SortMe Money

SortMe.com - Financial wellbeing made easy

SortMe Money is the podcast for New Zealanders who want their money to work harder without having to think about it constantly. Each episode turns our most-read articles into audio — practical insights on spending, saving, investing, and the everyday financial decisions that quietly shape your life. Made by the team behind SortMe, NZ's AI-powered personal finance app.

  1. Jul 22

    The single-income household: how to run a whole house on one wage

    Running a whole household on one income takes real skill. One wage covers the rent or mortgage, the power, the groceries, and the kids too if there are kids — and it does it week after week, without a second pay quietly filling the gaps. There are all sorts of ways a household ends up here: one partner is home with the kids, or studying, or unwell, or between jobs; someone lives alone and covers everything themselves; someone is parenting solo and doing every job in the house. Different lives, one thing in common — and the advice usually aimed at these households is some version of "spend less," which is both obvious and not very useful. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston offers the more honest, more useful version. One income is a different game — the big fixed costs don't scale with the number of earners (rent, power, internet, rates, insurance are the same figure however the household is set up, so a larger share is already committed before you make a single choice about it), and there's less room to soak up a surprise. The goal isn't to earn more or live like a monk. It's to make every dollar visible early enough that you get to make the call on it, instead of finding out after the fact. In this episode: Why one income is a different game — the arithmetic of fixed costs that don't scale with earners, and the smaller cushion for a surprise car repair, dental bill or cut fortnightThe number most people don't have — the fortnightly-to-monthly maths (× 26 ÷ 12) that means budgeting to "double the pay" quietly runs a shortfall ten months a year and a mysterious surplus for twoThe fixed-cost audit that beats two years of feeling bad about takeaways — power (Powerswitch), insurance re-quoting rather than auto-renewing, mortgage refix timing, subscription creep, and attacking credit-card-rate debt firstWhy single-income households need a bigger buffer than the standard rule of thumb — closer to six months than three, treated as a direction rather than a deadline, with the first couple of thousand dollars doing most of the psychological workThe income-protection conversation nobody wants to have — why insuring the wage everything rests on is one of the more sensible things you can do with your money, especially with dependents involvedLetting a good month pay for a lean one — the habit of refusing to let an $80 grocery surplus quietly evaporate into a nicer weekend, and treating the savings pot as where the good months goThe three numbers worth watching weekly — Safe to Spend, fixed costs as a share of income, and buffer measured in weeks not dollars (how long could you keep things running if the income paused on Friday?)Where SortMe fits in a single-income house — categorised spend so the fixed-cost audit takes an evening not a weekend, a real Safe to Spend after commitments (not a balance that lies to you), the surplus-month nudge into savings, and the Cashflow Health Score for the days you don't have the energy to interrogate a spreadsheetA note on real support — MoneyTalks is free and confidential, and Work and Income has entitlements that plenty of working households don't realise apply to themRead the full article: sortme.com/post/single-income-household-nz

  2. Jul 16

    Is the share market bubble about to burst? What a crash really means for NZ investors

    The question turns up everywhere at the moment. In the headlines, in the group chat, from the friend who has never mentioned shares in his life and suddenly wants to know whether he should pull his KiwiSaver out of Growth. Is this an AI bubble? Is it about to pop? The honest answer, worth sitting with for a second: nobody knows. Bank of America surveys global fund managers every month — the July 2026 round covered 210 of them running about US$555 billion between them. For the first time, an "AI bubble" topped their list of biggest tail risks, named by 45% (up from 28% in June). Then the survey asked them straight out whether AI stocks are in a bubble. 43% said yes. 48% said no. That's the state of expert opinion: a coin flip, held by people with Bloomberg terminals and research teams. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston sets aside the unanswerable will it crash? and picks up the entirely knowable one: what would a crash actually do to me? He walks the froth and the earnings evidence on both sides, brackets the range using dot-com and GFC history, and unpicks the single variable that decides whether a 30% drop is an emergency or a non-event — and it isn't your view on AI. It's your time horizon. In this episode: The 43/48 coin flip in BofA's July 2026 Global Fund Manager Survey — and why any article that tells you what happens next should be treated with suspicionThe case for worry — top-10 concentration in the S&P 500 running mid-to-high 30s (double the 1990–2015 average), with 82% of managers calling "long global semiconductors" the most crowded trade on recordThe case against panic — unlike 1999, the mega-caps at the centre of this are enormously profitable, and much of the AI spend is being funded from operating cash flow rather than debt (which is how bubbles fail differently, and far more violently)The two historical brackets — the Nasdaq's 78% dot-com drawdown taking 15 years to reclaim, and the S&P 500's 57% GFC drop taking 5.5 years — and why the depth of the fall tracked how much of the price was supported by real earningsThe anatomy of a 30% drop in your own numbers — $80,000 across KiwiSaver and Sharesies becoming $56,000, a $24,000 loss that grinds over months, and the real danger (the thought that arrives around the third bad month)Why the same drop is a genuine emergency for a March house deposit and a non-event for a 34-year-old's KiwiSaver — and the honest caveat about sequence-of-returns risk in the years either side of retirementThe bit most people get wrong — collapsing risk tolerance and concentration into one question, and how three "diversified" wrappers can quietly be the same handful of US tech companies ridden three timesThe four moves that don't require a view on whether the bubble pops — know your real exposure across every account, know your buffer, match money to time (nothing you need in ~3 years should be in the market, nothing you need in 30 needs to leave it), and write down now what you'll do if it falls 30%Where SortMe fits — a read-only view that connects banks, KiwiSaver and investment platforms so the two numbers this article is about (what you're really holding, and how much cash you'd have to lean on) stop being scattered across five loginsRead the full article: sortme.com/post/share-market-crash

  3. Jul 7

    The IPO trap: why the hottest float is usually the worst place for your savings

    Three weeks ago, SpaceX became a public company — the biggest float in history, raising about US$75 billion. Shares priced at US$135, opened higher, closed day one at US$160.95 (+19%), then ran to US$225.64 on 16 June with the company briefly worth more than US$2.6 trillion. A week later they were back at US$147, wiping out more than US$600 billion in value. They now sit around US$160, almost exactly where they closed on day one. Anyone who bought near the top is still down close to 30%. The common narrative said this was the chance you couldn't miss. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston pulls apart what the research actually says about buying IPOs — and why the "hottest float" is usually the worst place for money you can't afford to lose. The pop you read about isn't the pop you get: that first-day gain went almost entirely to the large institutions allocated shares at the offer price the night before. By the time the shares hit your trading app, you're buying from them, often at the most expensive moment of the stock's life. SortMe Founder & CEO Carl Thompson: "The hardest losses we hear about aren't from people who budgeted badly. They're from people who took money they'd carefully saved — a house deposit, a kid's education fund — and put it on one exciting bet because everyone said it couldn't lose. It almost always can." In this episode: The SpaceX round trip in three weeks — $135 offer, $160.95 first-day close, $225.64 peak, US$600B of value gone in a week, back to $160 todayWhy the first-day pop mostly goes to the institutions who got the offer-price allocation the night before — and why your trading app only opens the door after the price has already re-ratedThe Ritter research every retail investor should know — IPOs bought at first-day close returned ~34% over three years against ~62% for a comparable basket of established companies (about 29% behind); ~65% of IPOs underperform the market over their first three yearsThe floats don't even reliably hold their offer price — ~40% below offer in 2022, 54% below offer in 2023Three floats from the last twelve months, same shape — Figma ($33 offer → $115.50 day one → ~$23 now, down ~80% from day-one close and below offer); Klarna ($40 offer → $52 open → ~$20 now, half the offer price); Circle ($31 offer → $83.23 day-one close → nearly $299 peak → ~$69 now, three-quarters off the frenzy peak)Why floats are sold at maximum optimism — that's when founders, early staff and VCs get the best price for the slice they're sellingThe lock-up clock — 90–180 days after listing, insider selling hits the market, and around 60% of IPO stocks fall around lock-up expiry; the Facebook cautionary tale ($38 → below $18 as lock-ups rolled off in 2012)What a calmer plan looks like — money you need within a few years sits boring; long-run money goes in steadily, spread across many companies, and left alone. It doesn't screenshot well, but it beats the rocket-stock approach for the overwhelming majority of peopleWhere SortMe fits — accounts, KiwiSaver, goals and net worth in one place, so a decision about risk is one you make with the full picture, not in the heat of a chart going vertical. A goal with a number and a date is much harder to gamble away on a Friday afternoon.Read the full article: sortme.com/post/buying-ipo-stocks-nz

  4. Jul 6

    KiwiSaver employer contributions in 2026: the new 3.5% minimum, explained

    Check the KiwiSaver line on your last payslip. Two numbers moved in April, assuming you were on the default 3%, and you didn't have to do a thing for either of them: your deduction is now 3.5% and your employer has to at least match it. On $80,000 that half-percent is roughly $7.70 a week out of your pay. What your employer adds looks like the same amount on paper. It isn't, quite, once tax gets involved — and the gap surprises almost everyone who goes looking for it. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston walks through the KiwiSaver machinery underneath the April 2026 rate change — the employer contribution that shrinks in transit, the government top-up that quietly halved last year while nobody was watching, and the one particular flavour of employment agreement where the "employer's" share of this rise is actually being paid by you. None of it is hard to untangle; it just never gets explained in one place. SortMe Founder & CEO Carl Thompson: "Most people can tell you their salary. Almost nobody can tell you what their KiwiSaver is actually worth this month. That's why we put your balance next to your bank accounts and track it over time." In this episode: What actually changed on 1 April 2026 — 3.5% default employee deduction, 3.5% minimum employer match (up from 3% since 2013), and 16- and 17-year-olds now included so a teenager on $8,000 of shelf-stacking collects $280/year they never had beforeThe next diarised move — 1 April 2028, default rate to 4% on both sides — and the temporary rate-reduction escape hatch in myIR (3–12 months at a stretch) that lets your employer drop to 3% too and costs you compounding laterWhy the third row of the who-pays-what table trips people up — the government now pays 25c per dollar you contribute, capped at $260.72/year, requiring $1,042.86 of your own contributions by 30 June, with nothing at all above $180,000 taxable incomeESCT (employer superannuation contribution tax) — why the employer's 3.5% isn't what reaches your KiwiSaver account, worked through on $80k: $2,800 employer contribution, ~30% ESCT step, ~$840 to IRD, ~$1,960 into your fundThe "total remuneration" trap common in corporate NZ — one headline number with employer KiwiSaver included inside it, meaning the half-percent rise came out of your package and your take-home fell to cover it; the one-search fix on your employment agreement, and why your next salary review is the place to raise 2028Self-employed or contracting — no match and nothing automatic, but the government top-up doesn't care where the income came from; a lump before 30 June works as well as a weekly dripThe side-hustle-plus-salary structure that quietly works — the salary side carries the full stack, so give the side business a "retirement" line item alongside its software subscriptionsWhat to check this month in ten minutes — 3.5% on both payslip lines, an employment-agreement search for "total remuneration", the $180k income cliff, and whether the temporary reduction is worth it (your 65-year-old self would prefer it wasn't)Where SortMe fits — KiwiSaver aggregated next to your bank accounts through Akahu, so your total balance is one tracked number over time instead of a payslip plus an IRD login plus a provider app that mostly pushes fund-performance notificationsRead the full article: sortme.com/post/kiwisaver-employer-contributions-2026

  5. Jul 3

    Mortgage refix or refinance? Your options when your fixed rate ends

    Your fixed mortgage rate has an end date, and there's a decent chance it lands between now and next winter — 68% of New Zealand's fixed-rate home loans are due to reprice in the 12 months from early 2026. A few weeks out, your bank will email you. The email offers a refix: pick a new term from a short list, tap a button, done inside a minute. What the email doesn't say is that the end of a fixed term is the one moment in the life of your mortgage when you can change almost anything about it at almost no cost — lender, structure, term, repayments. All of it is on the table, briefly. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston unpacks the refix-vs-refinance-vs-restructure decision most Kiwis one-tap through without realising a three-option choice is being framed as a one-option formality. The past two years were kind to anyone rolling off a fix — the average rate being paid across all NZ mortgages fell from a 6.39% peak in October 2024 to 5.17% by late 2025 — but that tailwind is nearly spent, the OCR sits at 2.25%, and most bank economists have the next moves pencilled up. SortMe Founder & CEO Carl Thompson: "The households that refix well aren't the ones who can recite the OCR track. They're the ones who turn up knowing their own numbers: every tranche, the equity position, what the household really spends. When that's already on one screen, you spend your energy negotiating instead of assembling." In this episode: The one-tap trap — why 68% of NZ fixed loans repricing this year is the largest window of leverage most households will get on their biggest debt, and why the bank's email is deliberately framed as a formalityRefix vs refinance vs restructure — what each word actually means, when a refinance triggers a full application (income evidence, credit check, valuation, lawyer), and why cash contributions almost always carry clawback termsWhy the boring answer (a simple refix) is sometimes correct — a genuinely competitive offer, a recent refinance with an active clawback, sub-20% equity locking you out of the sharpest specials, or an income change that would make a fresh application hardWhen refinancing deserves the paperwork — a market-versus-carded-rate gap that the bank won't move on, a cash contribution that offsets legal and valuation costs several times over, or a product (offset, specific structure) your bank won't doWhy the boundary between refix and mid-term matters — everything above applies at the end of your fixed term; break your fix mid-term and the break fee usually wipes the gainsThe rate-card signal for 2026 — sharpest one-year around 4.65% versus sharpest two-year around 5.19%, and what banks charging more for longer money is telling you about their view of the next OCR movesSix months out: find the end date of every tranche (Auckland households often have two, three or four), confirm your equity, check your last six months of household income, and note the exact rate gap you're paying vs the marketThree months out: get three written offers (a broker can pull them without you redoing the paperwork three times), sense-check the fixed-floating split, offset/revolving-credit fit, and whether four tranches should become twoOne month out: confirm term and rate-lock length, choose fortnightly over monthly, and — if the new rate is lower — resist the automatic lower repayment so the difference quietly shortens your loanWhat SortMe pre-loads for the conversation — every tranche's balance/rate/end date, net worth including the house so the equity question answers itself, six months of income and spending as the evidence a refinance application asks for, and Safe to Spend showing what the new repayment does to your weekRead the full article: sortme.com/post/refix-mortgage-nz-options

  6. Jun 30

    Inflation 101: what it is, and how to stop it quietly eating your savings

    You feel inflation at the supermarket long before you read about it in the news. A trolley that ran you $200 a year ago is closer to $206 now. That might not seem like much, but the increased power bill, the higher insurance renewal and the rent increase quietly add up. New Zealand's annual rate hit 3.1% in early 2026 — a notch above the top of the Reserve Bank's 1–3% target band, and after a few quiet years it's back near the top of the agenda. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston strips the jargon off inflation and shows why, as an economic headline, it's easy to tune out — but for your own money, it's personal. A slow tax on every dollar you're holding in cash. The framing he keeps coming back to: $10,000 parked in a typical everyday account at 0.10% makes you about ten dollars in a year, but with inflation near 3% you now need roughly $10,300 to buy what that $10,000 bought last year. Same number on the screen — quietly $300 behind. You don't feel like you've lost anything because the balance never drops. What's lost is the buying power of those dollars. In this episode: What inflation actually is — Stats NZ pricing a basket of the stuff we all pay for (weekly shop, rent, power, petrol, insurance) and the same thing said two ways: prices going up, or your dollar buying lessThe two engines behind it — demand (households all wanting to spend at once, cheap borrowing, hot housing) and cost (oil, shipping, wages, a weaker Kiwi dollar) — and why the 2021–22 spike was a textbook mix of bothThe quieter driver — expectations — and why breaking that loop is the Reserve Bank's main job, with the Official Cash Rate (currently 2.25%) as the leverTwenty years of NZ inflation in context — most of the 2010s safely inside the 1–3% band, 0.3% in 2015, the post-pandemic peak of 7.3% in mid-2022 (the highest since 1990), and the climb from under 2% to over 7% in about eighteen monthsThe nominal-versus-real-return trap — a savings account paying 0.10% while inflation runs at 3% is handing you a negative real return of roughly minus 2.9%, even though the balance on screen never dropsWhy the default everyday/on-call accounts at the big banks (0.10–0.40%) are where most of the damage happens — and why the easiest single win is getting cash off the floorMatching the timeframe to the home — this week's cash stays in the everyday account, this month's cash earns more in a savings fund or HISA, long-term money goes into growth assets that historically beat inflation by a comfortable marginKeep your buffer, then put the rest to work — emergency fund stays in cash you can reach; it's the surplus sitting idle that inflation feeds onWhere SortMe fits — every account in one view so the idle cash stops being invisible, the Cashflow Health Score flagging when you're holding more cash than your spending needs, and net worth over time showing whether your money is genuinely growing or just standing stillRead the full article: sortme.com/post/inflation-101-nz

  7. Jun 21

    How to budget a side hustle in NZ (with multiple income streams)

    Picture the Sunday-night version of this. One partner has the banking app open on the couch, the other is squinting at a Hnry summary on their phone, and there's a Google Sheet on the laptop that stopped being accurate around the time the second kid arrived. Salary lands fortnightly. The side hustle money turns up whenever it turns up. A distribution from the business shows up twice a year, and nobody's ever quite sure which week. Four income streams, and not one place that adds them up. In this episode, SortMe Resident Money Writer Hugo Jonston explains why most "side hustle" advice in NZ is really tax advice wearing a budgeting hat — set aside 20–33% for IRD, register for GST at $60k, use a secondary code on the second PAYE job. Hnry, Solo and a good accountant have that side sorted. The bit they leave untouched is the household itself: what can you spend this week, given the money arrives in four rhythms that never line up? Hugo walks through the six-step method SortMe households use to crack it — about an hour to set up, and after that it mostly runs itself. In this episode: The Sunday-night scene every multi-income household knows — banking app, Hnry summary, an out-of-date Google Sheet, and four income streams that never line upWhy most NZ "side hustle" advice is tax advice in disguise, and the household question (what can you actually spend this week?) that nobody answersStep 1 — Get every income stream onto one screen via Akahu open banking, with salary, side hustle, dividends and business drawings sorted by where the money came fromStep 2 — Sort income by how it behaves not how big it is: dependable (salary, steady rental), wobbly (freelance, side hustle), lumpy (distributions, dividends, bonuses) — and the rule that you only plan the household on the dependable income, with the rest as savings or goal fuelStep 3 — Make tax visible before it's owed: Hnry skims at the door, Solo shows a live figure, or the dull-and-reliable auto-transfer of 25–33% of every non-PAYE deposit to a separate-bank savings accountStep 4 — If one income stream runs through an entity (sole trader, LTC, trust, rental), the second leak no ordinary household view catches — business spending that came off a personal card — and how SortMe Pro's Entity Management workspace tags it on the spot so the deduction doesn't disappear by 31 MarchStep 5 — Budget the household, not the stream: $90k corporate + $20k Shopify + $180k business stake + $8k dividends isn't four budgets fighting each other, it's one household with four taps running into the same tub, and a daily-recalculated Safe to Spend that nets everything against real commitmentsStep 6 — The 15-minute monthly review (Safe to Spend, Cashflow Health Score, goals) and SortMe's subscription sweep finding an average $2,371.27/year in forgotten charges — with multi-account households tending to be the worst offendersThe three-tool stack that actually works — Hnry for tax at the door, the accountant for the year-end return, SortMe for the messy middle the other two leave aloneRead the full article: sortme.com/post/how-to-budget-side-hustle-nz

  8. Jun 19

    Your default savings account is leaking money: where to park your money in NZ in 2026

    A BNZ ad for a 1.6% "high-interest" savings account. That doesn't even keep pace with inflation. The default narrative is that a savings account means whatever your own bank put in front of you — and on the four big banks' everyday savings pages, you're looking at 0.05% to 0.40%. A household with $50,000 sitting in an everyday account at 0.10% is earning $50 a year in interest. In this episode, SortMe Founder & CEO Carl Thompson breaks down where to actually park your cash in NZ in 2026, with Kernel Wealth CEO Dean Anderson on the record throughout. The headline rate doesn't tell the whole story — two products can show the same number and still be very different underneath on risk, tax wrapper, and how fast you can get your money back when you need it. Dean's line that stuck: "It's time to look outside your day-to-day bank. Globally we've seen the rise of fintech players able to offer better outcomes for customers, with a great user experience. Find a partner that can help you optimise your savings and investments so you can achieve your financial goals earlier." In this episode: Why the 1.6% bank ad doesn't keep pace with inflation, and how moving $50,000 from a 0.10% everyday account to a top PIE savings fund earns roughly $1,080/year instead of $50The two things the headline rate hides — risk (a bank deposit is government-protected, a money-market fund isn't) and access (Westpac's Notice Saver pays 3% but you wait 32 days)The layered framework most households actually need — a small instant-access slice (~$5k) for true emergencies, then the bulk in something higher-paying you can free up in 1–7 daysWedge (3.00% PIE, next-business-day access, AA weighted-average credit rating) and Kernel Cash Plus (~2.83% PIE, trade date + 1, $220m+ fund coming up four years old) — the two NZ standout money-market savings funds, and why they're funds, not bank depositsThe PIE tax wrapper math — for a 39% earner, the same 3.00% gross is worth 1.83% net in a standard account vs 2.16% net in a PIE; for under-33% earners, Dean's blunt take is the wrapper advantage largely disappearsThe three traps inside bank HISAs — most "savings" accounts at the big four are under 1%, bonus rates drop to 0.05% the moment you withdraw, and notice savers (Westpac 32-day at 3%) are where the real bank yield livesIndex funds as semi-liquid cash for money you've decided you won't touch for 6–12+ months — Kernel NZ 50 and Global 100 at 0.25% fees, with trade date + 2 settlement as a psychological feature if you tend to raid the HISATerm deposits for defined-date cash (3.45–3.65% at 6 months, 3.85–3.95% at 12 months, higher at non-bank deposit takers) — and why they're a bad fit for an emergency fundThe Deposit Compensation Scheme trade-off — $100k per depositor per licensed bank, but money-market funds sit outside it, so you're trading scheme cover for the fund's (AA/A-rated) credit quality and extra yieldThe five questions to ask before you move money — when you'll need it, your marginal tax rate, whether you'll really leave it alone, the size of the pile, and whether you're banking with the wrong place for thisWhat SortMe shows you — every cash balance in one view, Cashflow Health Score flagging a high cash buffer, and the Recommendations engine that shifted an average $14,200 per household last quarter (worth ~$620/year in extra interest)Read the full article: sortme.com/post/where-to-park-money-nz-2026

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About

SortMe Money is the podcast for New Zealanders who want their money to work harder without having to think about it constantly. Each episode turns our most-read articles into audio — practical insights on spending, saving, investing, and the everyday financial decisions that quietly shape your life. Made by the team behind SortMe, NZ's AI-powered personal finance app.

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  • Creator
    SortMe.com - Financial wellbeing made easy
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 SortMe Ltd
  • Show Website
    SortMe Money