Frances Cook

Heaps of different companies keep doing this one.

There's different banks and things.

And I've seen fluctuating numbers, but it's anywhere from usually 50 to 70% of New Zealanders don't have $1,000 saved, which A, a bit of a sign of the times, but B, I think...

It does also show how we can ignore the small things building up to big things.

Because even if you put 20 bucks a week into a savings account, you'll hit that goal in less than a year.

And to build up those smaller wins to have that savings account will give you so much more stability and not just the rest of your financial life, the rest of your life, right?

Yeah, it's interesting that, isn't it?

Because do you think that New Zealand has, because you travel a lot and you also talk to people a lot about money, both here and overseas.

Do you pick up on any sort of cultural differences with New Zealanders versus the rest of the world?

I guess on money generally, but specifically investing, if you've picked up anything on that?

There's a lot of stuff happening right now.

And when you just look for what is within my control on this, often more than you can feel like if you just see these big doomy headlines, I cannot control who's launching wars on who.

I can control what I do about it in my day-to-day life, right?

Which is wild to me.

What do you make of that?

It can be a lot of noise.

And that can get in your head, which I always think like, I'll monitor the news for my job, but I really make sure not too much, even with the amount that I need to know for my job, which is far more than the average investor.

The average investor can absolutely sit and forget far more than I do.

Even for the amount I need to know, I'm very curated about how much news I pick up because it gets in your head and it sends you on a doom spiral and that's not actually helpful.

It can really make you feel like things are far worse than they are.