Can you reach financial security without a house?

Cooking the Books with Frances Cook

Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how high house prices are changing the way we manage our money. Hosted by Frances Cook.
You'd have to be living under a rock to miss all the chat about housing, what with the soaring prices and the Government bringing in new rules to try to bring it under control.
While it's good that action is being taken, it's always a long-term game. We'll have to wait to see how many of the housing changes make impact in reality, and there's usually a lag effect where even successful measures take a while to work.
Now while I do think that owning your own home is important for your financial security, I strongly believe that it's not the only thing. In fact, even if you were to buy your own house and then stop there, I'd argue that you're not looking after your financial future properly.
I also don't buy into the idea that property is the best way to invest.
So if you're feeling frustrated by all of this, you do still have options.
It seems New Zealanders are already picking up on this.
Hatch polled its investors, and found that 35% don't invest in property. 14% said they simply couldn't afford it. Meanwhile another 14% are looking to invest more in shares soon.
Now to be clear, this was a Facebook poll, so not scientific.
But it is backed up by a very credible survey carried out by the Financial Markets Authority, and released at the end of last year.
Their "Attitudes towards New Zealand's financial markets" survey showed property investing was falling, down 5 percentage points to 9% last year, while more people were buying shares, bouncing up to 20%.
For the latest podcast I talked to Kristen Lunman from Hatch.
If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook

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