Her Magazine is New Zealand’s only women’s business lifestyle magazine! Her Magazine highlights the achievements of successful and rising New Zealand businesswomen. Her Magazine encourages a healthy work/life balance.
Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/97183
Saving ourselves It is never too late and you���re never too small or too womanly start saving children have flown the coop, we then focus on paying off our mortgages and only then does a retirement fund become important. "I don���t want to be the only woman in my retirement village who can afford to go on cruises and enjoy shoe sales," Carmel says. "Sadly, if statistics about the gender pay gap are to be believed ��� and they are similar the world over ��� my choice of shopping buddies might be limited. We���ve long known that women generally outlive men and that we are generally paid less than men. Better medicine and improved lifestyles are leading to longer lives for all, but women can still expect to live some five to ten years longer than men. As for the gap between what women and men are paid for the same job, there has been some progress, but the gap still exists and this makes a huge difference for women, in a bad way. "Our average investor with a lump sum investment comes to us at age 60. If these people are planning to retire at 65 that doesn't leave us very long to make any real returns on their investment. Whereas, if they had come to us 10 years ago, we could have done a lot more. If we women do live longer than our men, then we are going to need to start saving to look after ourselves - and for more than just five years before we plan to retire." Carmel insists that women should forsake any fear we have associated with money and instead take charge of our futures. "The number of people we come across who tell us they don���t have enough money to invest or don't know where to start is incredible. There should be no prejudice with money. You should be able to invest as little as $500 or $50 a month ��� everyone can start somewhere. Even getting into the habit of saving each week through a means like Kiwisaver is painless and when it comes time to retire or buy your first home you have a nice sum to work with. If you don't want to do Kiwisaver, instead of buying that second pair of winter boots - put that into an investment��� you need to start with something today." Being brought up by her solo, school teacher mother, Carmel not only learnt the value of hard work but saw first-hand the effects of wise money management. "When my mother died, she didn���t have a whole lot of money to her name. She would have admitted that she made some bad financial decisions along the way ��� like we all have. I decided very early in life that I wanted to have more choices as I got older and I knew that to do so required some capital ��� not just a weekly/ monthly salary. Most people spend this on daily living so it is very hard to develop a nest egg." "I don���t want to be the only woman in my retirement village who can afford to go on cruises and enjoy shoe sales. Sadly, if statistics about the gender pay gap are to be believed ��� and they are similar the world over ��� my choice of shopping buddies might be limited.��� Carmel grew up in the Hutt Valley, Wellington, attended Sacred Heart College and then went onto Victoria University to follow in the footsteps of her accountant father who died when she was 11 years old. "I decided to follow in his footsteps to become an accountant but wasn���t as good as he was so changed to study finance ��� a relatively new discipline at university. The more I learnt about finance and the share market, the more it seemed like a logical way to make money ��� especially for a young person." Upon graduating with a degree in accounting in 1984, Carmel gained employment as a share broker���s assistant before moving to Prudential Portfolio Management in Wellington which at the time, was the financial hub of the country. "In those days we would meet with potential investors and talk about what they wanted in their portfolio and then we would write a letter recommending what shares they should buy or sell. We would post it off and wait for them to call or come in to see us to confirm the shares. My role was largely communicating with clients, which was a fantastic way to get to know people and what they wanted. I also had to write paragraphs about each of the stocks and through this I developed an interest in research." Carmel then made the move into the research team as an analyst. In this role she would visit with companies and decide which were buy, sell or hold opportunities. "This is what I loved and I knew it was what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life." Using her newfound knowledge, as well as the intuition that would later see her rise to great notoriety in her field, Carmel experienced early success with some stock picks. "In 1984 in the New Zealand share market, you could buy almost any share and make money. This was punctuated by the 1987 crash which, with hindsight, I can say was the best thing that could have happened. As someone new to the industry it was a great experience to witness human nature take control through the highs as well as the lows of the grieving process that people go through when they lose money on share market investments. Whether it scares them from the share market forever or whether they go back in and recoup their losses. It was an invaluable time to be in the market and to learn." As well as experiencing the highs of the market herself, Carmel has definitely had some lows and knows how hard it is to recover from a loss situation. h e rmagaz in e .co.n z | 11