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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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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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17 December 2021
If you're actively thinking about your children's financial literacy, they're already lucky — that you care is more important than any specific tactic. I'm sceptical of both the Barefoot-style jam-jar…
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18 June 2021
It's easy to think you're either spending money or saving it. In reality, financial decisions rarely fall cleanly into one bucket. Businesses "spend" on wages and tools that are really investments in…
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7 May 2021
When I was an earnest young Catholic, I was fascinated with Saul turning into Paul on the road to Damascus. A lot of personal-finance writing follows the same arc — a moment of realisation, a total U-…
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25 September 2020
I'm not naturally frugal. I love spending money and buying stuff. I've never gone overboard with spending. Initially that was because it wasn't really an option. But as time has gone on, I've found my…
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12 June 2020
Every time I run the numbers, the cost of private secondary education stuns me. Retiring early is expensive too. Neither is wrong — just know what you're trading off.
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14 April 2020
When we look at our expenditure, it's easy to mix up day-to-day costs with capital expenses. It's common to make this distinction in business (Opex versus Capex) but it's valuable when it comes to our…
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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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13 December 2019
A personal allegory. On the surface it's about my long-running desire to own a Porsche Cayman. Underneath it's about having a clear-eyed perspective on your goals — the real, annualised cost of the th…
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22 November 2019
Frugality is great — if it's mindful, and aligned with your values. But focus purely on savings rate and you can miss the forest for the trees. My wife and I joke that you've got to spend money to sav…
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6 September 2019
File under: some terrible financial decisions can be great life decisions, and vice versa. Owning a bach is almost always the wrong call if you run the numbers — the opportunity cost on half a million…
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19 April 2019
"To be happy, buy experiences, not things." It's a compelling slogan and I've repeated it myself. But the more I think about it, the more I question it. Experiences aren't all equally rewarding, and s…
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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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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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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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17 June 2017
My wife and I own a wonderful house. We could have bought one for half the cost, halved the mortgage, and been financially independent years earlier. We made the decision with open eyes — we were prep…
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5 May 2017
If you lose the ability to make decisions, your spouse or parents can't just step in — someone has to apply to the Court, which means months of delay and thousands of dollars. An EPA avoids all that.…
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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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10 February 2017
Note: my views on this have evolved — I'm more comfortable with debt now and less inclined to treat a mortgage as an obstacle to investing. The original argument was that a 30-year term leaves too lit…
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29 July 2016
Two biases stop us saving: present bias (we weight now over later) and exponential-growth bias (we underestimate what a dollar today becomes). KiwiSaver's opt-out, locked-in design fights both.
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19 July 2016
When we think about spending, we focus on the discretionary stuff — coffees, clothes, takeaways. But it's the "fixed" costs that do most of the damage over the long run, and the two big ones are house…
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18 June 2016
Whenever you spend money, there are opportunity costs. You're using money you could have saved or spent on something else. The same goes for time. When you spend time on one thing, there are many othe…
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31 July 2015
When people prepare a will, they tend to think in terms of property, chattels, and financial assets. But your loved ones inherit far more from you than that. Memories, experiences, beliefs, values, wi…
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2 June 2015
The Millionaire Next Door has methodological holes — survivorship bias, a skewed sample, no control group. Take the findings with a grain of salt. But the core insight still lands: most of the people…
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19 February 2015
For most people, sudden wealth sounds like a dream — a lottery win, a liquidity event, a sports or entertainment payday, a big insurance cheque. There's a school of thought that you shouldn't play the…
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17 February 2015
Never borrow money to buy a car. Like all heuristics it has exceptions — genuine cheap finance, for one — but as a default rule it'll keep most people in better financial shape over the long run.