Bronwyn Candish

I've been in KiwiSaver since the day it started, right?

And so I might not have been like actively managing and doing those things or picking stocks, but I am an investor.

And so it was about changing that mindset of that, you know, that self-talk a little bit.

I think you need to give yourself like a little bit of grace, right?

If you were in the position where you're first learning to like ride a bike,

you'll get a little bit wobbly, right?

Like no one expects you to drive a car for the first time.

No one expects you to get in and especially a manual, just drive down the road without a few bunny hops, right?

So we just need to give ourselves a little bit of grace here.

Like any muscle that we haven't used for a while, you know, you just need to use it a little bit, a little bit often and it builds that muscle that's required for investing.

I think too, you know, if you really want to unpack the psychology behind it, remember there was a time

Not that long ago when you didn't know how to get a mortgage or a student loan or a credit card, but you figured those things out, right?

And to my mind, a mortgage is way more terrifying than investing.

There's a lot more legalities, there's a lot more commitment in a mortgage than there is in throwing some money in a few investments, okay?

So I think it just comes with...

The knowledge helps, like the knowledge gives confidence.

And, you know, there's so much information available, you know, podcasts like your own, books, all of those kinds of things that you can go down as far down the river hole as you're comfortable, as you need to be to become comfortable and to understand the investment class that you're looking at.

But I think, yeah, it is about practice and it is about grace and those early steps.

For me, I actually changed my KiwiSaver provider three times.

I was in one, I changed, I changed to another, and then now I'm hopefully in my forever one.