Our Thoughts
Starting a Home Budget: A Step-by-Step Guide
Creating and maintaining a home budget is crucial for financial stability and achieving your financial goals. If you’re new to budgeting, starting from scratch can seem overwhelming, but breaking the process down into manageable steps can simplify it…
Understanding Medical Costs and Insurance Options in New Zealand
Navigating the healthcare system can be complex, especially when balancing costs and coverage. In New Zealand, while the public healthcare system offers substantial support, private medical insurance can provide additional benefits…
Safeguarding Your Future: Protecting Your Income with Insurance
Securing your financial stability in New Zealand involves more than just managing your savings and investments. It also requires protecting your most valuable asset: your income…
Understanding the Importance of Having a Will
Planning for the future is a critical aspect of responsible financial management and ensuring peace of mind for yourself and your loved ones…
Understanding the Vital Role of Trauma Insurance
In New Zealand, when it comes to safeguarding your financial well-being against unforeseen medical emergencies, trauma insurance stands out as a crucial safeguard…
Why you should have a “Cash Cushion”... And an Emergency Fund
What is a Cash Cushion? A cash cushion is a balance kept in your bank account to eliminate your account going into overdraft or receiving dishonour fees because of insufficient funds…
Serious Illness: Most can’t Pay Rent, Mortgage within Three Months
In New Zealand serious illness is 2.6 more times more likely to strike than a serious accident putting an earner off work for six months or more…
Life's Profound Lessons
Life has many lessons. Some we continue to ignore and others can be profound. Our youngest daughter at the age of 11 taught me a profound lesson. She would randomly grab her fishing rod, tackle box, bait and knife and yell out ‘see you later’ and be off…
A Realistic look at Income Protection
Your ability to work is your single biggest asset. It’s your ability to earn money that gives you independence, freedom and the passport to lifestyle choices…
Remember to Live
Have you ever stopped and looked back on your week you have just had. Then wondered where it went and whether you achieved what you set out to achieve….
Who Pays when you can’t Work
If you are self employed, who pays you when you can’t work? Many people think ACC do. But they only pay for “accidental injury”…
5 Bad Money Habits and how to Overcome them
Some people earn a good living, but still struggle to get by. Just because they earn three or four times the average salary doesn’t mean they don’t struggle with their household spending…
If you already have Life Insurance you need to know about this
If you don’t have life insurance then you probably want to know about this… A pretty standard feature of most life insurance policies today is something that none of us really like to talk about: Terminal Illness Benefit…
Sometimes it is worth being in Debt
For most of us living a life without debt is almost impossible. Whether it is credit cards, student loans, or a mortgage, debt is just a part of life…
Teach your Children well - Money Tips for Kids
1. Guide and advise your kids about money, but don't dictate…
11 Habits to Control your Money
The following is a summary of the best tips for consumers from Dr Adrian Raftery, senior lecturer in Financial Planning and Superannuation at Deakin University…
Would you tell your Best Friend to go to Doctor?
If your best friend was showing some worrying symptoms but hadn’t taken themselves off to see a doctor, what would you do?…
When to Review your KiwiSaver Plan
KiwiSaver has rapidly become a “set and forget” savings strategy for many New Zealanders…
Do people really need Life Insurance
What are the chances….really? Well, the odds are pretty good for most of us that we will make it through our working lives, so that is good news!..
Why do people put off Financial Planning?
We are living in the “information age” and yet one of the recurring reasons give for putting off financial planning is “I don’t know where to get the right information”…