With a bit of luck and hard work, you will arrive at retirement with a pot of money to supplement your income from NZ Superannuation and allow you to live comfortably. The problem is, so many uncertainties lie ahead. How long will you live? How much money will you need? What will your investment returns be? Where should you invest your money? The most conservative approach to take is to assume you will live until at leas...

Emotions and investment are best kept apart. Put them together and you have the ingredients of a disappointing investment outcome, if not a failure. The best investment decision is one which is based on thorough financial analysis using well founded assumptions about the future. There are some investment decisions where emotions are more likely to get in the way. Buying an investment property.              Â...

It is natural for parents to want to give their children a good start in life, and often parents will have a financial goal of saving for their children’s education. There are two key questions to be asked: Is it a good idea to save for your children’s education? There are many ways you can help children get ahead. You can help cover the cost of a private or tertiary education, overseas study, travel, setting up a b...

Getting to a financial position where early retirement is a real possibility is not as difficult as it may seem. There are three key ingredients to being able to retire early; spending less, saving more and starting to invest as soon as possible. What makes early retirement simple is that there is a logical connection between these three ingredients. The less you spend, the more you are able to save and the earlier you c...

The last few years before you stop working are crucial for setting yourself up for a fantastic retirement. They need careful planning to achieve your goals. Of course, with more people now working past the age of 65 it is not always possible to plan towards a specific retirement date. Here are the most important things to do. Plan towards a date after which you will work by choice and if you are able. There is nothing...

Throughout life there are various points where key financial decisions need to be made that involve a substantial amount of money or which can take you off on a different path. Aside from the usual ones of buying a first home or starting a family, there are such dilemmas as: Should I leave employment and set up a business? Should I sell my business? Should I undertake a major renovation of my home? Should I buy ...

Your retirement years should be the best years of your life. With life expectancy increasing, the average person can expect to live to around 90, so retiring at 65 means you will spend over a quarter of your life not working. You can choose for that period of life to be ordinary; or you can choose for it to be extraordinary. It is said that whatever a child dreams of being when they are about ten years of age reflects t...

There is something about human nature that makes us wired to believe that anything which is scarce or available only for a limited time is something we must have, despite the price. It’s called FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – and it is without doubt the biggest driver of poor financial decisions. Everywhere you look there are examples of selling tactics that prey on our FOMO insecurities. Advertising copy is the bigg...

It goes without saying that one of the reasons entrepreneurs are successful at growing wealth is that they are risk takers. Some entrepreneurs argue that in fact there is little risk in what they do, because they fully analyse the financial implications of their wealth-building strategies before they part with their money. Even so, they are betting on their own ability to predict future outcomes accurately. It’s not ha...

There are very few people who, if offered a 50% guaranteed return on their money, would turn it down, particularly with investment returns being so low at present. Yet every June, thousands of people miss such an opportunity by failing to realise that their KiwiSaver contributions are less than what is required to get the full Member Tax Credit. In order to get the full credit of $521, contributions for the year 1 July t...