All by Ruth
To my surprise, I’ve chalked up five years of writing this blog! And I can’t quite believe it. I thought I’d blog today about what I’ve learnt, observed and what it’s like to write a blog because there is not a single day that has gone by that I’ve not emailed or spoken with someone about what I tend to refer to with my whanau and friends as ‘blog stuff’.
At the start of 2021, Jonny and I decided that we wanted to increase our generosity and that we wanted to provide some financial support to ‘someone, somehow’. We felt that the time was right to do so and that with a bit of planning and juggling of our finances we could and should make it happen this year. So a few weeks ago we made an exciting move to start The Happy Saver Tertiary Scholarship. And before you start to wonder, no, I am not about to ask you for money! It’s quite the opposite, we are giving some of ours away.
The title of this blog post will have invoked a response in you or either: What an entitled brat! OR How did she afford that? Stick around for the breakdown though and you might just learn something that you can use in your own parenting journey. Or not, you decide. But I’m pretty sure your teenager won’t want you to read this post!
Well well well, the time has finally come for this long term investor to divest herself of some shares. Say what?! I claim to be a ‘buy and hold’ investor, so what gives? Have I fallen on hard times you ask, or maybe Jonny and I have retired at last? Ah, thankfully, no and unfortunately, no not yet.
In my email I wrote last week to all of the fabulous people who subscribe to my blog, a decent number of people got in touch to thank me for the prompt I gave them to look at their own KiwiSaver before the 30th of June. So I thought I would do a quick blog post this week, using my own KiwiSaver statement as an example to show everyone how you can make sure you have contributed enough to your own KiwiSaver by the end of June to get the full government contribution of $521.43.
I’ll cut to the chase for those looking for a five-second read: I loved it. Mary has taken the best letters from her newspaper column and worked them into a book. In each letter, the writer asks a short question about an issue they are having that involves personal finances. Mary then gives a concise and well-rounded reply. This makes it a book you can pick up and put down, just taking in a bit at a time.
This is a blog post about all the investing “What if’s”. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if you bought shares in a company when you first heard about it, but you didn’t do it? And you find yourself years later saying “oh, I NEARLY bought that stock, but I didn’t…” Now you are wondering what even happened to the company share price and what WOULD have happened to your own net worth IF you had actually purchased some?
Whatever it is that you are embarking on that’s always the best place to start in my opinion. The beginning. Then just follow the path, in my case, the path to financial independence and eventually not being tied to a job to earn my income. It’s a long journey but it’s one worth starting. I’m often writing emails that cover the same points over and over again, so I thought that today I’d put that information into a blog post for all of the people wondering where to start and how to string all the bits of information you have learned about money into a cohesive order.
With our house prices continuing to climb, more and more pressure is going on first home buyers to save up the large deposit they need to buy a house. This is hardly news to you I know and this blog post is not really aimed at those of you who are poised and on the cusp of buying your first home, instead, it’s aimed at your far younger children, siblings, nieces, nephews and friends who might also want to both buy a home one day AND retire.
