Auckland mathematician Dr Jamie Sneddon probably did not expect a call from a chartered accountant trying to escape mortgage debt. But that call, placed by Hannah McQueen to the University of Auckland’s calculus department, set off a three-month collaboration. They built a formula to structure debt for the fastest possible payoff at the lowest interest rate with maximum flexibility.
McQueen, founder of EnableMe, recently launched a wellbeing service called Age Brightly. She spoke with former deputy prime minister Paula Bennett on the Ask Me Anything podcast.
The conversation landed on a problem she has watched for nearly two decades: high earners who cannot build wealth. The formula worked. But it revealed something else.
“It assumes I’ve got money left over to pay the mortgage off faster, which makes sense,” McQueen said. The assumption only holds if spending does not swallow every dollar of a rising income.
That is where the trouble starts. McQueen’s own practice data shows some of the highest earners she has worked with were also some of the people making the least financial progress. “So then you end up having people who are on great incomes, and their lifestyle has stretched to match their income — not the speed of their wealth has grown at the rate that their income’s increased,” she told Bennett.
This is a common pattern in New Zealand. People believe a bigger paycheck solves everything. McQueen said most people think incorrectly that if you just earn more money, you would be okay.
“But what more money gives you, usually, is permission to not worry about the money, not to actually use that or channel it to get ahead faster.” The math is simple. A person on a high income who spends it all has the same net result as someone on a low income who spends it all.
Zero progress. The difference is the high earner had more opportunity to build wealth and let it slip away. McQueen’s own history shows how hard it is to break that cycle.
She did not just hire a financial planner. She went to a university math department.
She asked for a formula. That level of deliberate action is rare. Most people do not call calculus professors.
They assume the rising tide of their salary will lift their net worth. It does not. The problem is not that people earn too little.
It is that they treat a raise as a signal to upgrade their lifestyle, not to accelerate their wealth. A bigger house, a newer car, more expensive holidays.
The spending expands to fill the space the income creates. No room is left for the mortgage or for savings. McQueen’s data from EnableMe backs that up year after year.
High earners walk in with great incomes and little to show for them. They are not broke.
They are stuck. The money flows in and flows out. The bank account looks healthy on payday but empty by the next one.
This is not a story about poverty. It is about a specific kind of financial inertia that hits people who earn enough to stop worrying. They stop tracking.
They stop planning. They stop making the money work for them.
The result is the same as if they had never earned it at all. McQueen’s message, delivered plainly on Bennett’s podcast, is that earning more is not the answer. The answer is what you do with what you already have.
A formula helps. But only if there is money left over to apply it.
