What is your net worth? $1,700,000 (not counting liabilities like cars, boats etc.)
At what age did you become a net worth millionaire? Around 33 I would guess
How did you accumulate your net worth, what are you invested in? High income job, low expenditure household! Mainly invested in a lifestyle block which we have just zeroed the mortgage on. Before learning anything about personal finance this was our sole focus. Australian superannuation scheme.
What was your highest average household WEEKLY income after tax? $8,000 (boom times, long hours and a good exchange rate!)
What is your career? Engineering
Do you have children? YES
Do you have a tertiary qualification? YES
Did you inherit any of your money? YES
If YES, how much did you inherit? $50,000 just this year
What's the approximate value of your house? $1,300,000 (lifestyle block-house is a small proportion of the value)
Are you debt free now? NO
If NO, how much debt do you have and what is it for? Depends how you look at it, we still have our offset mortgage available (handy for those big expensive provisional tax bills and being able to put everything on the credit card and still zero it each month)
Are you in KiwiSaver? YES
Were you taught about money? YES
If YES, how were you taught? Good = Taught that if you couldn’t pay cash, then you couldn’t afford it! Bad = that shares are just pretend money and not productive things that you should worry about!
What is the most enjoyable thing you do with money? Haha, so far it has been watching the debt decrease!
Do you use your money or your time to help others? NO
What is your greatest financial win? Meeting my wife who had a much better attitude to money than I had! I don’t think either of us would be where we are currently if we weren’t working together.
What is your worst financial mistake? Probably not learning/investing earlier (in terms of missed returns), but we lost about 10% on our first house as we sold it in a down market but needed/wanted the equity out of it to go on our (much larger) lifestyle block mortgage.
What advice do you have for others? Learn, learn, learn! There is so much great information out there once you just start looking (but if you’re reading this you probably already are!)
What is the point of having a net worth above $1,000,000. What does it mean to you? 1 mill ain’t what it used to be! But it does give you a great sense of security and peace of mind.
Finish these sentences:
If you want to build wealth do this… Spend less than you earn
If you want to build wealth avoid doing this… Watch out for lifestyle creep