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10 June 2026
The FMA's access to advice report says some good things. But a report that urges banks deeper into advice without acknowledging the risks, and that critiques sector conservatism without any acknowledg…
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9 May 2025
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…
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18 May 2023
I'm taking a break from publishing on this blog — it might be permanent, I'm not sure. Before signing off, I thought I'd share some articles I wish I'd published: exit interview thoughts on Fairhaven…
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21 April 2023
I love this recent video from the How Money Works YouTube channel. It appeals to my pre-existing sensibilities: if a product is aligned with someone famous, I'm generally less likely to use it — unles…
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17 April 2023
My views on AI, and specifically how it is likely to impact financial advice in the short- to medium-term, have evolved a lot in the last year or so. When the facts change, I try to change my mind — a…
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16 September 2022
A follow-up to my 2019 “How I money”, showing how my wife and I actually structure our savings, investments, insurance, and spending three years on. Don’t treat this as a guide — it’s illustrative onl…
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25 February 2022
Consumer NZ is paving a road to hell with good intentions in the way it talks about personal insurance, and especially personal insurance advice. I'm a paying member and a fan — which is why it's so f…
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18 February 2022
Lots of people reassess their insurance after repaying the mortgage and cancel their income protection. I often think that's a mistake. Mortgage-free years are usually when you build the wealth that f…
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4 June 2021
Every time I work with a client, I make a bald statement of fact. If you invest in growth-oriented investments, there WILL be times when the value of those investments drops. Sometimes significantly.…
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28 May 2021
Investing actively is great. By this, I'm talking about putting your time, energy, talents, knowledge, and expertise into how you invest. On the other hand, investing passively is great too. It really…
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12 March 2021
The idea that there's one specific right way to invest, or manage your financial affairs, is kind of weird. Yes, I give clients specific recommendations — but that's what I'd do in their shoes. In rea…
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11 September 2020
When I give financial advice, one of the most important questions I ask is about job security. It's easy to think about this in terms of your current role. But there's a second, often more important f…
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21 August 2020
Everyone is different. Even identical twins raised in the same household are pretty different once you get to know them. When you meet someone new, you have NO IDEA about who they are. Two takeaways:…
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15 May 2020
Many people think they lack financial literacy when what they really lack is financial confidence. In my experience, with clients and with friends and loved ones, the issue is much more often confiden…
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17 April 2020
For most of my clients I recommend widely-diversified, low-fee index funds. They're steady, sensible, and almost no one gets really rich from them. Investing in a business is one of the few things tha…
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6 March 2020
I rarely talk numbers on this blog, which might be surprising since it's mainly about money — and I LOVE spreadsheets. Numbers change, past performance isn't future performance, and precision can make…
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18 February 2020
My wife and I joke that cafe treats and holidays are "coming out of the kids' inheritance". It's strictly true. But your children don't just inherit money when you die — they inherit memories, experie…
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14 February 2020
If you engage a financial adviser, you might think the decision will leave you better off financially. Not necessarily. I often encourage clients to spend more, or point out they can afford to earn le…
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24 January 2020
Money is emotional, and rarely talked about candidly — which is a recipe for disaster. Borrowing from the sex-positivity frame: who cares what's "normal"? If someone's spending gives them pleasure, do…
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18 October 2019
"Wealth" isn't just about money, and "success" is personal. Don't over-complicate your financial life — make it boring so the rest of your life can be interesting. Everyone has a financial plan, wheth…
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11 October 2019
I love books that swing for the fences. The Last Safe Investment is one — a personal development book with a strong financial focus. I disagree with chunks of it, and the authors strawman mainstream a…
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16 August 2019
How would you invest if you were 60 with $5 million and spent $100,000 a year? Some of my clients in this position sit heavily in defensive assets. Others sit 80-90% in growth assets. Both are right —…
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12 July 2019
I have clients worth tens of thousands of dollars, and clients worth tens of millions of dollars. I find it much easier to advise clients with millions rather than thousands. As a general rule, the we…
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28 June 2019
The most valuable thing I do as a financial adviser isn't running numbers. It's having conversations. The right questions uncover what a client actually cares about, which is usually the hardest and m…
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14 June 2019
Kiwi personal finance forums are full of smart people endlessly debating which fund or platform is "best". I get frustrated with those debates, because they're operating in shades of good. Get your as…
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24 May 2019
Compound interest is magical, but there's a myopia around it. The Barefoot Investor and others lean on 10% annual returns to make the "start early or you're sunk" case — at 5% the chart looks very dif…
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17 May 2019
When it comes to money, I'm a "set and forget" kind of guy — one sign of a good strategy is that you can leave it alone. What you should review, every so often or when life shifts, is whether the plan…
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12 April 2019
I have tremendous faith in resourceful people. The clients who end up in a good position, financially and otherwise, tend to be resourceful — not because they started with much, but because they can s…
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5 April 2019
I'm very sensitive to conflicts of interest — I've built my own business specifically to avoid them. Which is why it might surprise you that I'm a strong advocate for commission as the way insurance a…
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22 February 2019
Warren Buffett is endlessly quoted about investing, but his most important lesson isn't about money. In a 2001 speech at the University of Georgia he said you measure success in life by how many of th…
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15 February 2019
My son is starting to get into video games. In many games, you can choose between "easy mode" and "hard mode". Sometimes I think we unnecessarily put our lives on hard mode, when we'd lead much more m…
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17 December 2018
Scott Pape, aka The Barefoot Investor, has a cult-like following on both sides of the Tasman. I like his values — he bats for the consumer and calls out things most people in the financial services in…
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15 October 2018
Australia's Royal Commission into financial services misconduct is worth New Zealand's attention. Two themes kept recurring in the interim report: dishonesty and greed. The commission also made clear…
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9 October 2018
The 4% rule says you can safely withdraw 4% of your retirement portfolio each year — so multiply your desired spending by 25 to get your number. I don't like it. Retirement planning is not the place f…
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14 September 2018
Paying off the mortgage ASAP is usually the smartest move — a guaranteed, tax-free, risk-free return. But I often recommend clients also put some excess income into investments: it builds liquid asset…
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31 August 2018
I'm raising my fees substantially — from $879 to $1,800 including GST. Writing this is a way of being transparent with readers and clients, and getting my head (and my feels) around the decision. $879…
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13 August 2018
Geoffrey Miller's book *Spent* has probably saved me thousands of dollars. Its central point — "the fundamental consumerist delusion" — is that other people care less about the products we display tha…
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16 July 2018
People sometimes tell me they don't want to take any risks with their investments. I have to tell them all investments have risks — even "safe" ones like term deposits and cash under the mattress. For…
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18 June 2018
Every so often I meet an insurance adviser who waxes lyrical on trauma insurance — there's something almost religious about it. In person, it's compelling. This article is an antidote. Trauma insuranc…
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20 May 2018
If the first thing you ask a financial adviser is where they get their research from, you're probably conflating two very different roles. Advisers work with clients; investment managers sit in front…
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11 March 2018
Most investment advisers in New Zealand charge asset-based fees — a percentage of your portfolio. On $1 million, that's typically around $9,000 a year, every year, with no obvious link to the work bei…
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8 March 2018
You're lazy sometimes. I know this because you're human. The trick is to use that laziness — or, more charitably, behavioural inertia — as a feature rather than a bug. Set things up once so wealth-bui…
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1 March 2018
Some high-level financial advice for 16-year-olds, and anyone who still feels young. The biggest investment in your early adulthood is in yourself. One of the best (or worst) financial decisions you'l…
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8 February 2018
The NZ news media keeps warning of "frightening" long-term consequences when people use KiwiSaver to buy a first home. This is a false dilemma. Owning a mortgage-free home by retirement is one of the…
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29 December 2017
Once you've captured the employer match and the Government contribution, the tangible benefits of putting more into KiwiSaver largely stop. So why does my wife contribute 8% of her income? Behavioural…
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15 December 2017
If you need personal insurance, it's tempting to go direct to an insurer or use a comparator like Life Direct. I don't recommend it. Policies look similar but differ in ways that matter: wording, excl…
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11 November 2017
Some links to interesting articles in published media such as The Press, The Sunday Star Times, and The Herald from recent months: John McCrone wrote a valuable article about "How to succeed at the re…
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29 October 2017
For most people, I recommend low-cost, index-based funds — don't try to beat the market, just make sure the market doesn't beat you. But the honest answer is that you *can* get better-than-market retu…
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2 October 2017
People often ask me what investment return they can expect. I wish I could give them a number. I can't. Nor can anyone else — historical outcomes for the exact same portfolio vary wildly depending on…
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26 September 2017
Innovation doesn't need to be revolutionary or technological. When people think "innovation" they think iPhones — but iterative change counts, and so does doing things differently. I'm allergic to bus…
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21 August 2017
If you've engaged a financial adviser, you'll be familiar with risk tolerance questionnaires — and robo-advisers lean on them even harder. Here's a dirty little secret: they're not nearly as valuable…
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17 August 2017
Retirement is often a euphemism for being displaced from the workforce — and involuntary unemployment is one of the few things with an enduring negative impact on life satisfaction. Career risk is rea…
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11 August 2017
The FIRE movement — financial independence, retire early — is alluring. The core lesson is simple: increase your savings rate, live frugally, and you can retire decades early. I'm sympathetic to it, a…
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30 July 2017
Excessive investment fees are "a tax on smart people who don't realise their propensity for doing stupid things" — a line from a Freakonomics episode that cuts close to how I think about my job as a f…
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12 July 2017
Deciding to marry — or enter a civil union, or slip into a de facto relationship — is one of the biggest financial decisions you'll make. Assets, debts, goals, kids, careers, pre-nups, spending habits…
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19 June 2017
Many insurance advisers provide terrific advice — but not always. Two red flags worth watching for: when the adviser has recommended the same level of life insurance cover for both you and your partne…
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15 May 2017
Many people don't think they have a financial plan. They're wrong. Even without clear goals or articulated strategy, you're acting as if you have one — maybe spending more than you earn, maybe skippin…
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5 May 2017
Money can buy happiness — we're just usually bad at spending it in ways that deliver. There's research identifying eight principles for spending in ways that actually make you happier: buy experiences…
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13 April 2017
Plenty of people are under-insured. But plenty are also over-insured — paying expensive premiums for cover they no longer need. Reducing cover is trickier than it sounds, and most advisers have financ…
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4 April 2017
For most people, I advocate investing in low-cost passive investments. Warren Buffett is probably a bigger advocate than me. He bet $500,000 that a low-cost S&P 500 index fund would beat a basket of h…
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27 March 2017
If you pick stocks, you aren't playing in a Little League. You're playing against the best full-time professionals in the world — the equivalent of stepping onto a tennis court with Federer, or a rugb…
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11 March 2017
Young professionals at the start of their careers face a genuinely different financial situation from people nearing retirement. Different circumstances, different needs, different objectives — which…
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14 July 2016
After working in Australia for ten years, I have a fair amount of money locked away in an Australian superannuation fund. As a resident of New Zealand, I have the ability to transfer these funds into…
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14 July 2016
Life insurance advice is almost cliche: if the client dies, they want the mortgage paid off. That's often the start and end of the conversation. But the mortgage is a red herring. The real question is…
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25 May 2016
Advisers don't add value by beating the market. Vanguard's 'Advisor's alpha' research points to the soft stuff — strategy, discipline, guidance — as where the real value sits. It's often underrated.
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24 January 2016
Paul Graham, having sold a startup and become wealthy, started paying attention to how fortunes are actually lost. Not through excessive expenditure — it’s hard to blow a fortune on luxuries without n…
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25 July 2015
Conflicts of interest are unavoidable in professional services — the question is how you manage them. Disclosure is the popular answer, but research suggests it can actually make advice worse, not bet…
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5 December 2014
Common advice is to save a fixed percentage of your income every year for retirement, starting as early as possible. It's reasonable in the abstract. But it doesn't really match how life actually work…
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14 November 2014
Online rating services for financial advisers are flavour of the month across the Tasman. There could be benefits — steering clients away from bad advisers, for instance. But the best-rated advisers p…