Financial practicality key to blog’s popularity

Ruth Henderson relaxes at her Alexandra home. PHOTO: SAM HENDERSON
Ruth Henderson relaxes at her Alexandra home. PHOTO: SAM HENDERSON
Sex, religion and money. They are three topics New Zealanders do not tend to talk about, and it is the last of them that Ruth Henderson is keen to generate more discussion around.

Known as The Happy Saver, Ms Henderson produces blogs and podcasts from her Alexandra home and has "common sense" chats to people about money.

She acknowledges she is not a financial adviser, nor an economist — she has a psychology degree and a graduate diploma in management — instead, her foray into finances was borne out of frustration.

She started a blog four years ago after she and husband Jonny Simpson had paid off their own home and had money accumulating in the bank.

Advised to buy another house and get another mortgage, she was not satisfied with that advice and started looking for alternatives which led her into the "confusing world of investing".

Ms Henderson discovered she wanted to help other people be better with money, and she was all about keeping it simple.

"I like to think that I just have a common sense chat to people about whatever is on their mind. People are starved of conversation around money."

Her top tips included:

  • Earn what you are worth.
  • Work hard.
  • Take on as little debt as possible and pay it off as fast as possible.
  • Save for retirement.
  • Have an emergency fund because something will go wrong at some point.
  • Keep a budget.
  • You need less money than you think.

If you owned what you had, then you did not need as much money, so you could work less, enjoy family more or "chilling the heck out".

The questions she received from people were often just simple practical things that no-one could tell them the answer to, she said.

People were often shy and nervous talking about money, while some could get very offended about the subject.

One of her main reasons for starting the blog was to help women, although it now had a wide ranging audience, from teenagers to mothers to CEOs; "just because you know how to make money doesn’t mean you know how to handle money".

Describing herself as dealing in common sense, Ms Henderson said she got huge satisfaction out of helping people.

"It didn’t start it to make money ... I’ve got the worst business model ever but I love it because its from the heart."

And it was the "heartwarming" messages she received from people she had helped that made it. The satisfaction from knowing she had had a positive influence on somebody’s life was "just awesome".

Brought up in Otago, Ms Henderson said she was always told that she was practical from a young age; now she could see the benefit of having that skill.

She was backpacking around Australia when she thought she should get a degree.

She "stumbled" into psychology; two years in, she took two years off, driving big trucks at Macraes gold mine and then at a bigger mine in Australia. It meant she returned to university, paid off her student loan in full and paid for her next two years of education.

When she left, she might not have had "a penny to my name" but she did not have any debt. She was now 46, and many of her friends still had student loans that they had not paid off.

After completing her university studies, she got a job as an account manager for Feltex carpet; by that stage, she had met her husband and they moved from Wellington to Christchurch when an opportunity arose for him to start a company.

She had a job at the New Zealand Lotteries Commission as an account manager and then retail development manager and then, after feeling like a change, worked for new build companies.

The couple later took some time off working and "traipsed around the South Island" before settling in Alexandra with their 12-year-old daughter and building a house.

Mr Simpson was a home-based graphic designer with clients around New Zealand while Ms Henderson was a part-time administrator.

It amazed her what they had achieved on part-time incomes as they had worked either part-time or not at all for the last 12 years. The key was no debt and having spending under firm control, she said.

"We both ... are extremely happy with the life we live and its nice to share with others an alternative way of structuring life."

They spent a lot of time with their daughter. "She is my lab rat when it comes to talking about money", she said. "But I’m just determined that she will grow up in control of money, not having money control her like it does for so many."

She wrote the blog while Mr Simpson created it, so it was a team effort.

"It’s a passion project for both of us and we feel so lucky to be able to work on something fun together."

Every day, she was responding to emails, talking to people on the phone and, increasingly, getting visits from people stopping to see her as they passed through Central Otago. In her podcasts, she told the financial stories of "everyday Kiwis".

"Basically, I love talking about how to manage money well, so I went out and found my tribe."

sally.rae@odt.co.nz

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