Nigel Latta talked to Liam Dann for an episode of Money Talks in May.
Nigel Latta, who passed away this week, was a good friend.
I was thrilled he agreed to talk to me for the Money Talks podcast, but I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Although he was a new friend and although he was sick, he was determined to help me out by doing the interview.
What I learned about Nigel in the few years I knew him was that he had an immense passion for helping people achieve their goals.
He loved seeing friends make things and do things. He seemed as passionate about the success of his friends as he was about his own.
Earlier this year, he did one of those radio interviews where you get to choose your three favourite songs between the talking. All three of his song choices were for his friend’s local indie band.
He knew this was the chance to give them the publicity he felt they deserved.
He was equally enthusiastic in promoting my book when it came out, and after seeing me deliver a speech, he encouraged me to get out and do more public speaking.
He was a very kind man.
He also had some very wise things to say about money, health and how to make the most of your time on this planet.
So, for that reason, it seemed appropriate to resurface his Money Talks episode this week.
Liam Dann
This article originally ran in May with Nigel Latta’s episode of the Money Talks podcast.
In September last year, TV presenter and psychologist Nigel Latta announced he had incurable cancer and only had a few months to live.
Reliving the moment of diagnosis on the Herald’s Money Talks podcast, Latta said his brain became “unglued” by the news.
And then he called someone unusual.
“The first person I called was my insurance adviser ... before anyone else in the world because I thought, how the hell am I gonna pay the mortgage and how am I gonna pay the bills and I can’t work anymore?”
The experience had a lasting impact on Latta.
“I’ve become a huge advocate of insurance. [My wife] Natalie and I, everyone [who] comes over, we just grill ’em; have you got health insurance, check your assurance, have you got income protection?”
In his decades-long career as a clinical psychologist, including fronting a dozen TV shows, money and personal finance have come up several times, including on his TVNZ1 series Mind Over Money.
However, his experience with cancer has put things into perspective.
“After you take care of the basics and you can pay the bills and feed the kids and do all that kinda stuff, [money] doesn’t matter. I’d trade anything to be free of the whole cancer cloak.
“The money stuff literally doesn’t matter to me. What matters is time. Money buys me time because insurance has meant that I’ve been able to get access to some of those drugs and, literally, I think I’d be dead now if I hadn’t been able to do that.
“What matters is time with people you love, that’s the most important thing.”
He does have one bit of advice for people who are betting big on a winning Lotto ticket for their financial success: “I think I’ve bought them about once or twice. To me ... Lotto feels like you’re giving up. If your financial plan is Lotto, you’ve given up, and so you need to kind of get a better financial plan.”
As a psychologist, he can understand the appeal.
“I think it’s just that immediate thing. We’re really good at imagining spending the money and what it would be like and the rest of it, and we don’t imagine the vast swimming pool full of ping pong balls.
“And actually, you’re better off putting that $5 towards paying down some expenses or buying a coffee or anything.”
Now cancer is on the back burner, Latta is refocusing on his passion for writing and on providing sound advice to make people’s lives easier.
His latest venture is Parentland, an app he has been developing for several years that is designed to give people advice personalised to their kids’ development and their temperament.
“So if you’ve got a stubborn 9-year-old, that’s different to an easy-going 5-year-old. Yeah. And so the way that you get those two kids to go to bed at a time that works for everyone is going to be different.
“And so we’ve kind of been able to take that kind of secret sauce of how to do that and put that into an app.”
There’s a lot of evidence-based material in the app, Latta said, lamenting the vast range of artificial intelligence-based material available that some parents are relying on.
“This is a thing I’ve been working on for, I don’t know, it really has been kind of 20 years. A lot in the last 10 years and intensively over the last six, and [I’ve] put thousands of hours into this thing.
“But I think it’s really good and I think it can be helpful for people, and we’re deliberately pricing it low so that as many people as possible can get access to it.
“We don’t want it to be something that only people with tons of money can afford. It’s like less than a coffee a week.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from Nigel Latta.
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics – it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.