Frances Cook

Good old hindsight.

We can all see a lot more with hindsight.

And a lot of the stuff that I've read about why New Zealand was hit so hard by that was because we had been borrowing a lot to buy those shares, you know, extending the mortgage as far as you could take it in order to buy more shares.

And the problem is, you know, it's like we talk about all the time is like share market money is meant to be for money that you can leave alone for five to 10 years.

If you've borrowed, you have to make those debt payments no matter what.

And like you say, interest rates go up.

That debt that you've got could become more expensive.

It could be more than you're planning on right now.

And then you're going to have to make that payment no matter what.

They're going to come and collect it.

Meanwhile, your value of your investments might have cratered.

It could recover.

That could be fine as long as you give it several years.

in that period of years, you're going to have to keep making those debt payments.

If the economy is massively down and everyone's suffering, maybe you lose your job.

I'm not trying to chicken little it and make it sound really scary.

I'm just pointing out how badly wrong it can go.

And it can cause super long knock-on effects.

I would so much rather people put five bucks into shares than 500 and it's all debt.

That one gives me the absolute heebie-jeebies.