NZ Wealth & Risk - money for thoughtful Kiwis
Consumer NZ is paving a road to hell with good intentions with the way it talks about personal insurance, and especially personal insurance advice. I’m a big fan of Consumer NZ. I pay for membership to access its research and to support its mission.I’ve benefited from Consumer’s guidance when purchasing big ...
Lots of people reassess their insurance arrangements after repaying their mortgage. That’s fair enough. It’s a significant financial milestone. A lot of people also associate insurance with debt — it’s common for people to arrange insurance around the same time they take out mortgages (and it’s often the same people ...
Being a parent is a huge responsibility.We want the best for our children. When they leave the nest, most of us want to have some comfort knowing that they’re well-equipped to be happy, independent, productive people.Part of this picture is being able to make sound financial decisions.As a result there ...
Sometimes, for some people, the smart thing isn’t to maximise the probability of success.Sometimes, it pays to do things that are more likely to fail – where you’ll probably lose money or get nothing for you time. If there is the possibility of a big payout. And you’re in a ...
Most of the books above are fictional – in the sense that they don’t technically exist (outside of my mind or this blog). Today, I want to share Devil's avocado: On giving advice. (I often refer to myself as a "devil's avocado". I define it as "a devil's advocate, but ...
Most of us want to feel financially secure. How we feel about our financial situation is highly personal. Quite often I speak with people who are worth millions of dollars but are concerned about their financial security. Other times I speak with people who are focused on a certain figure ...
The idea that there is one specific way to invest, or to manage your financial affairs, is kind of weird. This might seem like I’m contradicting myself, since when I prepare advice for clients, I prepare a report with specific recommendations for where and how to invest. Similarly, I often ...
Lately, I’ve been joking that I often feel more like a biographer than a financial planner. I now wonder whether that’s really a joke, or actually the truth. The reason I started saying this was because when I prepare reports for clients, the sections of the report I spend by ...
To my mind, financial planners offer four distinct investment services. These services have traditionally been offered as part of a single package, for good historical reasons. For a lot of people, the bundling of all these services together is ideal, and this service model will continue even though the historical ...
If you’re interested in becoming a financial adviser, this article is my attempt to provide some initial thoughts and breadcrumbs. Background to this article Quite a few people ask me about becoming a financial adviser. In the last couple of months, almost as many potential advisers have reached to me ...
There are many different types of “financial adviser.” You may think you want to engage a financial adviser. Or you may wonder whether it’s worth engaging a financial adviser. That’s great! But what type of financial adviser do you have in mind? Unfortunately, the term “financial adviser” is very broad. ...
I recently celebrated Fairhaven Wealth’s third birthday. I’ve been reflecting on the past of the business, and its future. In this article I’m going to share some of my thoughts. The early days I founded Fairhaven Wealth in 2017. My first day working on the business coincided with my son’s ...
I’m going to wear my “futurist” hat and make a prediction: In the future, there will be a boom industry of people who are paid to have one-off conversations. In a sense, these people will be professional conversationalists. People with means will pay other people to have one-off conversations with ...
If you decide to engage a financial adviser, you might think that the decision would make you better off financially. That’s not necessarily true. I was chatting with some clients recently and had a weird realisation. I realised that for many of my clients, engaging with me is likely to ...
This week I gave a 30-minute presentation to a group of engineers. I talked about investing and insurance, while emphasising the importance of making financial and lifestyle decisions that are in line with YOUR circumstances, needs, and objectives. If you’re in the Christchurch area and have a group who would ...