http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/ The latest Blog feeds from www.moneyworks.co.nz en-us Wed, 05 Aug 2026 12:18:42 +1200 Rocketspark http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/167519/you-cant-eat-bricks/ A client of ours described the moment clearly. She had reached her early sixties with an investment property, a bach, and a financial plan that had always assumed both would eventually look after things. Then she sat down and looked at what each one actually cost her every year. The numbers surprised her. Not in a catastrophic way. But enough to make her rethink.Property has an almost mythological status in New Zealand retirement thinking. If you own it, you feel covered. The asset is there, it ... Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post167519 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/166449/good-journalism-did-not-disappear-it-just-moved/ I have been reading Heather Cox Richardson since 2017, when she started posting on Facebook. Back then she was a history professor at Boston College writing about American politics through the lens of American history. The posts were long, carefully argued, and entirely without hype. They were also, depending on your appetite for American political drama, either essential reading or something you had to pace yourself with.She moved to Substack in November 2019, and I have read her almost every d... Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post166449 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/166374/managing-geopolitical-risk-in-your-investments/ The world has changed faster than most investment frameworks have caught up with. For most of our working lives, the rules were reasonably clear: the United States underwrote global security, developed countries were the safe end of any portfolio, and risk was something that happened in places further away. That picture is no longer accurate, and pretending otherwise is not a strategy.This article is not a forecast of what happens next. Nobody knows. But there are things we do know about how to ... Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post166374 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/166371/what-people-get-wrong-about-having-enough/ One of the questions that comes up most often in our work, sometimes asked directly, more often circling around the edges of a conversation, is some version of: how do I know when I have enough?It sounds like a numbers question. It almost never is.We work with people who are, by any reasonable measure, in strong financial positions, and who still feel a low-level unease they can't quite name. We work with others who have considerably less and feel genuinely settled about where they are heading. ... Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post166371 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/164516/words-matter-more-than-ever/ In law school, they taught us that words matter. Not just any words, the right words. The discipline of legal writing is built on that idea. Think about the last time you wrote to a company and actually got a useful response. It was probably not the longest letter you ever sent. It was the one where you stated clearly what had gone wrong, what you wanted done about it, and by when. The reader knew immediately what was being asked of them. That is not a lucky outcome. It is what happens when the ... Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post164516 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/160416/the-tech-bros-question/ Over the past year I’ve heard a new phrase in client meetings.“Tech bros.”It’s usually said half-jokingly. But not entirely joking.Behind it sits something more serious. A discomfort about where power sits in the modern economy, and what happens when a handful of individuals control companies with products used by billions of people.This isn’t about disliking innovation. Most of the people I work with are deeply pro-innovation. They run hospitals, engineering firms, research teams. The... Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post160416 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/166530/mindful-money-best-ethical-financial-adviser-2026/ Carey Church has won the Mindful Money Best Ethical Financial Adviser award for 2026, and we are proud of that. This is work we care about deeply, and recognition from Mindful Money, whose whole purpose is to hold the industry to account on this, means something real to us.Until last year, the award was given to a business rather than an individual. When it changed to an individual award, Rodger Spiller and Carey were named co-winners, which was significant. Rodger has been working in responsibl... Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:27:46 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post166530 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/160133/what-you-need-to-understand-about-retirement-villages-before-you-get-anywhere-near-one/ Retirement villages are often sold as a simple solution. Downsize the house, free up some capital, hand over the maintenance, and move into a community where people look out for each other. For a lot of families, it gets presented as the obvious next step.I want to push back on the word obvious.Retirement villages are one of the most complex financial and lifestyle decisions people make later in life. They sit at the intersection of housing, care, ageing, family dynamics, and money. And in my ex... Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post160133 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/162035/maybe-this-time-it-is-different-what-this-means-for-your-plan/ Last month we wrote about what came through at the Portfolio Construction Forum.Jonathan Pain’s argument that artificial intelligence will fundamentally change what human capability looks like. And Oliver Hartwich’s description of the slow unravelling of the institutional order that investors have relied on, often without realising it, for the past thirty years.It felt different to the usual ‘this time is different’ commentary. We stand by that.But we also said the right response is not ... Fri, 05 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post162035 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/162611/new-zealand-is-finally-getting-a-modern-slavery-bill-here-is-why-you-should-care/ Most people, when they hear the phrase modern slavery, picture something that happens somewhere else. In supply chains on the other side of the world. In countries with weak laws and weaker enforcement. Not here.That assumption is wrong.Modern slavery is not a historical term.It is a broad description for a range of practices where people are exploited, coerced, or controlled in ways that strip them of their freedom.Forced labour. Human trafficking. Debt bondage.Situations where someone is worki... Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post162611