Caroline Ritchie
In September 2005 I sat down in an office at Forsyth Bar in Napier and penned my first piece for the Hawke's Bay Today newspaper.
It was about wool equities.
After writing a very serious introductory paragraph it became apparent that for me, a dry-as-cardboard style was never going to be the way of the future for my articles.
Waltz on over to the other thousands of weighty, deadpan studies about investing if you want that, I thought, as I attempted to make a printable sheep joke.
So for just under 12 years, with a small break in the middle, I have subjected readers to a weekly first person narrative about personal finance.
As I perch now in my home office, writing this last column, I want to tell you why.
When I first started out in sharebroking, it was with a computer screen, a telephone and a book containing exactly zero clients.
Some crazy cat wonderful upper manager at Forbar had taken a chance on my 24-year-old self.
My colleagues were cool and egalitarian and the company was fab, but when the phone rang, or I rang it, nobody would talk to me.
I had all the game, the info, the analysis, but "Gimme a bloke in a suit with a few grey hairs" was the perpetual refrain.
It was never going to be enough to be better, or more qualified, in a starkly grey field cluttered with faceless pinstripe trouser suits.
It was going to take something quite different. A real life personality. Tangibility.
So, over the years, you have had to hear about my getting married, getting divorced, jumping my horses, crashing my bike and almost falling off chairlifts.
You've been introduced to Cycle Dad and Hunt Mother.
I've chucked evolutionary psychology in there, and some cognitive quirks, and made more than a few dangerously close double entendres.
Those listening closely will also realise that over the last eight months-ish I've been writing about a quiet love affair with the long-suffering active fund manager who lives in my house, disguised as an investment column.
And the reason I put all that stuff on all those pages was not actually to tell you about me, 100 per cent real though the events were.
It was an attempt to give investing and the share markets a more approachable visage.
It was always going to be business-lite and Ms Ritchie-heavy on the back page.
It was an experiment to see if shares could be viewed in a friendlier beam, the advisory industry could seem less elitist and to give DIY investors an outside chance to be more confident with their portfolios.
So I poked fun at the markets and the players. I poked a hell of a lot of fun at myself.
The purpose was to inject a little humanity into things.
It did obviously work for the clients who came through my door because of it, and the professional referrers who sent their charges to me.
To them, thank you, you made my career.
For those of you whom I never met, good on you for reading.
After 13 years, and trying to escape twice, I am now leaving finance for good.
On my own terms, with a plan in mind, and excited for the future.
I hope you have all enjoyed the show, I had a wonderful time narrating it.
* Caroline Ritchie is now permanently retired from financial markets and is off on a two-year intellectual odyssey, heading back into post-graduate stuff on various topics which really spin her wheels.