The impact mental health and trauma have on how people manage their money needs more attention, the founder of the Māori Millionaire platform says.
The 22-year-old business mentor told Breakfast there’s a narrative around spending less and investing more but what’s not often talked about is why people might not do those things in the first place.
Te Kahukura Boynton said: “So many people are struggling at the moment, so many people want to see someone who's talking about issues without shaming people for making decisions that they didn't know better. We all want to do better.”
She said her financial journey includes being open about struggling with mental health challenges and overcoming a drug addiction and binge eating.
“It can feel very belittling when you hear constantly 'you just need to behave better’, ‘you just need to do better' when no one's talking about trauma. No one's talking about the reasons why people might not do it, and that's the important part that I wish more people are discussing.”
Boynton said those ‘reasons’ are what is keeping many New Zealanders from managing their finances.
When asked about whether culture might play a role in why people might not discuss their money situation, Boynton was emphatic.
“If you associate money with financial stress, if you associate money with shame, money with not having enough [then] you're not going to talk about it. You're going to avoid it.
"And this is like money personalities, you'll either avoid money or you'll be anxiously attached to it and this is the stuff that, like, awareness around this will actually enable people to make those better choices.”
A lot of things around financial literacy is “over complicated”, she said. “It blows my mind how normalised that is.”
Boynton’s mission is to bridge the wealth gap by creating accessible resources for people to use. She uses Instagram and TikTok to create content aimed at helping rangatahi grow their money and has amassed around 70,000 followers across the platforms.
Her debut book Māori Millionaire was published last year and she has now launched a new six-part podcast series, How We Money, in partnership with ANZ.
“I'm not coming here from my high horse saying you need to do better because I've made my mistakes and I just want to encourage people to look at their finances and go 'OK, what can we do right now?'”
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