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Welcoming a new team member - Grace

Grace joined Moneyworks as our Administration Manager in 2021 and works part-time.  While Millie Moneybot (our robot) does most of the routine administration, there are still a number of things that need to be done by a human, and Grace is helping us by taking the load off advisers, enabling them to spend more time with their clients and researching and analysing investments and financial solutions. Grace was previously the Office Manager at Cityside Properties,  where she looked after...

Sustainable Investing - Climate Change and human activity and how investing can help slow down change

At Moneyworks we use the shorthand terminology 'Ethical Investing' to cover a range of investing styles that can also be referred to as 'Sustainable', 'Responsible', 'ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance).  One of the main things that these 'ethical' investments have in common is that they are looking for investments that are long term, that will make our planet and environment, and human lives more sustainable and last longer.  There are a number of different ways that we can invest...

​ Banks being held responsible for fees, conduct and lending practices

Our banks are an integral part of our lives and pretty much hold us hostage with their fees and decisions, unless we choose to be part of the barter economy, or become self sufficient, we will always have to have an involvement with banks. Over the last year we have seen banks phase out cheques, close more branches, limit branch hours and replace humans with chatbots on line.  While we are active users of technology to make everyones lives more streamlined, some of these changes from the ba...

How to retire - well, how to get ready to change your life

Our byline on our logo is 'Helping you get to and through retirement - ethically'. Yes, this is mainly about making sure that you have enough money to enable you to retire, and that if something happens before you have enough money, that you have insurance to step in to make sure that you get to retirement.  When our clients engage with us and follow our advice, this side of retirement planning works. We have lost track of the number of conversations we have had with clients about the ...

Is your house properly insured - to take into account the rising costs of building in New Zealand?

Covid has seen many industries impacted by shortages - both of clients (tourist businesses), supplies and labour.  Finding a builder these days can be quite tricky, with long wait periods - because of labour shortages, but there are also materials shortages, because of shipping routes and global demand for building materials. It is easy to ignore this if you aren't planning on building or renovating (or going back to the drawing board if you are and the cost and time delays are too much), b...

Should New Zealand Superannuation continue to exist as it is?

Moneyworks was established in 1997, which was the same year that the referendum on compulsory superannuation was held as a result of Winston Peters negotiations to form a Government.  This referendum confirmed the role of New Zealand Superannuation as a political football – in 1993 New Zealand politicians had come up with a ‘cross party accord’ about the future of NZ Super (well, all politicians except for Winston).  That accord included the continuation of the superannuation sur...

Should adult children be able to challenge their parents wills?

You will have seen the headlines in the media about families at war over their parent’s wills.  The arguments of the Green family (https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/82480390/divorce-possible-in-family-of-business-magnate-hugh-green) , the saga of the Supreme Court Judge (Robert Chambers) and the issues with their blended families (https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/92972957/where-theres-a-will-theres-a-way-to-challenge-it), are just two examples of how the Courts have been u...

The Dow Jones turns 125 years old

If you have been investing for some time - even it has just been in KiwiSaver, you will know that markets go up and down in value depending on market events, but over time they do increase.  This is one of the things that we spend quite a bit of time talking to our clients (particularly newer ones) when markets go down. The human reaction when markets go down and you can't seem to see the upturn, is to pull all your funds out (which is the wrong thing to do if you are a long term investor, ...

Cyber Security issues and protections are getting far more important

As your financial adviser, we work with you to reach your goals, in particularly to get you to and through retirement - ethically (for those who want ethical investments).  But a big risk to your financial security is if you have a cyber attack or have your identity stolen. While identity theft has traditionally been something that you read about in books and articles in the USA, it definitely happens in New Zealand.  This article in the New Zealand Herald (which hopefully isn't paywal...

Abuse of people knows no limits

We all know the stories of people being abused within closed doors, and New Zealand has the Family Violence Act (was Domestic Violence Act) to recognise the harm that abuse incurs. Email and social media are common tools used by abusers, but it was shocking (to me) to hear about the latest tool - using the messages on bank statements to continually abuse people. This excellent article in the Sunday Star-Times recently investigated the issue, where abusers are transferring small amounts of money ...

Do you know what is in your insurance policy?

Fair Go and the media regularly cover situations where insurance companies don't pay out on a claim.  Having been an intermediary between insurers and the insured party for 25 years, we have seen very few claims not paid out. The key is to ensure that you disclose all relevant information (which can be more information than you might think, and it is our role to help you to do this when you are signing up for a life/trauma/health/income protection insurance policy) and that you un...

Some interesting things that we have read or listened to recently

This post is a little different, as it doesn't have a commentary on these articles, but they are interesting articles that might be worth a quick look at: How to dismantle the Absurd Profitability of Nuclear Weapons (2019, but still interesting)Boom: 88 KiwiSaver Funds invested in nukes.  & War of words over nukes Nicole Perlroth: they cyberweapons arms race (Podcast of interview with Kim Hill) - so interesting, Carey is reading the book. :  In her new book, This Is How ...

Ethical Investing Update

As we have signalled, we are working on a big project this year to become internationally certified as Ethical Investment Advisers, and to be able to provide our clients with certainty over what 'nasties' they have exposure to within their portfolio.  This is an update on where we are up to. UNPRI Academy and RIAA CertificationCarey has completed her United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment Academy Certification, and is now in the process of becoming Certified by the Responsible ...

No more cheques - technology has taken over

You may be aware that I am quite a fan of technology and adapt technological advances (in the belief that it will make my life easier, but we all know that technology brings its own challenges - it is always nice when it just works smoothly). Two months ago I destroyed all the cheque books that had been sitting at the bottom of my drawer unused for years as I prefer to use the phone app or online system for electronic payments. However, I am aware that many people are still more comfortable usin...

Stuffing up NZ Super - make sure you get it right

This blog post comes from an excellent article written by Rob Stock that highlights how easy it is to muck up your New Zealand Super entitlements.  Here is a link to the article. Some important points about making sure that you are aware of all your entitlements relating to NZ Super: 1. Check that you fulfil the residency tests for application for NZ Super.These residency tests have been static for many years, but there are mutterings that these might be changed in the future (to make the t...

Investment Markets - updated graph

From time to time fund managers put together a wallchart for their advisers to hang in our offices for clients to see what has happened in investment markets over time. We feel that it is more useful for us to provide this to you to review and wonder over.   To download a copy of this PDF - see the link below This wallchart, produced by Booster, one of our favoured KiwiSaver fund managers (particularly their Socially Responsible Investment KiwiSaver funds), is one of the best that we h...

Is your PIE tax rate too high - going forward you can get a refund

A subtle change to PIE tax rules was delivered behind the scenes, which benefits investors.  If you get your PIE tax rate wrong and overpay your PIE tax, you will get a tax refund going forward. Historically - since PIR rates (Prescribed Investor Rates) and PIE's (Portfolio Investment Entities) were launched in 2007 - if you under-stated your PIE tax rate you owed the IRD money, but there were no refunds if your PIE Tax rate was over-stated.  For the tax year ending 31 March 2019 ...

Tax issues end of 2021 Financial Year

We are coming up to the end of the 2021 Financial and Tax Year (on 31st March), and there are few things that we thought you should be aware of.   New Marginal Tax Rate from 01/04/2021If your income is over $180,000, from 01/04/2021 there will be a new marginal tax rate of 39%.  If this applies to you, please contact your adviser as it is important that your adviser has this tax rate set up properly on your investment portfolio.  You will also need to ensure that yo...

Buy now - pay later - what could go wrong? Well....

Showing my age, when I was a teenager, if I wanted to buy something, I needed cash, or I could do this thing called 'lay-buy'.  You found your item and the shop put it aside and you made regular payments.  When you had paid it off, you got to take the item home and enjoy it.  I purchased many items (clothes, music) by this method. Then came credit cards, debit cards, and now the 'retail phenomenon' of  'Buy Now - Pay Later'.  This fits in with the world of instant gratif...

Romance Scams and how to avoid them

There was a recent article in the New Zealand Herald (premium subscription) headed up ‘Catfished: Kiwi loses $840,000 to online romance scams’. This was the largest reported loss in a long term romance scam, but it is reported that nearly $19 million was lost to online fraud last year (to 30 June) at an average of $4,777.  But of course, this was only the reported amounts – a lot of people are embarrassed to report the losses. Surprisingly people aged 18-40 were involved with almost h...

Ethical Investing and New Zealanders opinions

very year Mindful Money – the New Zealand charitable trust created to help people monitor the ethical allocations of their New Zealand investments and RIAA (the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia) run a consumer survey to monitor peoples’ opinions on ethical investing. Over time the number of people who ‘care’ about ethical investing has increased, and continues to increase.  You can find the report here. Some of the highlights of the 2020 survey are: ·  &n...

Buying a property at auction - a personal experience

Call me old…. But I haven’t been involved with the purchase of a property for nearly 20 years.  Peter and I built our dream home in Cambridge, and loved the process, and sold our properties in Turangi (one by negotiation and the other by deadline treaty), but buying a house – nope, no modern day experience. Until a few months ago.  A family member decided to purchase a house in Cambridge – at the peak of the property market euphoria (well time will tell whether it was the ...

More financial scams about - BEWARE

This information is from the FInancial Markets Authority - and we are repeating the message in case we can save at least one person from being caught in a financial scam.  PLEASE pay attention to this and think carefully before engaging in any investments or financial opportunities. The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has reported a steep rise in the number of investment scams attempting to impersonate legitimate New Zealand businesses since the emergence of COVID-19.FMA research has also...

Three big changes in a post-pandemic world

This information is copied from a recent Fortune magazine newsletter that we received.  Given that 2020 has been a big year, we thought we would share the information with you - as an indicator as what is ahead in the next decade.Fortune - CEO Daily NewsletterAccenture CEO Julie Sweet has a unique window into what’s going on in the world of business. Her company serves hundreds of large companies in 120 countries, with a half million employees and more than $40 billion in revenu...

Generate KiwiSaver actively engaging in 'impact investing'

Moving towards an 'ethical approach to investment' for those of our clients that want this approach means that we are talking to our existing and future fund managers about how they are investing, and why, and making sure that there is substance behind their claims. We were impressed to see Generates' announcement that they were the cornerstone impact investor in The Salvation Army Community Bond. The Community Bond is a fixed interest, 5 year impact investment yielding 2.30% per annum and ...