This week, there is intense talk about Jonny's career in our home. It has been a topic of discussion for some time now, but things are hotting up! I am encouraging him to make 2023 a “work optional” year. This blog post is not just about Jonny, though, I have a close friend contemplating the same thing, and I’ve spoken with many people of various ages and stages of life on my Phone A Friend calls who are considering a grown-up gap year too.
Today I’m sharing a practical example of why it might be worth investing weekly instead of monthly and moving from Smartshares to InvestNow to enable that. I’ve met many lovely people via my blog, few more lovely than Dale and Dean. We have been emailing back and forth for three years, and they recently let me know of a significant change they have made to how they invest. With their permission, they have let me share it.
Back in June of 2017, I wrote a blog post called Insurance (YAWN), and in it, I talked about what insurance we had and what policies we were dropping because we had reached a point where we could self-insure. This blog post is a quick insurance update to explain why we continue to shed insurance policies and show you that it's worth reviewing your insurance from time to time and whether the cover you have is appropriate for your current life stage.
Over the last 22 weeks, Jonny and I have been doing a bit of life admin that relates to the Christchurch earthquakes. Remember them? We have been working our way through a top-up of our original insurance claim. Recently, this claim paid us out $68,082.50. It’s a significant sum of money which we were grateful to receive. Today I just wanted to share with you why we came to receive this money and what we will do with it.
Do you like my dramatic title? Does it make you nervous? Don’t be. This week I was given the ultimate compliment. Someone said, “I like hearing what you have to say, Ruth. You have common sense”. It seems to me that every investment provider is telling me not to panic at the moment. Common sense tells me there is no need to; volatile times come and go, but hearing it so often repeated gives my common-sense approach a run for its money and makes me wonder if I should be concerned?
The weather turned cold here last week, a perfect time to read one of the many personal finance books I have on my ‘need to read’ list. Reading the latest book by Martin Hawes coincided with people mentioning the book in emails to me. Hearing good things meant it rose to the top of my reading pile.
I believe it is essential that we don’t just teach our tamariki to ‘save’, but we teach them to become ‘investors’ as well. That’s where the money is to be made over time. Since taking part in the Sharesies Kids and Investing webinar, one conversation thread has stayed with me. It was about whether it is worth signing your tamariki up to KiwiSaver or not. I am firmly in the YES camp.
Recently, a question came in via email asking, “how do you calculate your savings rate, please, Ruth?”. I thought it was a question worth elaborating on with a blog post. First up, why even take the time to work out how much you are saving? Put simply, the higher your savings rate, the faster you will have saved up enough money to retire or make going to work entirely optional.
I have a shelf dedicated to personal finance books that I actually enjoyed reading. The books that live there are the ones that I often refer to, and I’m pretty particular about the books I keep for future reference. I have to LEARN something from them, or there is no point keeping them around. They also need to pass my stringent ‘sleep test’. If I fall asleep reading them, it’s not a good sign. I’ve recently bought several new release personal finance books that I’ll review once I’ve read them, but today I wanted to give you a heads up on the one I’ve just finished.
