>Is there such a thing as online banks that can store multiple currencies and have credit/debit cards you can use abroad ?

Yes

>Ideally low fees

Yes

>decent interest on savings

No

>I want to be able to buy and store currencies for a good price and when I go overseas be able to use my card to access said funds while traveling.

Wise.com formerly TransferWise

I am an accountant and deal with this sort of thing for clients on a daily basis so can provide some help.

As another few poster have raised the first step is determining that setting up a company is required or the best option. You could also run the business through your own name(sole-trader) and return it for income tax in your personal return.

Key differences - Company Vs sole-trader - Company is a seperate legal entity, sole-tradership is not - Company has increased compliance cost (annual companies office return and tax returns for company) - Companies provide more options regarding investment - If employing staff best to use a company

This link should help you understand these things a bit better: https://www.xero.com/nz/resources/small-business-guides/how-to/how-to-start-a-business/business-structure/?gclsrc=aw.ds&gclid=CjwKCAjw7rWKBhAtEiwAJ3CWLGQ28gV_1F5CrCmJGiIBoBre-F27PhS7I2YguEd6FtExOCPk9ZIR3BoCFY0QAvD_BwE

If you are set on a company these are some key things to consider: - need to set up at the Companies office and pay an annual registration fee - Company will need an IRD # and will need to file an income tax return annually (returns will cover the year ending 31/03) company will pay flat tax of 28% on taxable profit. - in order to take this profit out you will need to pay additional tax to "top it up" to the same as if the profit was in your name - if GST taxable supplies exceed 60k annually the company will need to be GST registered (This also applies to a sole-tradership) - Xero is a great way to handle your book keeping requirements and will also making filing GST returns much easier if necessary

The numbers still aren't stacking up for me. I think it's clear that you have a spending problem. I'd really recommend reading Your Money or Your Life to help you work on your relationship with money.

> The medical insurance for me is worth a bit as I have a $17k surgery every couple of years.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Gaspy https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nz.hwem.gaspy&hl=en_NZ&gl=US

And if you're in Auckland, fill up at Gull Portage Road

The single most effective money saving tool for me was starting to use YNAB - https://www.youneedabudget.com/landing/camp-patton/. It is a tiny bit pricey at $125 a year. But i believe that it is extremely worth it. The above link gives three months free, which will be plenty of time if it's a good fit.

The main benefit of YNAB is it tells you exactly how much 'Fun Money' you have to spend, rather than having a vague notion of having bills coming up to pay, and maybe having $x to spend on a night out. It assists in paying off loans and expenses like rent through monthly goals and using a great UI which is easy to work with. For this reason, it is 100x better than using an excel spreadsheet, which you can do, but it's so much easier to be disciplined about money if you don't have to spend 3 hours per week fanangling a spreadsheet to do what you want.

If you're unfamiliar with an envelope system of money, you can look into that. Otherwise, you can sign up to YNAB, and follow along with this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPVEB759gkU. PM me for any questions if you decide to use this and it's confusing!

Looking at the ten year chart you're exposed to some pretty big swings (low of 0.49260, high of 0.88327). Of course I've got no idea which way things will go in the future.

But I will say owning assets denominated in a foreign currency is a lot less risky than owing debts denominated in a foreign currency (just look at Turkey right now for an illustration of this).

>I have read over the long term index tracking funds usually out perform actively managed funds.

To my knowledge this is not true, the managed funds often do better but have higher fees, so you are generally better in an index fund after fees are taken into account.

So the answer would be that if the fees are low they are worth considering.

In the book The Intelligent Investor, they talk about how the best managed funds are when there isn't much money in them, so they can be selective. Once the fund has more money, it has to put it somewhere so they are forced into OK investments instead of great ones.

The secret here is to get into new funds early, and the way you do that is by being a rich guy with contacts.

I recommend reading the book as it's quite good at saying "don't invest in x, but if you do here's some tips". It's also recommended by Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, etc which is how I came to know of it.

You could spend thousands with an advisor, or hundreds on a tertiary course or textbook aimed at individual investors (i.e. https://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Investing-13th-Pearson-Finance/dp/013408330X).

I'll give you a shortcut, all the advice boils down to putting your longterm investing money into a low fees, passive fund. Simplicity, or a mix of ETFs through investnow are all you need. Craigs Investment partners or any other firm will happily chirp some bullshit to you to add another 1-3% p.a. in fees, plus onramp and exit costs for exactly the same thing. If you want to invest hnds-off you probably can't do better than Simplicity's growth fund, if you want to be more active you dont need to pay an advisor - self educate

Another option if available to them, is to create a Wise multi-currency account and get their debit card.

They can then transfer money to their NZ account within Wise and spend and withdraw cash with the debit card.

There's a free version that I used for months, but recently picked up the paid one (one time unlock fee of $5.49) because I wanted the PC editing feature.

It's really not something you can compare to something like Mint in the US or Pocketsmith, but in app form, its really good if you like to log your expenses yourself. Some features that I liked were:

• budgeting by category, and shows current month's status vs budget.

• auto renew recurring expenses (Netflix/Gym etc)

• Can split payment type by specific bank/debit/credit card if you take the time to set it up (Highly recommended)

• Reminders of when credit card bills are due and what amount.

• CSV extract so you can do some charts/graphs etc on PC if you prefer, but the app also has a beautiful pie chart breakdown of expenses by categories.

Go for the free version, play store link is here.

Hey, many thanks for your response. Yes, I've read The Richest Man in Babylon and Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The principles I follow to this day are (1) Paying yourself first out of each payslip and (2) living below your means. I have put together a budgeting tool on excel that helps me measure savings, expenditure and consumption money for a weekly/fortnightly basis. Although, I am guilty of dipping into my savings from time to time for major purchases as well as weekend entertainment (binge drinking which I need to cut back on and control with discipline)

I think my next step in my own personal finance path is investing. I will refer to the links you provided above and starting learning the basics to help my financial growth and paying off my student loan. I guess it wont be much and will be a small start.. but I got to start somewhere :-)

Alright, so you want a 'Wallet'. For simplicity sake we'll start off with a software wallet like Electrum or Armory. These are for desktop, please for the love of god dont carry all your crypto around with you on your mobile. If you've only got a mobile, be sure to back up your Private Key somewhere so you can recover it when you inevitably brick your phone.

So lets set up Electrum: - Open it up and you should get a prompt to create a new Wallet. If you dont, hit File > New/Restore. - Follow the prompts: Wallet Name, Create New Wallet, Standard Wallet - Now you get your Seed, this is a recovery phrase. Write down the words, in order, and put it somewhere safe. Dont lose it. - Reenter your Seed to confirm. Except you didnt write it down you fucking idiot, so start again and write down the seed this time. - Electrum will now generate your addresses. - Optionally: Export your private keys for safe storage elsewhere. Wallet > Private Keys > Export. These are just strings of numbers and letters, you can print them off, put the file on a usb, back it up in cloud storage, DM it to me, bury it, whatever.

To Receive, hit the Receive tab, it will give you a receiving address, copy that and paste it into the 'To' field of whereever you're sending from (exchange, easycrpto, whatever), or send it to whoever you want to send you money, or slap it in your goddamn email signature or whatever. It will also generate a QR code if thats easier.

Once again, do not lose or show anyone your Seed or Private Keys. Once they're gone, they're gone. No takebacks, no recourse.

So at a guess it looks like 25 May when that deposit took place. Interestingly, it shows the value in your wallet, so that removes the effect of transfer or exchange fees. On that date the price of BTC was 9,061 USD, so you have made a 5% return or so (not bad). So I have no idea what has happened here, some kind of weird spike in the NZD? (i.e. as that was basically the middle of lock down). That seems like the most likely bet, as I remember my own crypto holdings taking a big hit from that. Even my gold bullion is in the negatives (almost) just because the NZD is moving. So to avoid that you can either roll with the punches, dollar cost average, or take a hedge position (say, short the USD vs NZD).

EDIT : That might well be it, look at this chart, NZD spiked right after the 25th: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=NZD&to=USD&view=1Y

Have you looked at xe.com ? They appear to support both PAP & NZD.

No fees but will have to make something on the spread (probably still much less than a bank).

I've not used xe but used to use hifx (which were either taken over by or merged with xe).

A search for "stock market APIs" returns quite a few. Looks like this is good: https://www.alphavantage.co/

Or google finance: http://finance.google.com/finance/info?client=ig&q=NASDAQ%3A[STOCK TICKERS]

Hey mate, I've seen a few posts about power bills recently. Thought I'd chuck my recent ones in a spreadsheet so others can get an idea. I think we pay a reasonable amount.

> Also with Electric Kiwi.

> 4 person flat (1 couple + 2 independent adults)

> Note, charges listed are fortnightly.

/u/orangemoa & /u/MyNameIsNotPat advise are great. I completely agree with them.

A little bit to add on is work hard on your study. Good education is the foundation of great income. With a great income, you will be ahead of lots of people.

I will recommend some books for you to read.

The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley

The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing by Mel Lindauer, Michael LeBoeuf, and Taylor Larimore

A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason

One more advise I gave to all young people are once you start working full time, you will have a new level of income. Lots of people will simply spent more to improve their life style and match their income, some even go into debt to support their spending. If you wish to buy a house in near future, try to manage your expense. I was saving 60-70% of my income when I started working fulltime for couple years. Those fund I saved help me heaps when I purchase my own house. I don't need to have a big mortgage thanks to those money. I pay a lot less on mortgage interest and I can pay off my mortgage much faster.

The thing I regret is not investing more while I was young. So, work hard on your study, control your expense, dont go into consumer debt, save and invest your money. You will be off to a great start!

Buy yourself 2 books: https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/your-money-your-future-9780143775089 To understand the what and how of investing and developing a plan that works for you. https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness/dp/0857197681 To stop yourself doing something daft in the future.

First of all, you are doing something great here by thinking about your future. You are not alone on this, many people switch careers or start things late in life, and that's ok.

I was in the same boat at your age, I wanted to switch my work that was pretty different from IT stuff, so I started to learn in my spare time and weekends. In the beginning, it was hard because there are tons of information, technologies, ways to do things, etc. But at that moment I found my path, which was Web Development.

One important piece of advice is you don't need to find a role in a company to do this job. If you are willing to learn by yourself, and you are sufficiently independent, you can look for opportunities as a freelance. It is not easy for sure, but if you push hard you can do it. There are plenty of opportunities, not only in NZ. I started my career like this, and only after 8 years of working as a freelance/independent now I'm working on a company full-time, so I was able to live all that time with a good salary, you only need to be organized.

Also, a important thing is to learn the basics of how things work. Many tutorials and courses on the internet show things already solved and just follow steps, without taking care of why the things work in certain ways, so you only learn a recipe, but not how to create your own recipe or why use those ingredients.

A good place to start learning for free is https://www.freecodecamp.org/

Good luck in your endeavor!

It may change by the time you actually move here, but download the Christchurch City Council's bins app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nz.govt.ccc.kerbside

Once you have one, plug in your address; it'll let you know which bins will be collected each week and you can look up items to see what bin to put them in.

The council will reject your bin on collection day if there's too many unallowed items in your bin, and they can take your bin off you if you fail too many times: so it's good to keep handy.

In terms of power/electricity, just choose whoever is the cheapest. There aren't many loyalty benefits and service hardly changes between providers (granted, some suck when it comes to querying a bill). I'm with Contact on a "free power from 9PM-Midnight" deal which is perfect for running the dryer and dishwasher at night.

As a fellow American, be prepared to be cold. New Zealand is cold and oddly unprepared to be cold. You'll wear a sweater or under layers (merino undershirts are godly) in your own home unless you want a horrific bill and eventually you'll get used to that. It sounds worse than it is. I would recommend starting to lower the temp on your central heating and get used to a naturally cooler climate to mitigate culture shock.

I should be on commission for the amount of times I post these:

https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/your-money-your-future-9780143775089

https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness/dp/0857197681

I think you read a different article.

Claiming a 10% increase without any timeframe is meaningless and just reinforces the short-termism lots of investors have. If you really want to invest for long term wealth, getting your head in the right space is crucial and https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness/dp/0857197681 does a great job of helping get over yourself and the futility of thinking we stand any chance of being the next Warren Buffett.

Hello I would like to recommend
Mysteries at Treasure River by Nipuna D. Ranasinghe
New book release - Amazon Kindle Free Promotion

I have this book on kindle. It’s the whole picture of personal finance from adding side hustles etc and how this guy did it.

For NZ specific: https://www.penguin.co.nz/books/your-money-your-future-9780143775089 For getting your head straight: https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Money-Timeless-lessons-happiness/dp/0857197681

>Enable.me

​Hannah McQueen is legit (she's listed as the founder on the website). She's a very well renowned and respected financial advisor in Aotearoa.

Comment earlier said 'Why does this feel like a scam' from u/AntiqueDescription81 - it's not a scam!

u/Nick0254 OP Her book (linked below) likely outlines the strategy your looking for, or at least will help you answer your question in this post.

If you have the means to hand over $5000 for the coaching costs, I'm sure she could help you out. Financial coaching is costly, but it should save you some money in the long-term. Hannah McQueen has a very good reputation.

In the meantime, check out the book below if you're still tossing it up.

https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Your-Mortgage-Sort-Retirement-ebook/dp/B00XTOB5M6/

Good idea. For example, AU$2 for Dolmio pasta sauce, NZ$3.89 here...

You can set up your own wallet using something like electrum for storing most of your coins. That way you are less at risk of losing your coins during a hack of one of the online platforms.

You would then transfer from your wallet to whichever exchange you wanted. But doing this does mean there will be an extra transaction fee as you are adding an extra step. I.e Easy Crypto -> Electrum -> Exchange instead of just Easy Crypto -> Exchange

Great response, just to add that in a correction it's easy in hindsight to see the bottom of the market, but in real time it's incredibly difficult, particularly if it's not your full-time job.

This blog post backs up what u/propertynewb is suggesting: Does Market Timing Work?

I use Wise for a small UK-based services company that holds Pounds and Euros. We don't keep large amounts of cash in there, as it's not completely safeguarded. If Wise becomes insolvent then your money may be used to pay administrators. https://wise.com/help/articles/2949821/is-it-safe-to-keep-money-in-my-wise-account

Sounds like you're part describing a 'wish farm' for which YNAB is great at and part describing long term expenses (new car, annual rates/insurance etc) which it's also great for.

​

While YNAB is often advertised as what you've described that's really because it's a simple way to sell it to people and have them try it out.

​

I started using it not because I had issues with debt or paying bills on time, but because I wanted to know what the money in my account was for, given I had more in my regular accounts due to restructuring my mortgage to have an offset component.

I used a spreadsheet for many years until I found Homebank. It can't sync directly with your bank, but it can import from common formats that you can probably export from FastNet.

https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=NZD

XE has an easy to mess with historical exchange rate chart. You probably won't find an answer to the question of which way the market will go.

I use Wise for all forex transfers - https://wise.com/invite/u/peterd2221 this referral link gets you a fee free transfer for your first transaction up to $900.

I think it is awesome. I actually use it for all my TradeMe ins and outs. No issues getting money in or out across NZD, USD, GBP and EUR bank accounts. I love that you can get proper bank accounts and easily hold multiple currencies, and they are amongst the cheapest I have found for currency transfers.

If you are interested in giving it a go - this is a referral link that waives the fees on a transfer for up to $900 https://wise.com/invite/u/peterd2221

To be honest I don't believe you or you are mistaken in your belief. Wise even compares their rates to the rate offered by banks at any given time via open FX APIs: https://wise.com/nl/compare/. You also have an incoming fee to consider on the NZ bank side.

Agreed. I actually included that one on the list of NZ podcasts. I may be a bit biased since I was a guest on the podcast last year discussing early retirement :)

https://player.fm/series/cooking-the-books-2000499/cooking-the-books-the-nz-family-man-saving-50-percent-of-his-income

Let's do the math shall we rather than wildly speculating. $500 per fortnight is a pretty typical investment scenario. Assume 8%pa returns.

Over 15 years, Sharesies net $373,275 vs ASB Securities $353,464.

Alternatively lets say you are an investor with a really irregular saving strategy like $10k every 4 months for 1 year (total $40k) then you don't invest again for 14 years. Surely all those $30/year fees will make ASB much, much better right?

In that case Sharesies after 15 years is $47,134 and ASB Securities is $47,732, or 1.1% different, and if you ever wanted to invest back in to your ASB securities shares during those 14 years then you immediately make less net money than on Sharesies.

https://gofile.io/?c=30r05w

Craving for a transparency and a legit project that will be here tomorrow LOOK NO FUTHER. 👉 RC2 got you covered

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RewardCycle #utilitytoken #launchpad #gem .

I haven't used any financial advisors myself so can't give any tips. From listening to Mary on her podcast, I think that's what she says.

Alternatively, there is https://ungaro.co.nz/. Darcy Ungaro does a fi ancial podcast and seems like a clued up guy. He does a 15 min free call on a specific target to get started https://calendly.com/ungaro/15min?month=2020-11

Kraken works and is a reputable exchange with a diverse basket of cryptos, but SWIFT transfer times can be punishing (generally 3 business days) and you will incur a small fee (usually ~$20).

Its legit: https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-reddit-moon

If you go to the sub you'll see everybody has a moon symbol and number next to their name. You can even see them via the reddit app in the vault section.

The twist is that its only a testnet asset - but people figured out how to convert it into a "real" asset. Its tradeable on the honey-swap exchange.

I have not been able to find any non NZ broker that lets you trade in NZX listed stocks.

Interactive brokers - Exchange Listings

Charles Schwab - Schwab Global Account.

All of them - it's a paid only service for $6.99 USD a month. It's pretty steep now, fortunately I was grandfathered on to their cheaper plan since I've been a user for a while. For me, it's worth it. Great mobile apps too.

3 month trial available via this link (got it from a Wirecutter deal). https://www.youneedabudget.com/landing/wirecutter/

True. You can learn Software Development online, you only need dedication and if you like it, you can make some good money. Then you can get yourself a decent company, good perks, work less than 40h a week, and have heaps of fun.

My friend started coding when he was 16, got his first internship at 17, now he is 23, making over 130k, with no degree whatsoever. All e-learning. Nowadays you have so much online content that is worth thousands of dollars and it is free. You only need dedication and of course, enjoy the role.

I like to recommend this for people interest in learning some coding:
https://www.freecodecamp.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Intelligent-Investor-Definitive-Investing-Essentials/dp/0060555661

This book might be a nice starting point for what you are after

When you click on the holding it will show it in its native currency as found from tradingview.com (e.g. with BTC it is USD) but on the dashboard, it shows the price of the currency that is set in the very bottom left of the dashboard. Is this kind of what you were looking for?

far out....unsure as to why you're getting so heavily downvoted! I'll take 'bullish' for $500 Alex!

https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/

"act fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful.”

Haha, yeah GBP is definitely not the best currency to use!

TransferWise is definitely a solution, but my situation is slightly different, I'm only wishing to spend money in NZD / GBP, I'm not needing to take my NZD elsewhere.

There's a card that's open to EU Residents which solved this issue for me.
The curve card acts as an intermediary by allowing you to pay in local currency, and charge your NZD debit/credit card at the mastercard exchange rate without fees.

That sounds perfect for your visit!

Appreciate it mate, however I've found a solution that avoids all fees.

There's a card that's open to EU Citizens which solved this issue for me.
The curve card acts as an intermediary by allowing you to pay in local currency, and charge your NZD debit/credit card at the mastercard exchange rate without fees.

Would it be helpful for you to open a UK account so your relatives can send local transfers? Might be easier for them. Then you can transfer yourself to NZ. Wise is one company that offers this.

https://wise.com/nz/multi-currency-account/#coverage-bankdetails

Here’s my affiliate link if you want a free first fee transfer for transferwise 😁

https://wise.com/promotion/referral-landing?utm_source=url&utm_medium=invite&utm_content=&utm_campaign=3for50&referralCode=torrellt&referralToken=torrellt&profileType=PERSONAL

Not sure if you’ve set up Transferwise (Wise) yet - but definitely the way to go. Much cheaper option and good to have if you go travelling elsewhere.

Feel free to use my code - think you get some free transfers

https://wise.com/invite/i/lucasm196

Thank you, good feedback! I removed the buttons from the input field. For the top illustration I used unDraw (https://undraw.co/). They got great looking open source illustrations :)

Bypass Paywalls - Chrome

Bypass Paywalls - Firefox

I've tested on Chrome, it worked like a charm.

Edit : Typo

If you are starting from zero (like I was) I highly recommend this book. Basically teaches you the building blocks with very simple recipes which you can later use to expand to more complex stuff.

How To Cook Everything: The Basics

https://www.amazon.com/How-Cook-Everything-Basics-Food/dp/0470528060

Try this book... - https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4

​

Lots of good relatable ideas.

Thanks, this is interesting.

Not for a newbie but if you feel like being challenged on a few of your fundamental assumptions try Why Smart People Do Stupid Things with Money.

Whats with the 1.5 rating on the app? :/ That's the only thing putting me off.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nz.co.onesmart

I have a debit card already, I wanted the buffer you get from having access to credit.

Further to your quality comment...

> Basically, active management sometimes wins, sometimes loses.

People who flip coins sometimes win multiple times in a row, to hold them up as oracles is to be fooled by randomness.

I didn't know that superlife allowed you to spread your investment across different funds, thanks for posting that.

Question from a complete noob:

I'm still working on understanding investing before I commit money to it. I'm working my way through "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton Malkiel, and I understand why passive investing is recommended so highly. I've done some reading on smartshares but what is the real difference between superlife? Is it a superannuation company that also allows access to ETFs?

I understand that if you want to sell smartshares you do so via nzx with a securities account, but with superlife is it an investment vehicle where any money is locked in until 65? The "super" in the name seems to suggest that or is it just poorly branded?

I'm working through my reading on /r/financialindependence and it seems that if it's the case that it's locked in with superlife then it wouldn't be a good fit for someone planning on retiring at, say 52 for instance.

Or am I interpreting the purpose of smartshares vs superlife incorrectly and superlife doesn't lock you in for non-kiwisaver funds?

edit: words.

Don't rush into it.

Before you start reading the get rich quick stuff and the people who think outside the box , I would suggest you get your head around the fundamentals.

So to get started I'd suggest you read the Reserve Bank guideline for savers and investors ^(pdf)(written by Mary Holm).

For a start, EFTS in NZ is basically shares and in my opinion you need to invest in more than one asset class. .

Once you are confident with the fundamental principles and want to move on, for this my rec is Why Smart People Do Stupid Things With Money (though bear in mind his asset allocation ideas are based on a US not NZ model).