SortMe Money
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.
Episodes
20 episodes
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 page...
Budgeting tools that work for self-employed people (NZ)
The most expensive thing about being self-employed in New Zealand isn't tax. It's the deductible business expense that came off your personal credit card in November and never made it to the accountant in March. A self-employed Kiwi on the 33% ...
Introducing Entity Management: your trust, your rental, your side business all in SortMe
If you've got a trust, a rental or a side business, you know the March routine. Your accountant emails asking for the year's transactions, the rental statements, and "any receipts you've got." You lose a weekend exporting CSVs from three differ...
Should I be using a trust? When a family trust is the right move?
A decade ago, as Opes Partners' Ed McKnight puts it, "every man and his dog had a trust." That default has quietly collapsed — three regulatory shifts (the Trusts Act 2019, the 39% trustee tax rate, and tighter IRD disclosure) have raised the b...
When to see a financial advisor in NZ (and when it's still too early)
Search traffic for "when to see a financial advisor" in NZ has doubled in the last year. The question almost every SortMe user eventually asks is some variant of: is my situation complicated enough to warrant an advisor yet? The honest...
The SortMe Cashflow Health Score: what it is and how it's calculated
Most NZ households know their credit score matters when they apply for a mortgage — but the number that actually runs their life is the one they look at once a month and interpret from vibes. Apps tell you how much you spent. Banks tell you wha...
What lifestyle creep is - and why it's so hard to spot
You earned an extra $20,000 this year. Twelve months on, the bank balance is roughly the same, the car is a year newer, the family went somewhere warmer in July, and the kitchen finally got the renovation that was always "in a couple of years"....
Sharesies, Hatch, Kernel: where each one fits in an NZ portfolio
Sharesies, Hatch, and Kernel turned the NZ share market from something Kiwis read about in the Weekend Herald into something you can open on the couch — fractional shares of Apple or Nvidia from $5, an S&P 500 ETF bought in 90 seconds, the ...
Joint or separate? How dual-income NZ households really run their money in 2026
Should you keep your money joint, separate, or somewhere in between? After thousands of onboarding calls and customer interviews with NZ households, SortMe Founder & CEO Carl Thompson thinks that's the wrong question. The real one is how tw...
Budgeting v3 is live. Your essentials and your lifestyle now live apart
Budgeting every dollar sucks. It's also impossible. Traditional budgeting apps ask you to pre-allocate "lunches: $80" or "kids' activities: $50" in January and expect reality to obey — one week leftovers are free, the next you're buying every d...
NZ House Sales Steadied in March — Why First-Home Buyers Still Have the Upper Hand
If you've been saving for your first home, the recent NZ housing headlines probably gave you whiplash. January and February both posted year-on-year declines in sales volumes — the first back-to-back drop in nearly three years — and most of the...
PocketSmith alternatives in NZ (and when SortMe is the better fit)
For NZ households who've outgrown bank apps and spreadsheets, PocketSmith vs SortMe is often the next comparison they hit — both NZ-built, both go well beyond basic budgeting, and both are recommended by financial advisors. Most coverage frames...
The NZ net worth tracker for households with more than a bank account
Working out your real net worth sounds simple — add up what you own, subtract what you owe. The catch is that for most NZ households, no one actually sits down to do it until something forces the question: tax time, a mortgage application, or a...
When to switch KiwiSaver providers (and what SortMe flags first)
If you're searching "switch KiwiSaver", the question underneath is almost always one of two: should I? or how do I? The second one is easy — the transfer takes ten minutes online and a few business days in the background. The ...
Break your fix? What a NZ mortgage break fee really costs
If you're searching "mortgage break fee NZ", you're really asking one question: is it worth paying the fee to get a lower rate now? The honest answer is "it depends on three numbers, and most households don't have them in front of them when the...
Petrol just jumped 20% in a month — do you know what that's actually costing your household?
91 octane in Auckland sat at $2.50 a litre at the start of March. Six weeks later it's $3.04 — a 20% jump on a non-discretionary line item with no warning, and economists are openly discussing $4 a litre as a realistic scenario if Middle East t...
We’re at an Economic Turning Point — Why Spending Visibility Matters More Than Ever
The Reserve Bank has cut the official cash rate nine times — from 5.5% in August 2024 down to 2.25% — and Westpac's economists are calling it an "economic turning point" for New Zealand. On paper, the recovery is here. But most Kiwi households,...
Kiwis Are Pulling Back on Credit Cards, What We're Seeing Inside SortMe
Credit card spending in New Zealand fell 1.1% year-on-year in February 2026 — the first negative reading since the COVID disruptions of 2020. Most coverage ran with a "Kiwis are scared to spend" story. SortMe CEO and Co-Founder Carl Thompson th...
The 3 Budgeting Myths That Keep High-Earning Kiwis Stuck
High earners don't budget because they think they don't need to. The data says otherwise.SortMe's Chief Customer Officer Charlotte Barraclough spends her days looking at the financial positions of everyday Kiwi households — the dual inco...