That Home Loan Hub
Welcome to That Home Loan Hub, your ultimate guide to mastering the world of home loans and property. I'm Zebunisso Alimova, here to simplify the complexities of real estate and provide you with expert insights and the latest trends.
Whether you're a first-time homebuyer, an experienced investor, or simply curious about the property market, this podcast is for you. Join me each week as we unlock the secrets to property success and help you make informed decisions. Let's dive into the world of property together!
That Home Loan Hub
How Early Habits And KiwiSaver Build A Future You Control
Ever met a teenager who saves 90 percent of every dollar? We did, and his reason is razor-sharp: build freedom early and avoid being trapped in a job he hates. That story sparks a candid look at how money habits form, why compounding favours the early and consistent, and how small, boring moves today can unlock choices in your 40s, 50s, and beyond.
We dig into practical levers that work in New Zealand. KiwiSaver gets real airtime as the easiest path for natural spenders to build wealth on autopilot, and we weigh the ripple effects of lifting contributions to 12 percent—learning from Australia’s superannuation lead. We talk fund choice, the power of automatic deductions, and the danger of relying on the pension alone when the future is uncertain. Then we shift to property: paying down a mortgage faster to build equity you can lean on when income drops or life changes. Add an emergency fund so you’re not forced to raid long-term investments, and suddenly compounding gets to do its quiet work.
Across the hour, a simple framework emerges: four pillars for retirement confidence—KiwiSaver or diversified long-term investing, a right-sized home paid down early, a liquid cash buffer, and a career you actively shape for income and joy. You don’t need perfection across all four; steady progress compounds. We also tackle the money mindset with kids: saving versus spending, the thrill of “other people’s money,” and how to teach habits when the stakes are low but the lessons last.
If you’re ready to trade guesswork for a plan, hit play. Subscribe for more straight-talking finance chats, share this with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a review telling us whether you’d back a 12 percent KiwiSaver—yes or no?
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It's never too late to prepare for retirement. Starting from the young age, you should know what to do to help you out in old age. Hello, James. G'day, mate. G'day, mate. I love this. All right, Jason and I got very involved in this discussion. I said, stop talking. We're going to record a podcast about it. Because what we realize is in order to prepare for retirement, you got to start now. You got to start when you're five, when you're seven, when you're 16. If you've got any money coming in, this is where the financial literacy and financial capability comes into play. Over to you, James. Hit me with it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, we just got we got talking about retirement and preparing for retirement. And then I realized my son, who's only 15 or 16, one of those, he is putting aside 90% of every single amount uh dollar that he gets, whether it be from work or odd jobs or birthday money, any of that sort of stuff. And he's putting it into shares, he's putting it into our we've got an investment account that we've created for him. And so he is building his fund up really quickly. And I I I realised the other day while he was why he was doing it, it's because he doesn't want to get a job when he leaves school. So his idea is that he is if he starts really young and starts accumulating this wealth, he wants to just be able to invest this money because he sees Ms. Mum and me, or especially his mum, and how hard that she works. Yeah. And he's like, Stop that. I don't want to do that. This is stupid. I love that. Let's just not spend all our money.
SPEAKER_00:Let's just grow the money you have.
SPEAKER_01:Grow the money you have. And I mean, I tell talk to him about this all the time. I wish I'd started at the same age, because if you start at a young age, you just get those savings habits and those investing habits right from you're really young. And if you do it when you haven't gotten any expenses, why can't you save 90% of your income? If you don't have any kids, you're not married, you don't have a house, you're living at home.
SPEAKER_00:What's stopping you from saving? Well, now on the flip side of that, a son like mine that is spending every single dollar he can get on lollies. It's not like we never buy lollies, we always buy some sort of treats or lollies or whatever he wants. But for some reason, he feels powerful when he has the money and he can stride over to the dairy shop and go, ah, you know, and just buy any lolly he wants under the sun. So my struggle with him is, you know, making him see that yes, you can grow that money. And if you save your money, you know, that will help you in retirement. Maybe we should get our kids to sit down and do an episode of that would be cool. From their point of view, why are they spending and why are they saving and what's driving them? Because I think it's important at this age to instill the right money mindset. And if we don't do that, then there will be the consequences of it in the future. Because tell me about your daughter, because you did touch on your daughter. Does she save?
SPEAKER_01:Not quite not aggressively in the same way. She she's really smart in that she is big into OPM.
SPEAKER_00:What's OP OPM?
SPEAKER_01:Other other people's money.
SPEAKER_00:I was like, is there a file I don't know about?
SPEAKER_01:She loves spending money, but she doesn't spend her own money. Uh this is quite a smart play as well. Yeah. Well, it's gonna get you off site sooner or later with the people in your life. But so that they're both reasonably good in that regard. She's a little bit more career oriented. So but the the reason why if you if you if you can be financially sorted as a young person, then that gives you options when you you know, then you don't necessarily necessarily have to choose a job just because it's about the money. Do you know what I mean? You can actually choose a job you might really enjoy doing rather than it being, oh I've got to make this amount of money because I don't have any. So I'm hoping that that's where we're getting with with my two with my two kids. It's like because I I've followed, you know, if you watch those, if you've uh uh followed, I suppose, people like uh Buffett and and Munga, Charlie Munger, those guys they started at a really, really young age, just looking after their money. You know? And and it's just such an incredible advantage if you get in at that young age and do the compound interesting, compound interest, compounding of your interest and and and things like that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that's the thing, right? Money makes money. If you let money grow, it will actually multiply if you grow it in the right way. So going back to our topic, preparing for retirement, you should really start young.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:And but see, if what happens to kids that don't have money savvy parents, how can we help them there?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think that they need to get in touch. Okay, so and we can have a look at what they're spending their money on and making sure that they're in things like Kiwi Saver. Because and putting aside if you if you're really hard, let's say if you if you're really struggling with Kiwis with um saving, you know, yeah, if you're a spender, the best thing to do is to get into Kiwi Saver. And you just make sure that you put the biggest chunk possible across from your pay, every single pay.
SPEAKER_00:This is not a financial advice.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not. But yeah, you so you'd you'd look at it based on a a financial your personal financial situation. But if you're wanting to accrue some kind of investment fund and you're a terrible saving.
SPEAKER_00:This is the easiest one to start with. And what do you think about the government changing it to 12%? Because there are talks, right, about uh changing the Kiwi Saver contributions up to 12%.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think it's awesome. I think it's absolutely awesome.
SPEAKER_00:And this is to catch up to our big brother Australia. Because they've been doing it for years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, they're 20 years ahead of us. And and so you've got people over there with, you know, multi-million super schemes and big wealth. Really common. And it's and that's the big difference. Well, it's one of the big differences between us and them. They've got this massive super super fund industry over there. So and we need to make sure that we're preparing for our own retirement because we can't you don't be relying on what the government's going to be doing for you. We don't know that that's going to be there. I'm not saying it's not going to be there, the pension, but you've got to take responsibility for your own future now.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So putting aside as much as you can, and there's two ways to do it, right? So the way that I did it personally was I didn't do it with Kiwi Save, but the way I did it was I bought a house and my wife and I put paid our mortgage off as quick as we could. And we built up equity in our property really, really quickly when we were on two incomes. When we had kids, we pulled it back because we had that option.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because we'd we'd we'd paid, we'd made extra payments when we could. Um, and so that's that's given us a lot of leeway uh over the last few years. So I really think there's a couple of ways. Nowadays you've got more options. Kiwi Saver is a really good option to put as much as possible into that. Get yourself a decent house, pay that off as quick as possible, build up your equity, and then thirdly, you know, you're working on maybe some savings just in an emergency account of some kind. So you've got money there when you need it in case you have something that goes wrong, because you can't take money out of KiwiSaver.
SPEAKER_00:Easily.
SPEAKER_01:Easily.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so it's better if you are doing all those three things. And then fourth thing, of course, is your own career, working away at that thing that you love doing, trying to make money from it. So all those four things, you don't they don't have to all be successful at the same time, but if you're building those things from a young age, you know, I think it's a good thing. That's what I am trying to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And look, guys, if you're listening to this and you think of something else and something better, do let us know because we are we love hearing from you, we love getting the feedback. You know, my heart always sings with joy when I get a message from our listeners going, Oh, listen to your podcast. This was really cool. Episode on this and that. So please, please, please reach out to us and let us know what else we've missed or what else we can cover. Would love to record episodes for you. So thank you. Thank you, James. Bye.
