#JustWondering, What's Your Money Story?

Everyone has a money story. We all grew up learning about money somewhere – whether we know it or not – and have a reason for the way we manage our money and/or invest it.

Remember when our parents told us to turn off the lights to save power? Or to have short showers because the house was on tank water? Yep, these are the subtleties that might just be influencing how we approach our finances today.

In light of Money Week kicking off next month and ahead of our NZ-wide roadshow, we’re taking the time to spotlight a few of our investors’ stories.

In a recent survey of 500 Kiwis, we found that 35.6% do not often speak to their friends and families about their financial position. Whilst this statistic is somewhat unsurprising, it highlights the need for everyone (us included) to continue to speak about our finances and empower others to do the same. So here are a few money stories from our very own investors;

A west Auckland local, Ged is investing to reach the goal of financial freedom – to him this means $5M invested by age 40 (more on how he got to this number in the blog below). Passionate about sustainable investing, Ged has learnt the hard way that picking individual stocks requires a lot of time, expertise, and discipline (hence why now chooses to invest in Kernel funds!).

Read Ged’s full money story

With ambitious goals and a growing family, Nathalie and Ross were looking at ways to diversify their portfolio while keeping their eyes on the long-term. Starting with property, they began to look for other ways to diversify and stumbled on index funds. Whilst overwhelmed by what felt like a steep learning curve to start, Nathalie & Ross are happy to have a portfolio that is starting to tilt more and more towards index funds – the less maintenance option compared to property.

Read Nathalie & Ross’ full money story

Whangarei-based Chris & Rosemary had never given much thought to investing...until lockdown happened. With newfound time on their hands, they began to learn more and improve their financial literacy. As a result, they reassessed what to do with their hard-earned savings, allocating a portion to building up an emergency fund, then focussing the rest on investing for the long-term through index funds.

Read Chris & Rosemary’s full money story

Ged, Nathalie, Ross, Chris and Rosemary’s stories all had a few common threads in their journeys. Here are a few of them:

1. Take the first step and start investing NOW. You know what they say...the best time to invest is not today or tomorrow – it was yesterday. What we actually mean by this is no one knows what the stock market or economy are going to do, so “timing the market” is just guesswork. There’s lots of research that proves this too.
   

2. Learn to earn! All three of the investor stories above mention their investment into themselves through learning more, and the dividends has paid in driving them towards action. Knowledge truly is power, so take the time to invest in your financial education. Start now with Kernel’s educational resources.

3. Keep things simple and focus on your life goals. It can be easy to overcomplicate investing and in turn not take action. Ultimately it comes back to your life goals and when you’ll need the money. This is what should inform how you create your financial goals and plan, not the other way around.

To celebrate Sorted’s annual Money Week we’ve teamed up with the Money Men to host an NZ wide series of events focused on opening up more conversations about money. Our theme of “#JustWondering, What’s Your Money Story?” invites everyday Kiwis to join in sharing about their journeys with money, whilst hearing about ours and a few local guest speakers too.

We’d love for you to join us in encouraging more conversations about this Money Week – click below to find an event near you.