The wisdom (and otherwise!) of listeners
Runners up and winners of 5 copies of Mary’s new book, A Richer You — how to make the most of your money.
Some themes in the entries:
– Money and happiness
– Families and finances
– Shopping
– Investing in shares
Watch Your Spending
New Zealanders’ household spending is way up, compared with late 2019.
Spending is OK if not getting into debt
Why spend on non-essentials?:
– Happiness. But often short-term.
– Appearances.
– Pressure to spend on special shopping days.
What to do:
– Use credit cards?: pluses and minuses
– Estimate spending in different categories, then keep track for 2 months
– Change a habit for just a month. Letter to futureme.org.
– 2 birds with one stone: Cut spending on unhealthy things
– Help w budgeting: MoneyTalks. Free, confidential and non-judgmental, around NZ.
Q&As:
– Diversification — the only free lunch
– Drop health insurance and self-insure? It’s risky
– Increasing insurance excess slashes bill
– Leave GST alone, says reader
Plus:
– Meaningful Christmas gifts
– ‘Please don’t stop giving’
The high costs of Christmas
– Survey — NZers value time with family way ahead of giving and getting gifts
– Ideas to cut cost of gifts
– Donate to charity in the name of family member
– Thoughts about Christmas food, drinks and decorations
– I wrote article on this — on RNZ website from December 18
Money and relationships
– Follow-up on last time’s financial knowledge quiz — angry comments about women
– Survey on money and relationship problems
– Worse for the young, and worse for low and high income than for middle incomes
– Conflict more likely if … overspending etc.
– What to do about it
Q&As:
– FIRE movement lets you retire many years earlier
– Keep up basic health insurance in retirement, despite cost
– Rental or shares could save woman from reliance on the state
– Sorry, but overseas relative can’t get KiwiSaver government contribution
Q&As:
– You don’t need nearly a million to retire comfortably
– Should couple sell Covid-struck business now and retire, or wait and hope?
– Report shonky kiwifruit contractor, reader urges
– Reverse mortgage could help last week’s house buyer
Q&As:
– When debt can be good…
– … And when it’s not
– Job seeker benefit not easy to apply for
– Is this NZ Super reduction fair?
Mixed messages to New Zealanders these days
– Some examples: work from home vs support CBD businesses, Buy NZ goods vs imports
– In more depth: Encouraging you to spend vs setting up your emergency fund
– 2 recent surveys: How big are people’s emergency funds? What are people doing about that?
– The big question: Is it selfish to look after your own finances, rather than helping the economy to recover?
Q&As:
– My expertise on cows and farmers’ markets is called into question…
– … Nonetheless, my comments last week helped reader
– KiwiSaver becoming workable for people with special needs
– Change KiwiSaver provider any time, but take care with changing funds
– Who does government borrow from, and how?
– Are we likely to see negative interest rates, and if so, where should we save?
– Not good news on tax and negative interest rates
– Negative interest rates unlikely to threaten banks’ strength