http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/ The latest Blog feeds from www.moneyworks.co.nz en-us Sat, 19 Sep 2026 20:15:00 +1200 Rocketspark http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/167588/seventy-is-the-new-fifty/ The clients we have worked with for twenty-five years or more are sometimes the most instructive. Many of them do not feel much different from when we first met them. They have left full-time work, but they have not left the picture. A number are consulting two or three days a week. Some moved into governance roles after finishing their main careers and have stayed there for a decade or more. We have clients in their seventies who have ridden the Tour Aotearoa more than once.This is not anecdote... Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post167588 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/166450/why-we-give-the-way-we-give/ There was a story in the Cambridge News earlier this year about a local man with significant physical disabilities who gets around on a mobility scooter. His scooter has been breaking down. People in his community noticed, and someone started a fundraiser to get him a new one. That story stuck with us, not because it is unusual, but because it captures something that feels increasingly rare in the way we think about giving: someone saw a specific need, told the story honestly, and asked for help... Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post166450 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/post/169316/reflections-on-africa/ Peter and I have just returned from five weeks in East Africa. Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Zanzibar to finish, travelling with The Safari Company https://www.thesafaricompany.co.nz/.I want to get the plug out of the way early. If you are thinking about a trip like this, use them. Their knowledge of Africa, the countries, the people, the politics, was streets ahead of anything we could have organised ourselves, and it changed the trip completely.There were 16 other people in our group, a... Thu, 27 Aug 2026 13:13:14 +1200 http://www.moneyworks.co.nz/blog/#post169316 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/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/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/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