: stranger to people from the media point of view, because
Speaker 2: she has been around and about in the media circles
Speaker 2: for a little while. But she is now a financial
Speaker 2: advisor and coach with Enable Me and her name is
Speaker 2: Nadine Higgins Nadine or Nadine Nadine. Sorry about that, No,
Speaker 2: that's okay.
Speaker 3: Thanks for asking.
Speaker 2: Well, as I said it, I thought how and I
Speaker 2: should have checked that before. How are you?
Speaker 3: I'm very well, thank you? And what Yes, yeah, it
Speaker 3: is an internal heater going at the moment you do.
Speaker 2: And luckily you are at that stage of a pregnancy
Speaker 2: where I feel reasonably relaxed at saying hey, congratulations.
Speaker 3: Have you been eating all the pies? Or asking I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm also doing that.
Speaker 2: How's it all going? All good?
Speaker 3: Yeah, really good. It's a different pregnancy when you're also
Speaker 3: running around after a toddler. So our son is sixteen
Speaker 3: months old and he's full noise, and so there's less
Speaker 3: relaxing than go on.
Speaker 2: Ah yeah, and actually, so have you got another what
Speaker 2: three or four months to go or something?
Speaker 3: H three? Yeah, so there'll be about nineteen months apart.
Speaker 2: Oh that was the same with ours. Twenty We are
Speaker 2: twenty months in between our two.
Speaker 3: So well, it's incredible really four years trying to have
Speaker 3: our son, Frankie, and then we accidentally got pregnant with
Speaker 3: the second.
Speaker 2: We are almost I mean, we didn't quite have the
Speaker 2: journey were I mean, I know we're talking about money here,
Speaker 2: but it's good to get to.
Speaker 3: Know is relevant to money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we went through a few a few well
Speaker 2: we had there were a few. My wife it's the Wii,
Speaker 2: but she went to go through the emotional, the physical
Speaker 2: term alliver miscarriages. But it's funny. The second time was
Speaker 2: completely what do you mean? I'm not sure how much
Speaker 2: to give away about that, but there was a day
Speaker 2: when we shifted Lily into her own room and then
Speaker 2: a few weeks later my wife was like, one, guess what,
Speaker 2: it's quite funny. Anyway, too much information. I think I
Speaker 2: just overshared there.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I don't know that's okay. I'm not thinking the dots, and.
Speaker 2: I'm not thinking of you. I'm thinking the fact that
Speaker 2: we're actually anyway. So you're with Enabled Me and your
Speaker 2: financial advisor. How have you been doing that gig for now?
Speaker 3: I've been with Enable Me for uce six years, and
Speaker 3: the last three I think I have been as an advisor.
Speaker 3: And obviously my background was as a journalist, but I
Speaker 3: actually started out hosting the business show early in the
Speaker 3: morning when they had One and Zed, and before that
Speaker 3: was a financial journalist with rin Z and so it
Speaker 3: actually felt like the perfect fit. I'd been writing lots
Speaker 3: of financial content and doing their communications that Enabled Me,
Speaker 3: and then they said would you present some webinars? And
Speaker 3: I thought, oh, well, I don't really want to do
Speaker 3: that unless I'm qualified. And then I thought, well, why
Speaker 3: don't I get qualified?
Speaker 2: Actually this sounds like it. I specialized in what I
Speaker 2: think could be dumb questions, but there's simple questions. What
Speaker 2: got you interested in money? Because the obvious answer anyone
Speaker 2: listening boy, well we all love money. But what got
Speaker 2: you interested in that side of it and managing finances?
Speaker 2: I think and writing about it in the first place
Speaker 2: came back.
Speaker 3: What prompted me to get into that as a journalist.
Speaker 3: Was I think I had a real desire to know myself. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I came from a family. You know, my
Speaker 3: mum was a single mum for a lot of my childhood.
Speaker 3: We didn't have a lot of money. I was acutely
Speaker 3: aware of that, and despite her best efforts to give
Speaker 3: us everything that we needed. And I think I just
Speaker 3: really craved financial security. And so I think it started
Speaker 3: from a place of wanting to educate myself.
Speaker 2: Was this at school? Were we talking school?
Speaker 3: Not so much? Although I was good at economics, I
Speaker 3: really enjoyed economics.
Speaker 2: Wow you Oh no, it's only just a running gag
Speaker 2: on that. I think I got a C minus at
Speaker 2: university or a C plus. I even talked about it with
Speaker 2: a good All yesterday from Corl Logy. He says, c's
Speaker 2: get degrees anyway, well done. When did you feel when
Speaker 2: did you feel you learned your first significant lesson in finances?
Speaker 2: Then that you sort of thought, oh, I think I
Speaker 2: get this now, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I started as a financial reporter right at the beginning
Speaker 3: of the financial crisis, and so I watched the devastating
Speaker 3: impacts on so many people. You know, you were interviewing
Speaker 3: people who'd lost money in bridge Court or Hanover or
Speaker 3: you know, and these were people who'd put their life
Speaker 3: savings in to get a slightly better rate of return
Speaker 3: than they could get in the bank, and it had
Speaker 3: changed the game for many of them are reparably. You know,
Speaker 3: they didn't have time to make that ground back up,
Speaker 3: and they'd thought they were doing the right thing, and
Speaker 3: you know, some of them didn't take advice. Some of
Speaker 3: them had been put crook potentially by advisors. And so
Speaker 3: I suppose that's where my first lesson came from. And
Speaker 3: I still vividly remember saving my first ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: at about the age of twenty one, and it was
Speaker 3: when the official cash rate was eight point two five percent,
Speaker 3: and I put it on a term deposit for eighteen
Speaker 3: months and it was like nine point seventy five or someone.
Speaker 2: Goodness, it would have been like, wow, this is good.
Speaker 2: I'm not even working on getting another almost a thousand
Speaker 2: and bucks in the first year of investment.
Speaker 3: And so coming to high interest rates the second time round,
Speaker 3: not having the savings and having the mortgage was a
Speaker 3: totally different experience.
Speaker 2: Actually, that you would have seen a lot of change
Speaker 2: then because back in the old Hanover days that in fact,
Speaker 2: that company name was almost a trigger for remembering that
Speaker 2: there was a sort of maybe a lack of regulation.
Speaker 2: Because things have changed a lot now when it comes
Speaker 2: to advertising, hey earned ten percent, eleven percent, me one's going,
Speaker 2: oh bingo, I stent the money in there without really
Speaker 2: realizing how safe it was or wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think disclosure regulations have changed, certainly, the regulations around
Speaker 3: how advisors need to be qualified, what they need to
Speaker 3: tell their clients, everything that they need to disclose has changed,
Speaker 3: always more room for improvement. And I also think one
Speaker 3: of the burgest things that's changed throughout my career is
Speaker 3: that people didn't care about the stock market. I used
Speaker 3: to go on the television every morning talking about how
Speaker 3: you know, the Nxaics top fifty did this and the
Speaker 3: foot seat did that, and people were like, oh, yawn,
Speaker 3: when's this lady going to finish? But people care now
Speaker 3: because there is a whole generation of people who do
Speaker 3: not remember nineteen eighty seven, and they're also worried that
Speaker 3: they're not going to get onto the property market. So
Speaker 3: how do you make your money grow? And yeah, there's
Speaker 3: actually a really exciting cohort coming through who care and
Speaker 3: are interested in upskilling. And you know, maybe if television
Speaker 3: was in a different place right now, there would be
Speaker 3: a brilliant business show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. I do remember the crash because I
Speaker 2: had as a kid, had some shares which had been
Speaker 2: I've had a few hundred bucks given to me, and
Speaker 2: I had Briley shares and I just kept on taking
Speaker 2: up every cash offer as a teenager, and I actually
Speaker 2: had quite a whack in Briley's. And I thought, and
Speaker 2: I remember saying to my mum, what I should I
Speaker 2: think I should sell these. They've gone up quite a lot.
Speaker 2: He says, no, they'd be right. That didn't play out
Speaker 2: too well.
Speaker 3: But probably my other big lesson and money was in
Speaker 3: the early days of zero, I with my flatmate at
Speaker 3: the time, bought shares. I think we brought about ten
Speaker 3: thousand dollars worth the shares to get at two dollars fifty.
Speaker 2: As a flat mate. That's a that's a very nerdy
Speaker 2: financial as a flat isn't it.
Speaker 3: He was a real, he's a real He's still a
Speaker 3: very good friend of mine, and he's a roll. The
Speaker 3: dice gambler kind of guy, and so he was like,
Speaker 3: let's get in, let's get in, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm definitely a lot more risk averse. So we put
Speaker 3: our money in, and we doubled our money, and we
Speaker 3: sold them at five dollars and wow. I later worked
Speaker 3: out what we would have ended up with if we'd
Speaker 3: held on for the ride on the insid X, and
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, my mortgage would have been a
Speaker 3: lot smaller. But we took another bite at the cherry
Speaker 3: some years later and we bought beck In before they
Speaker 3: delisted from the insid X because we thought they'd got
Speaker 3: stock zero O zero was like once in a generation
Speaker 3: kind of trajectory. It listed at a dollar. I think
Speaker 3: it might have delisted on the New Zealand Stock Exchange
Speaker 3: somewhere in the forties, and then in Australia it went
Speaker 3: to one hundred or something.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think it's always easy to look at
Speaker 2: those journeys though, because people would look at and in fact,
Speaker 2: I've talked about this when until the Deep Sect thing
Speaker 2: popped out about the n video price and everyone imagines,
Speaker 2: so imagine if you'd bought in video when they were
Speaker 2: just a couple of bucks a share, but how many
Speaker 2: people would have necessarily held them and held them and
Speaker 2: held them until the very peak. But nobody does that.
Speaker 2: What people do, I guess funds do.
Speaker 3: Really lots of people who believe in bitcoin have held
Speaker 3: on through some tough times, and you know they've ridden
Speaker 3: a real roller coaster. But I think too many of
Speaker 3: us focus on trying to a pick the market and
Speaker 3: be not necessarily focused on what your situation can handle
Speaker 3: in terms of the tolerance of it. I heard of
Speaker 3: somebody the other day trying to sell a tiree of
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy and seventy five into bitcoin, and I thought,
Speaker 3: please don't listen to that person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I just like to think I bought bitcoin
Speaker 2: and stuck a hundred bucks of bitcoin and when they
Speaker 2: are about ten cents, But of course nobody does that. Well,
Speaker 2: somebody has, and somebody's very happy, but it's a bit
Speaker 2: lottery sort of.
Speaker 3: Well, and then you could be like the guy who
Speaker 3: lost his access code and he would literally be I
Speaker 3: think a billionaire, if not many hundreds of millions, and
Speaker 3: it's gone to the tip and he's tried to go
Speaker 3: to the council to say let's, you know, excavate this
Speaker 3: and try and find, you know, my millions of dollars.
Speaker 3: I'll pay for it. I'll pay for it. But unfortunately,
Speaker 3: I think that will be the regret of his life.
Speaker 2: Because one of the things we want to talk about
Speaker 2: today is the reason I was asking about you earlier questions,
Speaker 2: is that there are some easy ways where you can
Speaker 2: improve your finances without actually having to be a financial whiz.
Speaker 2: Have you are? There are there some easy ways where
Speaker 2: people can I'm not sure is it avoiding waste? What
Speaker 2: are some of the simpler lessons where people can improve
Speaker 2: there out look on?
Speaker 3: I think approach that so many people take to finances
Speaker 3: is they're like, what's the big thing I should invest in?
Speaker 3: And sometimes the thing you should invest in is actually
Speaker 3: a little bit more awareness, some better systems and yourself.
Speaker 2: What's in't it? Is this something that you've learned personally
Speaker 2: or from observation?
Speaker 3: Both?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Both. I've had clients that you know, don't think they
Speaker 3: spend very much, and sometimes they'll actually tell you that
Speaker 3: they're very frugal compared to their friends, and when you
Speaker 3: look into the nitty gritty, oh, you know that they're
Speaker 3: not frugal. But it's not because their profligate spenders. It's
Speaker 3: that there's just a lack of awareness about what is
Speaker 3: actually going out the door and what it's going on.
Speaker 2: Is that often when people have they they probably have
Speaker 2: a frugal attitude to certain aspects of their spending. So
Speaker 2: they think, look, I've had a look at the mortgage,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to do this, and we're going
Speaker 2: to and when it comes to our shopping, our weekly shop,
Speaker 2: let's try and stick to this budget. And then in
Speaker 2: the next breath they're paying for I don't know, a
Speaker 2: session at the local sort of spa where it's three
Speaker 2: hundred dollars for a couple of hours I don't know,
Speaker 2: sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: That's about prioritizing the things that actually make you happy,
Speaker 3: Like I'm all for the going down to the spa
Speaker 3: and spatial if you have provision for it and then
Speaker 3: you can enjoy it without guilt. And that's where I
Speaker 3: think people confuse a budget being about restriction, when it
Speaker 3: is actually about freedom knowing you can do something and
Speaker 3: that you will still achieve your goals, rather than being like, oh,
Speaker 3: it shouldn't have done that. It's going to thwart my
Speaker 3: financial progress. But do you know what, the shopping one
Speaker 3: is huge. So many people are eating and drinking their surplus.
Speaker 2: That actually doesn't surprise any That shouldn't surprise anyone really,
Speaker 2: because we love our cafes and we do love our
Speaker 2: lattess what we're talking about us.
Speaker 3: I think that it's that because it's just little and
Speaker 3: often and so you well, what's five bucks here or
Speaker 3: actually probably a late costs you more than that, now
Speaker 3: seven bucks here. But at the same time, I think
Speaker 3: we are also buying things, putting them in our fridge
Speaker 3: and then throwing them out a week later. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: a lot that is spent on literal waste and could
Speaker 3: be avoided, which would be to the benefit of everybody.
Speaker 2: Really, what are some what are the some of the
Speaker 2: examples that you've seen yourself. If somebody was to talk
Speaker 2: about how do I want to improve misspending and my
Speaker 2: savings and things, would there be a particular part of
Speaker 2: their life that you would go, well, okay, I think
Speaker 2: we're going to mind this part of your life first,
Speaker 2: and you know you're going to come up with some gold.
Speaker 3: The food and drink would be top of the list.
Speaker 3: And I know it sounds really simple, but I just
Speaker 3: see it day and day out. I think the worst
Speaker 3: I've seen is maybe about forty thousand more than that
Speaker 3: they intended to spend on eating and drinking and going out.
Speaker 3: So that's not the budget, that's the excess a year.
Speaker 3: In a year, Yeah, that sounds.
Speaker 2: Like you'd have to really try to spend that a
Speaker 2: couple of nice bottles of wine.
Speaker 3: You're there, Well, I guess if you love socializing and
Speaker 3: you live in an area where there are lots of
Speaker 3: opportunities to go out and have a really nice meal
Speaker 3: and drink some really nice wine, it very quickly adds up.
Speaker 3: But there are plenty of other areas what we spend
Speaker 3: on interest. Sometimes that's people who have savings in the
Speaker 3: bank and a mortgage or savings and short term debt,
Speaker 3: and it's almost like they are lending the bank their
Speaker 3: money on one hand and borrowing it back from them
Speaker 3: at a higher rate on the other, which makes zero sense.
Speaker 3: And that's a structural thing that doesn't actually make you
Speaker 3: feel any happier. But they just need to feel safe
Speaker 3: in putting that money against the debt or putting that
Speaker 3: money against the mortgage insurance. Because we don't like reviewing
Speaker 3: it because it's complicated and it's a bit boring. And
Speaker 3: so you know, I've seen people, in fact, one guy
Speaker 3: who had I think he had two life insurance policies
Speaker 3: and he had no debt and no dependence, and I
Speaker 3: was like, what, why are we spending this money? Who's
Speaker 3: getting this money if you die? Because it's certainly not you.
Speaker 3: And so it's not that insurance isn't important. It absolutely is,
Speaker 3: But it's about having the right level of cover for
Speaker 3: the right price, for the right length of time.
Speaker 2: So you've got a piece in the hairld. You've written
Speaker 2: one of your columns, you've written Mastering Money, Habits, financial progress.
Speaker 2: The lazy way, Okay, what are the What are the
Speaker 2: lazy ways that you can make progress?
Speaker 3: Automate? Just automate, that's one of them, because it doesn't
Speaker 3: rely on you remembering to do it. It doesn't rely
Speaker 3: on you bothering to do it. And those are two
Speaker 3: of the things that get in the way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We're busy, we you know, there's kids, there's washing to do,
Speaker 3: there's shopping to do. So if you can automate what
Speaker 3: goes into your savings, or you can automate that all
Speaker 3: the bills get paid on time because you know exactly
Speaker 3: what they add up to, and there's a you know,
Speaker 3: a ring fence around that, so there's always enough that
Speaker 3: those bills get paid. One of the other one that
Speaker 3: other ones that a lot of people don't know is
Speaker 3: that some bills, if you pay them annually instead of
Speaker 3: choosing to pay them monthly or quarterly, they'll actually cost
Speaker 3: you less. So, for example, some insurances, you might get
Speaker 3: a five percent discount if you pay it there might
Speaker 3: even be more than that instead of paying it monthly.
Speaker 3: Obviously you have to have the money.
Speaker 2: All that. I thank you. In fact, I think I
Speaker 2: know through my I'm sure. I'm pretty sure at one
Speaker 2: stage when things were tight, we went to a monthly
Speaker 2: thing because I just didn't like the idea of forking
Speaker 2: out at all in one.
Speaker 3: Shebang, which I completely understand. But I'm willing to do
Speaker 3: it if there's the right incentive to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'd like for your calls on this actually to
Speaker 2: share your experiences. What are the easy ways that you
Speaker 2: have also saved money as well. We're going to dig
Speaker 2: into this more with Nadine. By the way, our guest,
Speaker 2: if you have just joined us. Her voice may sound familiar.
Speaker 2: Is Nadine HEATONI, oh gosh, sorry, it's not Nat It's
Speaker 2: Nadine Higgins from enable Me. We love your cause. What
Speaker 2: are the easy ways that you have actually I don't
Speaker 2: want to use where's like transformed your finances? Corset sounds
Speaker 2: a bit high for lutin and life changing? But what
Speaker 2: are the small things that you've done easily which have
Speaker 2: made a difference. But if you'd like to pick Nadine's
Speaker 2: brains on this stuff as well. She is a financial
Speaker 2: advisor and coach from enable me and she's with us now.
Speaker 2: You can give us a call. Oh eight hundred eighty
Speaker 2: ten eighty text nine two nine two. You can email,
Speaker 2: but that's not the quickest way. Jump on the blower.
Speaker 2: We'll be back in just a moment. It's twenty four
Speaker 2: past five Newstalks.
Speaker 4: He'd body and Jesus so long and be right to
Speaker 4: feel long and be with you Instead, there's something.
Speaker 2: And so Welcome back to the Weekend Collective. This is
Speaker 2: a smart money. We have a new guest on the show,
Speaker 2: Nadine Higgins from enable Me. She as a financial advisor
Speaker 2: and coach. We're talking about what are the easiest ways
Speaker 2: to just make a difference to your financial what what
Speaker 2: to just your money to the money that's coming in,
Speaker 2: you're saving your financial prospects trajectory. There we go. That's
Speaker 2: that's that sounds like a high flutin I mean, what
Speaker 2: are the simple What are the simple things that if
Speaker 2: people are listening now and they're thinking, oh, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm always putting this in the back burner, and okay,
Speaker 2: I've heard about the insurance. What are a couple of
Speaker 2: things that you would say for someone who's listening just
Speaker 2: to have a look at that might make an instant
Speaker 2: difference just to their financial well being, simply by a
Speaker 2: few simple decisions.
Speaker 3: Have one account that you spend everything you eat and
Speaker 3: drink out of and and only top it up once
Speaker 3: a week once it's gone. You eating what's in the
Speaker 3: pantry all which you know sometimes might be a weird meal,
Speaker 3: But honestly, that means that it alerts you when you're
Speaker 3: about to overspend, and it makes it more difficult to overspend.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the hacks, is that
Speaker 3: if we're trying to change our behaviors, because our behaviors
Speaker 3: become our habits, which actually become what we're on track
Speaker 3: to achieve long term, the things we do day to day,
Speaker 3: week to week, months to month. Then I think that
Speaker 3: I completely lost my train of thought. That can I
Speaker 3: blame the.
Speaker 2: Baby, Absolutely can blame what? No, No, the simple things
Speaker 2: that we can do to change our financial prospects and trajectory,
Speaker 2: that's your word.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's probably too high fluting the direction we're heading
Speaker 3: an URI on track to achieve our goals or not.
Speaker 3: So if you want to make something happen, make it easy,
Speaker 3: make it something that you can see. And if you
Speaker 3: want to stop doing something, I guess the inverse would apply, right,
Speaker 3: make it hard and you take it out of your eyesight.
Speaker 3: So one option is you what I would never save
Speaker 3: my credit card into an internet browser. Makes it way
Speaker 3: too easy to head to the checkout when you've been
Speaker 3: served up some ad on social media and you're like, oh, excellent,
Speaker 3: add to cart and we're off and it's being delivered
Speaker 3: in two days time, So if you instead have to
Speaker 3: get up and go to the other room, or one
Speaker 3: suggestion one of my colleagues made was that we put
Speaker 3: the credit card in the freezer, so you're literally putting
Speaker 3: your spending on ice Ah. Then sometimes that is just
Speaker 3: enough friction that it stops you and gives you pause.
Speaker 3: And similarly, if you're at in the shops, we've all
Speaker 3: got credit cards, and many people are very reluctant to
Speaker 3: stop using their credit card. But if you just don't
Speaker 3: have it in your wallet, well then you have to assess,
Speaker 3: we'll do I have the cash to pay for this,
Speaker 3: and if you do, well, chances are you might be
Speaker 3: able to afford it. But if you got your credit
Speaker 3: card there, then you're ticking it up. It's disconnecting you
Speaker 3: from the pain of the purchase. Future. You has to
Speaker 3: think about the cost of that, and what the research
Speaker 3: tells us is we will actually be willing to spend
Speaker 3: more when we're paying by a method like a credit card.
Speaker 2: That is interesting about the keeping it logged in your browser,
Speaker 2: because as soon as you use a credit card, Google says,
Speaker 2: would you like us to save this for next time?
Speaker 2: And of course I say yes because it makes it.
Speaker 2: You might be about and we're going to take a
Speaker 2: call in a moment, John, just stand by, but we
Speaker 2: I might be out about to get told off because
Speaker 2: we do what a lot of people do, is we
Speaker 2: pay off our credit We do everything on the credit
Speaker 2: card and pay it all off each month.
Speaker 3: I've been an entire column about why that can be problematic,
Speaker 3: and we can talk through some of the reasons later
Speaker 3: if you like, because I'm sure that John is waiting.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people think that that is a
Speaker 3: way to hack their finances. And in theory, if we're
Speaker 3: talking about interest rates and mortgages, it works. What I
Speaker 3: see in practice is it doesn't.
Speaker 2: Is that because people miss the payment or they just tend.
Speaker 3: To those track of how much they've actually spent, and
Speaker 3: so at the end of the month they're like, oh gosh,
Speaker 3: the credit card balance. Is that if you're managing your
Speaker 3: expenses to with an inch of their life, then sure
Speaker 3: it can work, but that generally not how it works
Speaker 3: from a psychological perspective.
Speaker 2: Yes, I might. We'll have a chat about that offair
Speaker 2: that much. Let's take some calls John.
Speaker 5: Hello, Hi, I heard they've been mentioned the crypto and
Speaker 5: I think that's great, although that's not what I thind about.
Speaker 5: I think it's great. I think you have a lot
Speaker 5: of fun because you get wild changes. You know, it
Speaker 5: goes up, goes down, and it never seems to go down.
Speaker 5: For too long and any play. That's not what I
Speaker 5: found out about when you retire. When people retire, it's
Speaker 5: a matter of knowing how much money they can take
Speaker 5: out of their nest EG each year. And I did
Speaker 5: read a couple of weeks ago. I think about a
Speaker 5: four or a six percent rule. Will you take either
Speaker 5: four percent or six percent of your nest EG out
Speaker 5: to a year and that should last give it twenty
Speaker 5: five years, you invest it in the meantime, then you
Speaker 5: take it four or six percent a year. What does
Speaker 5: Madine think about that?
Speaker 3: Cure? To John, I take your point first. On the
Speaker 3: bitcoin front, it can be fun as long as it's
Speaker 3: not a bet that you can't afford to lose. Right
Speaker 3: It's not fun if you're watching it go down, but
Speaker 3: you really need it right now. And so if you're
Speaker 3: doing it and just riding the waves, then absolutely fill
Speaker 3: your boots, have a great time along the way. Whereas
Speaker 3: if you know you're going to need it next year
Speaker 3: or next month to pay the rates, then that's that's scary.
Speaker 3: And I know a lot of people make taking those
Speaker 3: risks without necessarily thinking through that aspect of it. What
Speaker 3: you're referring to is a deccumulation strategy, which is just
Speaker 3: a fancy way of saying, how are we going to
Speaker 3: make sure that your funds last the distance? And there
Speaker 3: are a number of different theories as to how you
Speaker 3: can do it, and I guess whether it's going to
Speaker 3: work for you or not, is, well, what is four
Speaker 3: percent of your nest egg and is that going to
Speaker 3: be enough to get by on? Because the New Zealand Actuaries,
Speaker 3: which is just like some number crunches basically that looks
Speaker 3: at probabilities, have suggested that if you do use this
Speaker 3: four percent rule, then the likelihood is you are going
Speaker 3: to have enough for say a twenty five year retirement,
Speaker 3: and then depending on how your funds are invested, there's
Speaker 3: also a small chance that it might last longer than that.
Speaker 3: Some of them are adjusted for inflation, so if you
Speaker 3: only take out a fixed amount per year, then obviously
Speaker 3: the purchasing power of that money declines, So say the
Speaker 3: four thousand we take out this year is going to
Speaker 3: go a lot further than the four thousand we take
Speaker 3: out in ten years time when you hit sixty five.
Speaker 3: And so there are actually some good options that you
Speaker 3: can look through online where you can.
Speaker 2: Kind of put in.
Speaker 3: The amount that you've got and it'll give you an
Speaker 3: idea of how much you might be able to take
Speaker 3: out per year and how that changes if you go, well,
Speaker 3: let's account for inflation.
Speaker 2: How are you managing at the moment, John, I'm not bad.
Speaker 5: I'm seventy seven, so I haven't got as far to go.
Speaker 5: It's a lot.
Speaker 3: But while you don't know, you might live to ripe
Speaker 3: old age of one hundred, there might still be the
Speaker 3: better part of twenty five years to go on the streets.
Speaker 5: Where you you put the sums on, it comes out
Speaker 5: with the answer.
Speaker 2: What do you know?
Speaker 5: What website?
Speaker 2: That is?
Speaker 3: Off the top of my head? I can't, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: but a good place to start might be heading to
Speaker 3: the sorted website. I can't remember whether they do have it.
Speaker 3: They do do that, but there are a lot of
Speaker 3: tools on there, so that would be probably your first
Speaker 3: port of call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you just go I put something in lump,
Speaker 2: some actuarial literally, you'll get a bunch of things there.
Speaker 2: But if you that then also put en z you
Speaker 2: might get some New Zealand websites and if it says sorted,
Speaker 2: then probably there'll be linked there and.
Speaker 3: I am actually working on writing a guide at the moment,
Speaker 3: a masterclass on retirement, which will include a chapter on accumulation.
Speaker 3: So if you don't have any luck, come back to me.
Speaker 5: All right, Thanks, thanks a lot.
Speaker 2: Good on you, John, good on you. Hey. Thanks. Hey.
Speaker 2: Also you're doing so what is the You obviously writing
Speaker 2: for the New Zealand. Hell, but you also you've got
Speaker 2: a podcast going as well, haven't you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: This is super exciting because it sort of feels like
Speaker 3: they're bringing together of my old life as a journalist
Speaker 3: and a broadcaster and my current one as a financial advisor.
Speaker 3: We've launched a podcast called The Prosperity Project and we're
Speaker 3: only about three weeks in, but it's awesome. I'm loving it.
Speaker 3: And it's just designed to be accessible information on a
Speaker 3: wide variety of financial topics so that anyone you know
Speaker 3: who has an interest or a need can find something
Speaker 3: that's relevant to them and hopefully take it away and
Speaker 3: make their life small prosperous.
Speaker 2: There is there was something actually in your article that
Speaker 2: you've got in the Herald. Now just look if you
Speaker 2: google Nadine Higgins's Mastering Money Habits. That's a piece that
Speaker 2: was written just a few days ago. It's interesting that
Speaker 2: it dovetails into the previous hour when we were chatting
Speaker 2: with Kent John's because Kent quoted James Clear's book Atomic Habits.
Speaker 3: I love James Clare and I.
Speaker 2: See it here. But it is a theme that would
Speaker 2: carry on at this part of the year because people
Speaker 2: are you know, you've had Christmas and you've had the holiday,
Speaker 2: and you've spent a bit of money and you're maybe
Speaker 2: getting back to work. I mean, there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of uncertainty out there, but it is the time to
Speaker 2: think about those simple things you can change, isn't it.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I think we often only think about making changes
Speaker 3: when it's drastic, and that's like New Year, New Me,
Speaker 3: which usually wears off by about now, if not sooner,
Speaker 3: or when we all get a bit of a fright
Speaker 3: because you know, I hate mentioning the seaword, but during COVID,
Speaker 3: we all found out what we were willing to go
Speaker 3: without if we really needed to. And I certainly don't
Speaker 3: advocate for living that kind of lifestyle in perpetuity because
Speaker 3: it's not sustainable, but I do think it's worth putting
Speaker 3: a little bit of thought into the things that actually
Speaker 3: make you happy, because you'd be surprised the sacrifices people
Speaker 3: are willing to make on other things if they get
Speaker 3: the things that really bring spin their wheels.
Speaker 2: I wonder how often there is with people's finances that
Speaker 2: they think I'm saving money here and I'm saving money there,
Speaker 2: and there's an elephant in the room where they just
Speaker 2: don't see it and there's a really obvious way. It's like, hey,
Speaker 2: you can fiddle around with whether you have one or
Speaker 2: two lates a week or something, but here's this really
Speaker 2: obvious thing that you're missing. How often is there an
Speaker 2: elephant in the room in terms of the obvious thing
Speaker 2: people miss all the time when they think they're being smart,
Speaker 2: they think they're being frugal.
Speaker 3: I think most of the time people think they're being
Speaker 3: really smart when they are trying to be you know,
Speaker 3: play the banks off each other for the best interest
Speaker 3: rate on their mortgage and they might get sort of
Speaker 3: twenty five basis points or quarter of CIA here there,
Speaker 3: and look, that's great. If anything we can do to
Speaker 3: pay the bank less is fantastic, But they're ignoring how
Speaker 3: minute that is compared to having the right structure and
Speaker 3: actually having a plan to get rid of it faster,
Speaker 3: because the one thing that's going to maximize how much
Speaker 3: you pay to the bank is having it for thirty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, are we going to dig into that a bit
Speaker 2: more actually, because well, because we're going to be back
Speaker 2: into a moment, So twenty one minutes to two six.
Speaker 2: If you've got any questions though with Nadina Higgins, she's
Speaker 2: a new guest on our show, and we want to
Speaker 2: hear from you. What are the simple and the theme
Speaker 2: is generally the simple changes that you can or have
Speaker 2: or could make which would actually make quite a difference
Speaker 2: to your financial outlook, your trajectory, whatever words you want
Speaker 2: to use. And is there something that you have done.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's been brought on by a financial shock or
Speaker 2: some bad news, or maybe it's just been brought up
Speaker 2: around by the new year and you've gone, actually I
Speaker 2: did this for instance. Actually I'm thinking back to the
Speaker 2: previous hour that gym membership that you've used four times
Speaker 2: in the last ten years. Anyway, we'll come back in
Speaker 2: just a moment, but give us a call. Eight it's
Speaker 2: twenty to six News Talks. He'd be welcome back to
Speaker 2: the Weekend Collective. My guest is Nadine Higgins from enable Me.
Speaker 2: Let's take some calls on on money. Peter, Hello, goody,
Speaker 2: how are you good? Peter?
Speaker 6: Hi, how are you?
Speaker 3: I'm well?
Speaker 6: Thank you very quick question and I quite very your
Speaker 6: opinion on that bitcoin too. You've got to afford to
Speaker 6: be able to lose it.
Speaker 2: I agree with you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the question I've got for you earlier on in
Speaker 6: my days. I'm seventy odd. Now, I took that gamble
Speaker 6: when it was versually a dollar or something like that,
Speaker 6: but I was involved in a Ponsi skin but I
Speaker 6: still have the bitcoin key. Can you still claim on that?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 7: Sorry?
Speaker 3: Was your bitcoin through a Ponzi scheme?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: I sound.
Speaker 3: I would suggest, well, I mean you could give it
Speaker 3: a go, but I would presume that for them to
Speaker 3: have made money out of being the intermediary, that that
Speaker 3: probably doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 6: You're probably right there to who would you contact with
Speaker 6: regards to finding out about that?
Speaker 3: Well, if you've still got the key, I would google
Speaker 3: the instructions of how do you access your bitcoin and
Speaker 3: try in putting those details and look, it could be
Speaker 3: your lucky day if you managed to get in. But
Speaker 3: I think if it's been through some shady characters, then
Speaker 3: I would be skeptical.
Speaker 2: Do you know who you bought it from or was
Speaker 2: it something through the net?
Speaker 6: No, I know how I bought it from, but they
Speaker 6: were involved in a fairly big Ponzi broad or scheme.
Speaker 2: What I think you really need to just get in
Speaker 2: touch with someone from the mafia and get to put
Speaker 2: some heat on them. In the heavy.
Speaker 6: Weren't quite the Mapia. But even so your program has
Speaker 6: been very enlightening, especially for retirees. It's quite interesting, good stuff.
Speaker 2: Thank you for your call, Thanks Peter, and we're just
Speaker 2: getting to know each other. It'll just get better and
Speaker 2: better now. Actually, something we were talking about in the break.
Speaker 2: We've done this a little bit, but you say, when
Speaker 2: it comes to food, we were talking about saving money, Nadine,
Speaker 2: you do your own takeaways, fake aways?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we do fake aways, which I don't know if
Speaker 3: that makes me sound like a tight word, but we
Speaker 3: love good food and we were just so often underwhelmed
Speaker 3: by what turned up at the front door, you know,
Speaker 3: on Uber Eats or whatever app you're using to order things,
Speaker 3: and the price of it was I'm watering, and so
Speaker 3: we you know, you obviously get to the end of
Speaker 3: the week you are tired, you cannot be bothered. And
Speaker 3: so we started doing fake aways on a Friday, and
Speaker 3: we do Zinger burgers. So it's a KFC burger with
Speaker 3: a spicy paddy. Otherwise a very simple burger.
Speaker 2: Hang on, have you got the eleven secret herbs and spice?
Speaker 3: I don't have the eleven secret herbs and spices, but
Speaker 3: look it's close enough. You get like a bag of
Speaker 3: Teagle frozen paddies, just keep them in the freezer. Get
Speaker 3: some buns and lettuce, you know, mayonnaise, whatever we've got.
Speaker 3: You can do the mashed potato from the freezer and
Speaker 3: it comes out beautifully. Do some instant gravy. You've got
Speaker 3: your potato and gravy. Check some chips in the oven,
Speaker 3: and you know, pass your uncle.
Speaker 2: Actually, I'm I'm quite a fan of that idea. We've
Speaker 2: recently we do burgers the chips. I mean, to be honest,
Speaker 2: I'm probably just going to get a scuba chips because
Speaker 2: it's five bucks. But burgers. It's really easy to do
Speaker 2: because literally, what are you doing. You've got a fry pan,
Speaker 2: you get a burger patty and buy those at the supermarket. Tomato, lettuce, cheese, tomato, saucematoes.
Speaker 3: Done exactly, very little clean up, which is what we
Speaker 3: all need on a Friday night. Fills the gap happy days.
Speaker 2: Is the food, the big thing you would say to
Speaker 2: most people that have a look at your food habits,
Speaker 2: because that's probably the first place you're going to say.
Speaker 3: That, the most regular thing, because it's something we do
Speaker 3: day and day out. And I had a colleague who
Speaker 3: had had some previous business consulting career where he'd done
Speaker 3: something with the supermarkets, and he talked about how they
Speaker 3: work to the or do you say the Tricep test.
Speaker 3: So you go into the supermarket and you put the
Speaker 3: basket over your arm and you will fill it until
Speaker 3: your arm can't hold it anymore, and then you head
Speaker 3: to the checkout and then they're like, on, that's eighty
Speaker 3: dollars and you're like, what I came in for milk
Speaker 3: and bread? And so the more often you go to
Speaker 3: the supermarket, the more often that bill blows out. Because
Speaker 3: you might well do your weekly shop and think great,
Speaker 3: that was in budget, but then there's all the things
Speaker 3: that you just pop in to get that one thing,
Speaker 3: but it's never just one thing.
Speaker 2: Well, I was almost wondering at one stage, because you
Speaker 2: can end up having that weekly shop blowout to quite
Speaker 2: a lot. When I work out per cook for the
Speaker 2: cost of each meal, is it almost cheaper to get
Speaker 2: the takeaways?
Speaker 3: And if that absolutely not?
Speaker 2: And if the answer is yes, not with.
Speaker 3: Some meal planning, no exactly. And so we have a
Speaker 3: deep freeze, and you know, like ones every six weeks,
Speaker 3: we're ones every two months. We'll do a big cook up,
Speaker 3: big prepare of foods. So that being tired, because let's
Speaker 3: be honest, we've got a small child and another on
Speaker 3: the way, and we're both working, we're often tired, but
Speaker 3: we still want to eat good food, and so just
Speaker 3: a little bit of preparation allows us to be lazy
Speaker 3: later without it costing heaps.
Speaker 2: I've got a few texts here. One says I'm by myself.
Speaker 2: I eat out every day. I probably spend ten thousand
Speaker 2: dollars more a year on food because I don't make
Speaker 2: it myself. I would say that would be oh, that's
Speaker 2: probably a reasonables next I was going to say it's conservative,
Speaker 2: but two hundred bucks a week.
Speaker 3: I think as well. Cooking for one is is hard
Speaker 3: because you do benefit from economies of scale, because you know,
Speaker 3: if you buy a head of broccoli, you probably have
Speaker 3: to eat it three nights that week to use it
Speaker 3: all up. Otherwise it goes to waste and you still
Speaker 3: spend it. So I totally get that cooking for one
Speaker 3: is hard. The only thing I could suggest is you
Speaker 3: cook it and freeze the other half, and then future
Speaker 3: you will thank you because there's something ready to go
Speaker 3: when you can't be bothered.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, well we didn't take a break. It's eleven
Speaker 2: minutes to six news talk said by let's welcome back
Speaker 2: to the weekend collective. This is smart Money with a
Speaker 2: new guest is Nadine Higgins from Enable Me, and she's
Speaker 2: also the host of the Prosperity Project podcast, which you
Speaker 2: can check out. I think you just go to iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: don't you, Nadine, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Wherever you get your podcast, but obviously iHeartRadio is a
Speaker 3: good one.
Speaker 2: Always a good starting point. Now we got we're a
Speaker 2: ton to squeeze in. One more call tersca Hello.
Speaker 7: Hello, Hello. I just wanted to share a couple of
Speaker 7: tips that we do so. Even before we were mortgage free,
Speaker 7: Harvey and I used to every fortnight pay our Meridian
Speaker 7: energy bill. So Meridian was on a level pay, so
Speaker 7: we paid like one hundred dollars a fortnight into that,
Speaker 7: and then when our electricity bill came, we were often
Speaker 7: in credit, especially over the summer, and so that credit
Speaker 7: would carry us into the winter when we were spending
Speaker 7: more on electricity. So we sometimes have three or four
Speaker 7: hundred dollars in credit. In January, we'd either take a
Speaker 7: couple of hundred out and buy a firewood, and then
Speaker 7: the other two hundred would just sit in that account.
Speaker 7: And then because that pricity bills were more expensive in
Speaker 7: the winter, that would just chew away at that credit.
Speaker 7: And we often found that we were just doing that yeah, constantly,
Speaker 7: and that worked really well. The other thing is that
Speaker 7: we we're now mortgage free. We're not sixty five yet,
Speaker 7: so we're in that fortunate position. But we have many
Speaker 7: accounts and so every fortnight, every week, one of us
Speaker 7: gets paid, and every week we have automatic payments going
Speaker 7: out of that account into other accounts. So one will
Speaker 7: be for annual bills. So we'll look at all of
Speaker 7: our annual bills and we'll add that all up and
Speaker 7: then we divide that by twenty six and then we
Speaker 7: put that amount of money every fortnight away into an
Speaker 7: annual bal account. So when we get a bill for
Speaker 7: for example, the car insurance, that money is already sitting.
Speaker 3: There's a really great strategy finding that.
Speaker 7: Really yeah, and we do it. We do it with
Speaker 7: a contingency. We put a little bit away every fortnight
Speaker 7: into a contingency fund. We put a little way a
Speaker 7: bit away into a fund and trip, we put a
Speaker 7: bit of way into a house account when we want
Speaker 7: to go out and buy plants at mighty ten or
Speaker 7: something like that. You know, so there's always that little
Speaker 7: bit of money is going every fortnight, and because it's
Speaker 7: only a little bit, you don't notice it so much.
Speaker 7: And we have a decent amount going across to a
Speaker 7: food account.
Speaker 3: So and it is that is a good way, in
Speaker 3: particular if you don't have a mortgage, because there's nowhere
Speaker 3: else that that money needs to be to be offsetting debt,
Speaker 3: and it's going to be there when.
Speaker 6: You need it.
Speaker 3: Because we so often get surprised by big bills, like
Speaker 3: you know, car repairs, when it is likely there will
Speaker 3: be somewhere in tear there's something we're going to have
Speaker 3: to spend in an annual period. So let's plan for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good stuff. Thanks for you for your court to risker. Actually,
Speaker 2: it's just that question that we might have to dig
Speaker 2: into it next time you're hear. But the question about
Speaker 2: whether you're better to stick money into your retirement or
Speaker 2: money into paying off that mortgage and then cain the
Speaker 2: retirement fund.
Speaker 3: That a bit of both. You can do both at
Speaker 3: the same time, and because you benefit from time when
Speaker 3: it comes to investment returns, you don't want to be
Speaker 3: waiting until you're sixty or whatever age you are when
Speaker 3: the mortgage is gone and then going, oh my goodness,
Speaker 3: what are we going to do. We've got five summers
Speaker 3: before we're not going to be earning any money. So
Speaker 3: great to have a mortgage free home. But you'll want
Speaker 3: to run those two strategies and tandem if we can.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to have lots to dig into
Speaker 2: next time, I think because the phones are lighting up,
Speaker 2: but unfortunately, guess what, people is it's time to wrap
Speaker 2: it up. At four minutes to six, Nadine, thanks so
Speaker 2: much for coming into the studio and fun. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: been a blast. We'll look forward to next time very
Speaker 2: much so. And you can check Nadine's articles on the
Speaker 2: New Zealand Herald and of course she is the host
Speaker 2: of the Prosperity Project. Hey, thanks to my producers two
Speaker 2: of them today, Tyler, Tyra and Mary. And we'll look
Speaker 2: forward to joining you again same time next week, three
Speaker 2: o'clock on Saturday for the panel and then it all
Speaker 2: rolls on from there for the weekend and we'll look
Speaker 2: forward to your company again. Then Sunday six is next.
Speaker 2: Have a great evening, catch you soon.
Speaker 4: Let them music plays Held End.
Speaker 1: For more from the Weekend Collective. Listen live to news
Speaker 1: Talks it be weekends from three pm, or follow the
Speaker 1: podcast on iHeartRadio