Making Cents

Five minutes could be enough to add hundreds of thousands of dollars more to your KiwiSaver. There are simple, low-hanging fruit changes that can mean serious money landing in your account - but simple changes cut both ways. There are costly traps to avoid, and easy tweaks to your settings that can make a massive difference to your balance over time. This week on Ask the Experts, Katie Wesney from...

What if the home buying rules you think are holding you back don't actually exist anymore? Between outdated advice, myths about needing massive deposits, and the fear of trying to buy on a single income, it is easy to assume you are locked out of the property market before you even start. The truth is that many old lending rules have expired, and with the right strategy, getting into your first ho...

Frances Cook joins the TVNZ Breakfast team to explain excuseflation, the trend of businesses using wall to wall inflation headlines as cover to hike their own prices, and what you can actually do to fight back. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz TikTok / https://www.tiktok.com/@francescooknz Join the Money Mem...

Is your Afterpay habit hurting your financial future and stopping you from hitting big life goals like buying your first home? Every financial decision leaves a digital footprint, and banks and mortgage lenders use that data to check your creditworthiness, spending habits, and loan affordability. But with so much scaremongering and myths around credit scores in New Zealand, it's easy to panic. Thi...

What if financial independence is something you could build for yourself, before you even hit 40? Katie and Alan Donegan did exactly that. No lottery win, no trust fund, just a determination to live simply, stack their cash, and build a life where they didn't have to answer to anyone else. They retired at 35 and 40, and now travel the world while running Rebel Finance School, a free money course t...

Frances Cook joins the Seven Sharp team to unpack a coin flip experiment that reveals how Kiwis think about risk and money, and why we will happily put it all on red but get nervous about the kinds of risk that actually build wealth. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz TikTok / https://www.tiktok.com/@francesco...

Renovating to add value is the dream, but overcapitalising is the nightmare that can turn your dream reno into a costly mistake. So how do you tell the difference before you've spent a single dollar? This week's Ask the Experts letter comes from a homeowner who badly needs more space and is weighing up an extension to their house. Vanessa Williams from realestate.co.nz joins Frances to pull back t...

Time to fact-check the mortgage advice taking over social media, and see what actually holds up. Mortgage adviser Aaron Cattell (aka The Mortgage Man) is ready to go myth-by-myth through the mortgage advice doing the rounds online, and find out what actually survives contact with someone who does this for a living. We cover: The "pay a dollar a day" trick, the viral claim that resets your mortgage...

Frances Cook joins the TVNZ Breakfast team to share her favourite apps and websites for cutting power bills, saving on groceries, eating out for less and upskilling for free, all with as little effort as possible. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz TikTok / https://www.tiktok.com/@francescooknz Join the Money...

"Excuseflation" is the secret reason your groceries, petrol and power keep going up. Why did butter come down a third in global price... and only drop two cents on the shelf? Why does petrol rocket up in a day but crawl back down for months? There's a name for this: excuseflation, when real inflation gives businesses cover to hike prices for no real reason at all. In this episode, financial journa...

You sent in your KiwiSaver questions, time for us to answer them. KiwiSaver is one of the biggest financial tools most New Zealanders have, but just a few changes can mean tens of thousands of dollars more for you. Personal finance journalist Susan Edmunds, author of the new book Your KiwiSaver Questions, Answered, is on the Making Cents podcast and ready to sort it out. In this episode: The most...

Frances Cook joins Jim Mora on RNZ Sunday Mornings to talk through whether financial independence is actually achievable for ordinary people and how to make it work on your own terms, followed by a run through the latest money news including the AI bubble, rising rates and what is happening in the housing market. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / h...

Most parents want to give their kids a softer landing than they had. But what if the soft landing is the problem? This week's letter writer has done everything right, on paper. Bills covered. Kids never stressed about money. An investment account quietly building in the background, for a nice surprise one day. But with the kids about to fly the nest, they're rethinking whether thiswas the right ta...

It’s time for the ultimate budget hacks to save money on food, petrol, and life. Because a good budget should help you keep your cash for the fun stuff. Today we’re pulling together the best tips and tricks from past Making Cents guests, so you get just their best moment on how to save money, from groceries, to apps, subscriptions, banking, food costs. Chris Schulz breaks down the money-saving app...

Frances Cook breaks down why the most popular index fund strategy in the world may not be spreading your risk the way you think, what history tells us about industries that have dominated the market before and what to do if the current AI concentration concerns you. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz TikTok /...

The difference between long-term travel being the best decision you ever make and a very expensive mistake usually comes down to one thing: whether you had a plan. This week on Ask the Experts, Frances Cook and Georgia Grange, head of Revolut NZ, answer a letter from a twenty-something who wants to take a couple of years to travel properly, but without going into debt or derailing their finances....

There's a belief that's almost a religion to some people: buy a home, hold onto it, pay off the mortgage, and you're financially sorted. More often than not, it's not true. And if you let that belief guide you, you could miss real opportunities for building wealth, because you feel like you're ahead when you're actually not. Janika ter Ellen knows this better than most. She's a property reporter f...

If it feels like getting a pay rise is harder than ever, you're not imagining it. But even in a tough market, there are strategies that work, and people using them to get ahead. Frances Cook is joined by University of Auckland senior lecturer Dr Kenny Ching, MyCareerBrand career coach Kaela Hindle, and Side Hustles NZ founder Rachel Mills to break down how to actually earn more in this environment...

The highest number of June listings just hit the NZ property market, since 2020. But the impact isn’t what you would think. Despite the flood of listings, prices haven't moved. Nationally, prices have barely moved in three and a half years, even as listings pile up. The picture also varies sharply depending on where in New Zealand you're looking, with wide swings across regions, within that nation...

There’s nothing quite like starting young. But most of us don’t build a business before we can vote. Never mind several of them. Hamish Sutherland is 17 and already on his fourth business. He felt the spark to get ahead early on but turns out it’s hard to get a job when you’re eight. Rather than let a tricky thing like employment law hold him back, he just started his own business instead. By 13,...

With the OCR on the rise and inflation heading up again, Frances Cook joins the TVNZ Breakfast team to explain why the safest place for your money depends entirely on when you need it and why bank accounts are not always the answer. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookNZ Instagram / https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz TikTok / https://www.tiktok.com/@francescoo...

Free Power Forever? The Real Cost, Payback Time, and Battery Truth on Solar in NZ 18 months ago, I spent $89,000 on home solar and an electric car. I told you about it, and was flooded with questions on how this could work for other people. (You can listen to the previous episode from 1 April, titled "I Spent $89,000 on Solar And Electric Car In NZ… Was It Worth It?") This episode is the follow-up...

Why do so many high performers end up exhausted and burned out? Mindset coach Sarah Robb has spent years working in this area, and says that unfortunately, many of us burn ourselves out, usually trying to prove we're good enough. At 26, Sarah had lost both her parents, in difficult circumstances. What she built afterwards became the foundation for how she now coaches high achievers, business owner...

Frances Cook joins the TVNZ Breakfast team to talk through one of her favourite money hacks, using the second hand market to both clear out the clutter at home and score serious bargains on everything from furniture to kids clothes. Follow me everywhere! Facebook / Frances Cook - Journalist Instagram / Frances | Money | Investing (@francescooknz) • Instagram profile TikTok / Frances Cook on TikTok...

Are there still good property deals in New Zealand right now? Here's where to actually look. A listener wrote in with the question everyone's asking: prices are technically down, but they still feel expensive. Interest rates aren't friendly. Rents don't cover the mortgage. So is property investment still worth it, or has the window already closed? On this episode of Ask the Experts, Katie Wesney f...