I’ve honed my ability to eat on the smell of an oily rag - often learning from readers’ tips. So I’m going to share those ideas. Not all work for everyone. But I find new ideas can be winners if I approach them with the ‘how can I make this work’ attitude instead of writing them off automatically. Read more >
Is it time for a health check of your KiwiSaver? Everybody should review their retirement savings every year or two. Sleepwalking is never good when it comes to finances.
Just be wary this year of assuming a balance below that of December 2021 means it’s a bad fund. Markets have fallen the world round over the past 12 months. A balance in the doldrums isn’t in itself a reason to worry. If, however, a fund is falling compared to equivalent funds, or your reaction to falling values is off the scale, then you might be in the wrong fund for you. Read more >
“Adulting is expensive”, my university student son messaged me after his first two weeks of flatting. I sit firmly outside the camp that thinks parents should pay for uni. Learning the hard way what life costs can be a very good lesson at a young age.
Teaching children early to stand on their own two feet financially is one of the best ways to help them learn to be financially stable. Make them pay uni and hall fees, and don’t hand them cash. Working part-time, budgeting and managing a student loan are all good for long-term financial smarts.
I’m not alone. I was having a breakfast meeting with the chief executive of a large corporate a couple of years prior to the pandemic, and wondered why the young waiter kept grinning in the direction of our table. It wasn’t until the teenager finally said, “Here’s your bill, Dad”, that it fell into place. The 17-year-old was getting up at 5am several mornings a week to save for uni. Dad, it turned out, felt strongly that his children needed to pay for their own uni and make their own way in life. I’m in the same camp.
For the record, his children, like my children, do, of course, have all the advantages of growing up in financially comfortable homes that didn’t lurch from one financial crisis to the next. They have role models of parents who have made their own way in life. What’s more, children from comfortable backgrounds will know innately that if they had a real emergency, family could help them out.
It’s for these reasons I think it’s more important for young people who have had it easy financially through childhood to learn to ‘adult’ on their own. Read more >
Cooking with meal kits is a great fast way to produce a tasty dinner. They’re a hell of a convenience.
But are they cheap?
Back in July, a press release landed on my desk from Canstar that said one in five meal kit customers say they believe they receive better value for money than if they had purchased their meals through a supermarket.
I’ve always wondered about the maths of meal kits. I suspected customers might be fooling themselves, served up with a dollop of confirmation bias - a mental shortcut studied by behavioural economists.
Challenge accepted, Canstar customers. I ordered four meals from HelloFresh and set out to weigh/measure the ingredients and price the meals, right down to the last teaspoon of olive oil and a quarter of a teaspoon of salt. Read more >
Forget pain at the pump or in the supermarket ... if you want to know something that really hurts to pay for, it’s aged care. Thousands of New Zealanders are paying $1350 or more a week for a very basic room in a care facility.
I’m not talking about retirement villages for able-bodied adults. Rest homes, dementia units, geriatric hospitals and similar facilities are places for people who have been assessed by government agencies as needing full-time care.
We are all at risk of eventually needing aged care if we make it to a ripe old age. That time in life can be very trying and most individuals and families have virtually no idea how the system works or what it costs. Read more >
Diana Clement is a money and careers writer for the NZ Herald.
