Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I've never done this before, an introduction about the guest that you're about to listen to while she's sitting on a seat facing me listening to everything I say. So we have the amazing Frances Cook joining us today. Where did it even begin?
Chapter 2: What is Frances Cook's money story?
She was a financial journalist in mainstream media. In the last two years, it's gone out by herself.
Yeah.
Gone out by herself. She has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people. Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But about everything from personal finance to investing. And this conversation is probably not what you would expect from her. There's so much beautiful vulnerability about her life and the way that she looks at her own finances. And I think for someone who...
Chapter 3: How did Frances's KiwiSaver switch change her financial outlook?
you would consider to get everything right and do it by the books she's actually really honest about the way that she approaches everything which is real and human and not perfect so it's an amazing conversation and yeah I hope you really enjoy it Frances, before we get started, I just need to clear the air with the audience and say if my voice sounds a bit odd, I just choked on some cheese.
We've got a delicious platter of cheese and crackers. It's 11 in the morning. And I came in and made a joke saying as if I was going to have cheese and crackers for breakfast. And here I was scoffing cheese and had a little choke. So apologies if I sound a bit raspy.
Chapter 4: Why does money mindset matter more than people think?
So great to be here with you. It's really funny because as I was preparing for this interview, I was thinking, and all the questions that I wrote were very much, you know, how do you calculate this? How do you split this? You know, really quite meticulous in terms of the right way to do finances. Because I remember when we first had you on the podcast, which must have been... Forever ago now.
Four years ago. Yeah, it was just after my first bubba, who's now, we're looking at skills for him. That's wild. We were recording in Vic's spare room with wires everywhere. It was absolute chaos. But at the time, I was a total beginner with money, with investing. I was so fresh.
Chapter 5: How does Frances manage money with her husband?
And I remember the things that you spoke about and I just pedestalled you as if someone that knows exactly what they're doing and has got all their splits done perfectly and she puts this in here and You know, we were talking off mic and obviously knowing you better now since then.
Your approach to money is quite interesting because while you're a financial journalist and while you've spoken to hundreds, maybe thousands of professionals, the way you approach money actually is not that different to myself. And so today in this episode, I just wanted to get to know you a bit more.
And I know that you know the right way to do things, but it'd be really cool to speak about the theory of what you know to be true. But then also being honest about how you manage things because I know from experience there's times where, yeah, I'll talk about the 50-20-10 whatever rule in terms of how you should split your pay. But do I do that every single pay?
Chapter 6: What is Frances's investing strategy?
No. And I think that it's really refreshing for people to hear that. You know, people that put on pedestals realizing actually we're all human and we don't necessarily do it the right way all the time. So I'd love to start by hearing what you were like with money before you started the podcast, because you've worked in media a long time.
Chapter 7: Why does Frances avoid investing in cryptocurrency?
Before that, I'm imagining that you, you know, you weren't like, oh, I know what I want to be a journalist and money because you were good at it. Maybe it was the opposite. Yeah. Yeah, very much so. It's funny when I came into journalism, I've never, my mom's a math teacher and like, bless her. I don't think she'd ever call me a disappointment, but on some level I must be.
She tried to tutor me all through high school and it was a disaster.
Chapter 8: What does 'enough' look like for Frances?
Don't recommend that for a good teenager mother relationship. And so I've never been someone who thought I was like good with numbers, certainly not good with money. I've always had a job, but I would spend it as soon as it was out of my hands. Someone who went through real periods of sort of feast and famine of the money situation as I was a kid.
And I do think that leaves a mark in terms of how you handle money. So I was very much like spend money before it's gone sort of mentality. I had a real scarcity mindset with it. Didn't consider myself a And then got into journalism, was like, awesome. All I have to do is really like work hard for pay rises and everything will be fine.
And I was a general journalist, moved up to a senior journalist, became a court reporter. Loved that. until it starts to wear on your soul. There is a certain point at which you cannot be sidelined for the worst day of people's lives for too long. It starts to build. Um, so hit a point where I was like emotionally exhausted from that, um, moved into politics, loved it, then hated it.
Same thing in terms of the exhaustion, but I got sick of being lied to every day. Um, so ran out of time on that and then hit business journalism of all things. Um, And loved it. Really surprised myself. Loved it. Partly because it's not actually as much numbers as I had thought at first. Business is people. It is relationships. It is how everything is interconnected.
And it is underlying so much of everything in our lives. You start to see the way society operates moved by money. And that's very addictive. And I got more and more into this world and thought, I actually think I love this and maybe money can be for, you know, people like me.
You mentioned when you were younger, the feast or famine thing, because I've experienced that chronically, but it wasn't so much that my parents' financial situation was swinging in roundabouts. It was the way that I spent money. As soon as it was in my account, it was then gone. So for the last, well, before the curve, for 10 years, I would spend money. The first week would be
oh God, this is so fun. It drinks on me. And then the second, third, fourth week was, oh my God, forgot, forgot. I've got three more weeks. How am I going to do this? When you mentioned that, was it more actually that your parents and your home life changed at times and therefore that influenced your sort of feast or famine approach with money? Yeah.
And it's a little bit tricky to talk about because I would never want my parents to feel that I was ever criticizing them or what they've done. But it is also interesting as I've grown up and honestly, really only in my 30s, starting to realize just how unstable a lot of my childhood was, there were issues of getting enough food on the table.
where we had a friend of the family donate some eggs and then someone else we knew gave us some potatoes. And my mom went out and bought a sack of carrots because that was the cheapest thing in the supermarket. And that was like frittata for weeks, you know. And it was, you know, that sort of thing really can leave an impact.
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