“My first memory of money is when my dad got made redundant.”
Gower’s father worked at the power station in New Plymouth and he recalls its evolution into a State Owned Enterprise.
“I remember Dad would go to work one day in the white New Zealand Power Board overalls. He’d ride his 10-speed down to the power station to go on to the night shift, and then he came back another day with the flasher Electric Corp maroon overalls, as it had changed across to a state enterprise.
“Eventually he took redundancy there and I remember he came home with a cheque,” Gower recalls.
“We had the cheque in the lounge and it was quite a lot of money at that time... tens of thousands of dollars.
“We, my sister and I, sort of looked at it and, you know, it was a lot of money, but also, I guess my dad was out of work and, and looking to do, looking to do something new. So if there’s one kind of defining thing, it was that day really.
“When I was at university, I really struggled to kind of keep things balanced. And even when I was older and I was, I was living in London on my OE in my twenties, and I wasn’t earning that much, I really struggled to stick to a budget.
“That’s just translated to just generally being crap with money. I’m probably the worst with money that has ever been on this podcast.”
Gower, who no longer drinks alcohol, recalls one big night when his sister had to bail him out.
“I was downtown at the Mill in New Plymouth, partying, and I ran out of money and my house was quite close and I came back and had to sneak in, wake my sister up and borrow some money off her so that I could go back and buy some beers,” he says. “I’ll pay her back one day.”
Gower’s ambivalence to wealth is reflected in his favourite song about money: Money Don’t Matter 2 Night, by Prince.
“It doesn’t really matter in the end, for me. You know, other stuff does, you want everyone to be safe and secure and have a roof over their head. People will listen to this and go: who is this guy? But that’s just my vibe.
“It’s not like I’m some died-in-the-wool lefty or anything like that. I’m, I’m actually not.”
Gower says that through “a bit of good management and good luck” and focusing on his career, he’s been able to get to a financially secure position.
“I’m paid pretty well for what I do and I love doing what I do. It manages to bring in enough money that I don’t bankrupt myself, which, from previous iterations of my life was quite possible.
“It’s not that I’m a spend thrift,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve got heaps or anything.
“People do think that because you’re on TV that you are rich.”
Gower points out that he drives a beat-up old Toyota Corolla ... “with a dinged wing mirror and, quite a lot of mud and stuff in it from my dog”.
“This kid came up to me the other day and said: ‘I expected you to be driving a Porsche.’ And the kids, in particular, say, do you live in a mansion?” he says.
“I don’t drive a Porsche. I don’t live in a mansion. But people do expect you, expect you, because you’re on TV, to be really, really wealthy. I don’t know whether it’s because they link it to like movie stars or something like that, but it is just not like that.”
Listen to the full interview with Patrick Gower here
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. You can follow the series on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes will be back later this year.
