The Happy Saver Podcast - Personal Finance in New Zealand

Aria and her husband Dave didn’t grow up with much so once they got together they knew they didn’t want to live paycheque to paycheque like many of their friends and whanau. In their mid-forties they have now reached a point where they can work part-time and afford to be generous with both their time and their money to help out others, all the while taking care of their immediate family. When asked what financial independence means to them they said it means “we don’t have to worry about money” and that is a sentiment that they want for everyone. Such a great couple with so much to share.

I first heard from Hamish when he sent me an email in late 2020 telling me that back in 2018, at the age of just 24 he had saved up and bought a $379,00 house in Palmerston North with a big deposit of $125,000. Apparently, that’s meant to be impossible in this day and age? Hence, no surprises I was pretty keen to hear more from Hamish about the how and the why of this. The short answer from him was he achieved it by planning and deliberate effort. He said that too many people fail to plan for something that they want - but they still expect it to happen. Not so with him.

“Well this is awkward” I thought when some guy called Chris started secretly emailing me without his partner’s knowledge! Big long emails with tonnes of questions about personal finance, my favourite topic for sure! That is how I came to sit on the sidelines of the transformation of not just Chris but of his partner Rosemary’s (phew, he told her) financial life. It took a bit of work to get her on board but finally, together, they embarked on a journey to financial independence and the pursuit of happiness. I’m delighted to bring you this podcast today and I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Jen freaked out at 49! She considered herself to be halfway through her life and had big concerns about what the other half might look like. She became heartily sick of working so hard. At the age of 16, she started full time work, at 20 she had bought her first house, then got married and slowly became mortgage free. But a divorce halved her net worth and becoming a single mother introduced a whole heap of new challenges. But amongst all this she constantly repeated her mantra of “everything is working out perfectly”, even when it clearly was not! Yet despite these challenges she pushed on. She worked hard! Now debt-free once again, she is fast tracking to an early retirement at the age of 55. Jen is a wonderful example of showing just what a woman on a mission is capable of!

So often people tell me that they ‘wish their parents had talked to them more about money’ when they were growing up. Well, in today’s podcast that’s exactly what happened. Nina was homeschooled and part of her education involved investing in the share market and preparing from the age of just 13 to cover the cost of her future university degree. Now in her late 20’s and living in the South Island town of Oamaru with her husband and three small children she is feeling content with the journey ahead and that includes paying off their home and then starting to invest for the long term financial wellbeing of her and her family.

Alana’s debt of choice was buying household items on Hire Purchase. Lots of them! But before long she had precommitted her income years into the future so she could service these debts. Yet that still didn’t stop her borrowing money for a vehicle and running up credit card debt. But finally she reached a pivotal point of being heartily sick of living pay cheque to pay cheque and a chance conversation where someone said “just try writing down your expenses for a month or two” was to be the catalyst that changed everything. She got her somewhat reluctant husband on board and in just a few short years they have had a massive financial turnaround and are now firmly on the path to financial independence instead.

This week, I’m heading South to one of New Zealand's more underrated cities, Invercargill, where I had a chat with Steve who described his financial story as “not so much an epic dig out of deep debt”, or a “becoming fabulously wealthy” kind of story. But, more of a “jigsaw puzzle piecing it all together over time” kind of story, which, he told me, is still very much ongoing. Aged 31, a part-time teacher and almost full-time stay at home Dad and married to Madie, a 29-year-old junior doctor who is working while also studying to finish her qualification. These two have been relatively strategic in how they have gone about things and I think they have a story that many millennials could emulate.

When a former multisport athlete turns the same motivation, hard work and attention to detail that they used for their sport to their personal finances, great things can happen. Chris and his wife Megan were tired of it taking so long to pay off their mortgage, so they focussed on the detail and developed a game plan that will see them own their own house on 31st December 2020. Plus, a key decision to pay into their retirement schemes from the day they started working has really paid off because now, in their mid-thirties, they have the strong foundations in place to provide a wonderful future for their family of five. There are a few other investment decisions they are working through, plus there is the small matter of him convincing his wife ‘they’ need a boat...

There were many points during Ella’s 40 plus years that her gut instinct told her to make a few changes to the way her family handled money. Many of us can relate to this. 2020 has been a huge time of change with her reassessing her current financial situation and making some radical changes that will have a huge positive impact on the years ahead. These changes all stemmed from her wanting to be able to financially help her kids and once she worked out that she needed to be in a strong financial position herself in order to do this, the rest is rapidly falling into place.

In this final podcast of this series, I’m doing a recap of two people that I’ve spoken with earlier. Firstly there was Bret from episode #20, a guy who had gone from being a super consumer to someone who is finally, much to the relief of his partner Shelley, in control of money. And secondly, I spoke with Lucas from episode #28 who last time we met was staring down the barrel of a $1.2 million dollar mortgage. Both of these couples have come an extremely long way in a very short space of time and I think that hearing from them will help many people who are currently finding themselves in tough situations of their own.