Answering the Money Questions Readers Email Me About
30 Nov, 2025
I’ve been hitting “reply” to as many emails as I can this week. If you write to me, I will write back, but due to the volume of emails I get, there is often a delay. I respond to every single email because the questions asked are so valid and important to the person doing the asking. Every email is different, weaving together a set of circumstances in a new way, so I provide a bespoke response that links to tools and resources to help answer the questions. While each is different, though, there are commonalities.
I hear from so many people whose money feels completely tangled: A separation, a redundancy, an unexpected bill, a big money mistake, a never-ending mortgage or student loan, KiwiSaver confusion, or simply years of avoiding money altogether, because although it was all a bit messy and annoying to have to think about, it never reached a crisis point.
I also hear from many people who are doing really well. Perhaps they have paid off their home at last, or the kids have left home, they might find themselves in their peak earning years, or want to quit their work, and are just a bit confused about ‘where to next’ as they think ahead to how much money they might need in the future. My observation is that many people would feel financially better off if they understood their financial situation a little better.
We all start with a simple financial structure: one bank account. But then we spend decades bolting financial bits and bobs onto that structure until it becomes shaky and unwieldy. Sometimes a tinker around the edges works, but other times it's better to scrap the lot and start again.
Most of my emails give people a simple starting point and a rough map to follow, so I thought that, as we head for Christmas, a time when a lot of people do sit down and focus on money, this might help you head into 2026 more prepared.
Below are the key points I keep returning to. Whether you’re dealing with debt, confused about investing, unsure about your KiwiSaver, simply need to tidy things up, or stuck in a tricky relationship situation, these basics will get you moving again.
Start Where You Are: Work Out Your Net Worth
If you struggle to coherently explain how you manage your money, and when your cash feels all over the place, the first step is always to seek and maintain clarity. If someone were to approach you looking very upset, the first thing you would ask them is, “What is your problem?”.
Everyone should sit down and calculate their net worth. It concisely and quickly details your financial ‘problem’. You simply list what you own and subtract what you owe to work out what you have. It’s not a judgment; it’s a line in the sand. That’s it. It’s confronting for some, comforting for others. But for everyone, you are now dealing with facts. You might be better off financially than you thought, or worse, but at least now you know.
You can’t move forward until you know where you’re starting from.
Do this once, then update it on the same day every month. It takes me ten minutes.
Understand Where Your Money Is Going
The next step is to look at the flow of money in and out of your bank accounts. Look up the last three months of bank statements and categorise every dollar. If you want a visual shock, print them out. There will be a lot! Use big categories such as: Groceries, Housing, Insurance, etc. Then sit back and use this data to observe where your money flowed in and out of your life.
What do you earn and spend each month? If you average those three months out, what do you earn and spend in a year?
It’s a no-judgment zone, just an exercise in observation. The goal is always to spend less than you earn.
Once you really see your spending, you naturally start to make different decisions, hopefully better ones. This is always the area where I see the most ‘ah-ha’ moments. Some go nuts and completely transform both their income and expenses, while others tweak things slowly. Both approaches work, by the way.
The only thing that doesn’t work is ignoring it.
The thing about working out where you earn and spend your money, and then ignoring the data it creates, is that it still takes up space in your brain. My pragmatic approach is that it's far easier to get stuck in and fix it than to sit around worrying about it. Rip the band-aid off your finances and sort yourself out. Your future self will be cheering you on!
Build Stability: Your Emergency Fund and Insurance
Most financial drama comes from not having a cash buffer.
A simple emergency fund - $1,000 to start - stops you reaching for debt when life happens. A car repair, a dental bill, a week off work, a medical emergency (all things that have happened to my whānau this year, by the way). It takes just one surprise to knock things sideways if you have nothing set aside.
Expect financial emergencies to happen to you.
First, aim to save up $1,000 in a bank account all on its own. How? Work more. Spend less. Sell stuff. Then keep going and save up $2,000. Name the account Emergency Fund.
Then work towards saving up 3-6 months of expenses over time (you will now know this figure after working out where your money is going each month). Saving up a full emergency fund might take you a year or two, and that’s OK. When you use it, make topping it back up a priority.
The feedback I receive tells me that having a financial buffer is one of the single most important gifts they have given themselves. They sleep better at night.
Alongside that, take a look at your insurance. When you’re young or financially vulnerable, you need more insurance protection. As you build wealth, while there will always be ‘must-have’ insurances, you can remove layers and self-insure.
Every year, review what you still need… and what you don’t. I find it helpful to look around me and understand what crises have befallen myself and others, and I talk with Jonny about how we would financially handle that same situation. If insurance were essential, we would keep it; if it’s not, we let it go.
Untangle Your Financial Relationships and Protect Yourself
A decent number of emails in my inbox involve messy relationships and tangled finances. Again, we start with a simple money plan of just one bank account, bolt on our own financial bits and bobs, and then combine our mess with someone else's. It’s not surprising that money causes problems in a relationship.
Examples I see again and again:
Sharing accounts before trust is established
Buying property together too fast
Lending large sums to a partner without a contract
One partner does all the saving while the other does… not much
Exiting a relationship but keeping shared assets and accounts
Death of a spouse without a will
This is where people get hurt, both emotionally and financially. Being financially unclear with your partner leads to future complications. Sadly, I also often see one partner weaponise money against their ex. They want to get as far away from each other as possible, yet stay up in the other's face while dragging out the financial split. An awful situation for all involved.
If your relationship is good and destined to last, but money is tricky because your finances are tangled with someone else’s, with no clear objective, either combine your money fully and work as one, or create clear legal agreements that state your respective positions. Review these often. If you’ve gifted money to a partner with nothing in writing, please fix that. Trusting that “it’ll be fine” is not a sound strategy because problems don’t just occur during a break-up; the unexpected death of a spouse can also result in ‘your money’ being shared with their relatives.
And please, don’t hitch your cart to someone who refuses to take care of their own finances. Vast financial differences are hard to manage in the long term. Think about the future you.
And the last thing to comment on is that couples who work as a team and manage their money as one seem more financially stable and have better relationships. Nothing is hidden; they each have control, both understand their full financial position, and remain the individuals they are.
Tackle Your Debt Head-On
If you do find yourself in debt, it’s easy to struggle in silence, given we are told it’s ‘rude to talk about money’. But the moment you do write down your exact financial position, or discuss it with someone else, you take some power back.
I’ve thought about it long and hard, and honestly, there is no such thing as ‘good debt’. All debt is just money you owe someone else. So, it’s best to stop trying to sugarcoat it.
If you owe money, don’t take out another loan “to make it go away.” Even if it is to a lower-interest-rate debt, you have only moved the problem to another place. It feels like you have done something, but the situation hasn’t changed; it’s just wearing a different hat. In theory, at least, the fix is simple: front up, make more payments. In practical terms, I know it's hard. You are going to have to change how you earn and spend your money.
Then smash the debt out as fast as you can.
And once it’s paid off, don’t repeat the cycle.
Here in New Zealand, you don’t need to use a credit card. Fees are high, rewards are pathetic, and you spend more, which complicates your budgeting. You can simply use a debit card instead. But what about ‘keeping one around for an emergency’, I hear you ask? The last thing you want in an emergency is more debt. That’s why you keep your own emergency cash in the bank.
When your debt is gone, close that lending facility, unsubscribe from their websites, and send all emails to spam. This includes the big one, your mortgage!
Make Investing Simple - Not Scary
Investing for many is like learning a whole new skill. We’ve never had to think about it before, yet now we are trying to stake our entire financial future on it.
This is where many people feel overwhelmed by the need to be the perfect investor. They want to invest but are scared of making the wrong choice. So they do nothing. Or revert to property and mortgage debt, because it's the one ‘skill’ we think we know.
Just take simple steps: Your KiwiSaver is your first investment. Use it well.
Think low fees (less than 0.50%), have a long-term mindset, which means you are more likely to be in a high-growth type fund, and use a decent fund provider that is in it to make money for you, not from you. Many people set 3% employer and employee contributions (which are soon to rise) and forget it, not realising that increasing contributions (if you can) can transform your retirement. Self-employed? You can still use KiwiSaver if you want to.
The vast majority of us have a very long investment horizon (10 years or more). Remember that your KiwiSaver investment doesn’t stop at 65; it keeps helping you till you die, hopefully at 100. So, that’s a long time frame when you think about it that way!
Will a higher-growth KiwiSaver fund be volatile month to month? Probably. Is it likely to make you more money for your long retirement? Yes.
In addition to KiwiSaver, you can choose a simple, long-term ETF investment.
By all means, you can pour more money into your KiwiSaver. Build it up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, knowing that the more you have, the nicer your retirement will be. For many, KiwiSaver can be all you need to prepare for retirement.
But for some, myself included, I don’t want to be tied to working till I’m 65. I want the option to quit working for money while I’m young. But, to do that, I’m going to need income, and money invested well creates income.
Just as you are entirely capable of managing the rest of your money, you are entirely capable of managing your own investments, too. The key is to keep investing simple, and I’ve written plenty of blog posts about simple investing.
But, to cut to the chase, if you want to invest outside of KiwiSaver, find a simple low-cost index fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) that buys the whole world, or close to it. Look for a Total World Fund, or a Global Fund. A fund that, with one purchase, is buying the top ~10,000 global companies.
Invest regularly and let it compound and grow.
Why does this work, I hear you ask? Over the decades, share markets have risen. They might have dips and crashes along the way, but they go up more times than they go down. If you buy a massive global fund, you buy every company that is part of that growth. These funds are self-cleansing, meaning that when a company goes bust, it falls away and is replaced by the next top performer, meaning that at all times, you own the best and brightest.
Graph showing the Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF all-time performance. Share markets go up more times than they go down. Graph Source: Google
Financial advisors and fund managers are in a constant battle to beat this ‘average’ share market return. And while they might succeed in the short term (months to a few years), they can’t sustain it over the long term. Basically, you pay high fees (1%+) to your financial advisor or investment company to underperform the share markets over time, when you could just buy the entire share market yourself and go about your day.
Investing is the one thing where the less you do, the better off you are.
Should You Pay Off the Mortgage or Invest?
This is another question that fills my inbox, usually from people who feel torn between competing priorities. Often, they have just begun to learn about investing and realised that the sooner you start investing, the more your money grows over time. But… they had already signed up for a 25-year mortgage, which is sucking up their monthly payments.
In many cases, the answer is: do both.
If you only pay off the mortgage, you might retire with a house but no money. If you only invest, you may stay in debt forever. But if you do both - even if it’s tight - you build real long-term strength. These are often your highest-earning years. Make them count.
Those who focus more on getting rid of their mortgage and also set up a small payment into an investment (plus their KiwiSaver) can immediately pivot to investing once the mortgage is gone. Simply because they have spent years watching, learning, and understanding how their investment works and grows, and they don’t have to waste precious time learning how to invest once debt-free.
Plan for the Life You Actually Want
Once you’ve stabilised things, it’s time to think about the bigger picture. I’m not a big goal setter, but I know the rough direction I want my life to take.
Ask yourself:
What do I want my life to look like in five years?
Do I want to retire early?
Do I want to stay in this job?
Do I need to move cities?
What kind of retirement do I imagine?
Am I with the right partner?
Am I happy?
I am a big fan of people building enough financial stability so they can adjust course as they see fit. When you are in control of your money, when your situation changes, you calmly adjust course; money is not the deciding factor in all your decision-making, and your life carries on. This is especially powerful for single parents, people in unstable work, and anyone tired of agencies or ex-partners dictating their future.
Taking financial control of your life is also really powerful for people with a lot of drive and energy! When your finances are stable, you get to jump at more exciting opportunities and do more of what you love. You can say YES to all sorts of cool stuff when you know money is not a limiting factor in your life.
Adapt and keep moving.
None of us stays in the same place for long; therefore, it's only reasonable that your money systems should flex as you do. Money is not set-and-forget, so whenever something in your life shifts, going back to the basics helps you become more adaptable.
Rebuild your financial foundations. Simplify your decisions. Live within your means. Protect yourself. Invest steadily. Review often. And surround yourself with decent people.
You don’t need to be perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist. Just make more good money decisions than bad, and you’ll be heading in the right direction. Now, keep going!
