Te Kahukura Boynton wants to be a millionaire by age 25.
The 21-year-old founder of Māori Millionaire, a platform educating people, particularly rangatahi Māori, on how to achieve financial freedom, just published a book, Māori Millionaire: A beginner’s guideto building better money habits.
Building wealth but failing to live an authentic Māori life is a false goal, she told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
“One of the biggest things that people have said about this is that money isn’t a Māori concept, and I actually agree, it’s not something that our tupuna had – money.
“If I was say a millionaire, but I was still very much struggling with my health, with food addiction, all of these different things, the money would just come in and then it would go out on all of these addictions.”
Te Whare Tapa Whā, a model developed by Sir Mason Durie resonates with her, she says.
“It speaks about the holistic approach to health, our hinengaro, our mental health, our physical health, our spiritual health, our social health, when these areas are in alignment, we’re more likely to be able to focus on building wealth, on increasing our income and having the energetic capacity to do these things.”
Te Kahukura Boynton aims to become a millionaire by 25 through culturally grounded financial education. Photo / Supplied
She has overcome problems in her own life by changing one small thing at a time, inspired by James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, she says.
“I was feeling like there were all of these bricks weighing me down and there were so many different areas of my life I needed to improve, I was 183kg at my highest.
“I was smoking weed all hours of the day. And I realised that through this book that I didn’t need to focus on 100 things that I needed to work on. I just needed to focus on one small key thing that I could do.”
Her first commitment was to walk for five minutes a day, she says.
“I would walk to the end of my road and back. And I got so puffed out doing this, but what this taught me was that I could commit to doing something I said I would do.
“This built confidence, and this built the momentum of ‘I’ve done it for one day, I’ve done it for a week, now I can do it for longer’.”
These kinds of habit-changing activities flowed into other areas of her life, she says.
“If you’ve got proof in other areas of your life, then you’re more likely to actually transfer that belief that you can do what you said you would do into these other areas.
“So, I think that starting small and actually doing something you can commit to, sticking with it, and over time, this is just going to literally transform your life as it has mine.”
Māori Millionaireis published by Penguin New Zealand.
