I’ve written three follow-up articles to one about NZ Super and retiring overseas. I learned that readers can’t lap up enough of this. It seems everyone wants to retire somewhere more exotic than where they live. The other lesson is that it’s so fiendishly complicated that even accountants sweat.

At the micro money-managing end of personal finances, I discovered the concept of meals in a mug. Uber Eats and other takeaways are a shortcut from hungry to broke. I’ve long advocated a fried egg on toast if you just need to fill a hole. The Meal in a Mug concept could save an awful lot of money nationwide and reduce waste. Chuck one egg, a quarter of a cup of milk and whatever you find in your fridge, then microwave, for it’s the perfect antidote to Uber Eats sucking your wallet dry. Check out Love Food Hate Waste, or google for vegan versions.

Thanks to a spell of house hunting this year, I’ve become familiar with Toka Tū Ake EQC’s Naturalhazardsportal.govt.nz. It allows you to zoom in on a property and see if it has had a natural hazard claim paid out by EQC. That can uncover risks. What it doesn’t tell you is whether the issue has been fully remediated.

Tower Insurance provided an unexpected eye-opener this year by quietly refusing to offer house insurance to great swaths of hazard-prone homes throughout the country. Try to insure a risky home and you get the automated message: “We’re sorry. The details you’ve given mean that we’re currently unable to offer you cover.” The answer to that isn’t, as a friend of mine said, ‘ah well, I’ll just insure with AA’. It’s a warning about the direction the entire industry is headed, thanks to climate change. More importantly, if you can’t get insurance, you won’t get a mortgage.

In October the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia conference highlighted to me how far ethical investing has evolved from a few fringe funds in the early 2000s, to mainstream fund managers exercising their power to make the companies they invest in behave better. A series of incremental changes, a few scandals (like the 2016 KiwiSaver weapons controversy) and growing awareness of the power of invested money have pushed mainstream fund managers to step up from number crunching to talking seriously about climate action, social impact and responsible investing. That shift was a real eye-opener. You can read more here:

Earlier in the year I wrote an article about the effect of practising gratitude on your finances. It’s about counting your blessings, whatever they are. It can rewire your brain and helps curb buy-now, think-later spending. It also helps cultivate the mindset of being mindful with our resources. While you’re at it, practise some positive money scripts to repeat to yourself, such as “I am capable of managing my finances effectively.”

My final learning, which broke a few of my own rules, is don’t rent an office immediately across the road from the best op shop in Auckland. It’s not good for your personal finances. It means a steady stream of small sums of money heading straight into the Salvation Army’s coffers. I try to tell myself I’m donating to charity. The reality is that the fritter factor is not good for finances.

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