Recently tended

• 12 July 2026

  Classic literature: an AI showcase (13.5 hours over 3 days)

  I've forgotten most of the books I've read, and I'll never read the whole canon anyway. So over three days, and 13.5 hours with Claude Code, I built a personal map of the classics of literature and ho…

• 10 June 2026

  Access to financial advice: the FMA has questions for everyone except itself

  The FMA's access to advice report gets one important thing right. But a report that urges banks deeper into advice without acknowledging the risks, and that critiques sector conservatism without any a…

• 22 April 2026

  Where does your money go? I built an app to find out.

  Do you actually know where your money goes? Not roughly — actually know? Most people can't, and I couldn't either. So I built Snoopy: a private desktop app that turns a pile of bank CSVs into a clear…

• 9 March 2026

  Your insurance application is a health check in disguise

  When you apply for personal insurance, the application forms require you to answer some remarkably personal questions. Those questions exist because actuaries have spent decades researching what drive…

• 13 February 2026

  Spending through the tax code

  The Government doesn't only support people through benefit payments and public services. There's a third, largely invisible form: tax concessions. When the Government simply doesn't collect tax it cou…

• 6 February 2026

  Money matters. Part 2: Expanding your capacity

  Earning more can be values-aligned behaviour. If living well requires resources, building the capacity to earn what your values actually require is itself a form of service — not greed.

• 30 January 2026

  Money matters. Part 1: Does your spending reflect what you value?

  Many people with enough money — often more than enough — struggle to actually spend it on the things they say matter to them. They'd say health matters, but won't pay for the physio. They'd say relati…

• 20 January 2026

  Making the invisible visible

  “There’s a gap between knowing something intellectually and truly believing it. Visualising your spending, your financial projections, or your mood data can close that gap — making abstract knowledge…

• 19 December 2025

  Thoughts on AI

  AI was built in ways I find ethically troubling, and it's going to hurt people who don't deserve to be hurt. I hate it. But the toothpaste is out of the tube, and I've come to the conclusion that prag…

• 3 December 2025

  What I’ve been up to

  It's been a while. I stepped back from Fairhaven Wealth and NZ Wealth & Risk in mid-2023, and the years since have been a mix of difficult and gratifying. In this article I share what's been happening…

• 2 December 2025

  The paradox of code

  Since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, learning to code has become dramatically easier. I taught myself to code with the help of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini — it felt like a genuine revolution in ac…

• 9 May 2025

  My submission relating to the FMA’s access to advice review

  I recently made a submission to the FMA's access to advice review. The Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 isn't just about regulating advice — it also includes a purpose to ensure the availability of…

• 11 April 2025

  Four types of “existential” threat

  The term "existential threat" gets used quite broadly, and I think it's often used when it's not really appropriate. This is a typology of how I think about four different types of "existential" threa…

• 24 January 2025

  Recursive goal-setting with the help of AI

  Lately I've been using AI to help with goal-setting — working on a "living" document that outlines my goals in a way that feels organic. I've included some prompts you can experiment with yourself.

• 10 January 2025

  More people should blog

  I went to a wedding recently where several people there had an online presence. Reading their ideas beforehand made for much better conversations – and potentially longer-term friendships. I suspect t…