Hannah McQueen called the University of Auckland’s calculus department. She asked for help with a formula. Not for a client.
For herself. She wanted out of mortgage debt.
The request was specific: structure her debt to pay it off as fast as possible, at the lowest possible interest rate, with maximum flexibility. The calculus department put her in touch with Dr. Jamie Sneddon. They worked together for three months.
What came out of that collaboration was a formula. It optimised her debt structure.
But McQueen, a chartered accountant who founded the financial advisory firm EnableMe, says the formula had a built-in assumption. “It assumes I’ve got money left over to pay the mortgage off faster, which makes sense, apart…” That assumption is the problem, she argues. And it is the same problem she sees across New Zealand, even among people earning high incomes.
McQueen shared her observations with former deputy prime minister Paula Bennett on the latest episode of Ask Me Anything. She has spent nearly two decades helping New Zealanders get ahead financially. She recently launched a wellbeing service called Age Brightly.
The core issue, she told Bennett, is a widespread misconception. People think earning more money will solve their financial problems.
“I think most people think incorrectly that if you just earn more money, you would be okay,” McQueen said. She disagrees. “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.” Data from her own practice backs that claim.
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.” That is the mechanism.
Lifestyle expands. It fills the space income creates. The formula assumes you have money left over.
But if your spending matches your pay, there is nothing left to channel. McQueen’s own story shows the solution is not just a better spreadsheet. It is a change in behaviour.
She needed a formula, yes. But she also needed to have money left over to apply it.
That required not spending everything she earned. The point is not that high earners are bad with money. It is that income alone is not wealth.
Wealth is what you keep and grow. And keeping it requires a deliberate choice not to let lifestyle consume the raise, the bonus, the higher salary.
McQueen’s observation cuts against a common belief. Many people assume a bigger paycheck will fix things. She says it often does the opposite.
It gives permission to stop worrying. And without worry, the money slips through. The formula she built with Dr. Sneddon works.
But only if you have the discipline to feed it. That discipline is what separates high earners who build wealth from those who just have high expenses.
McQueen has spent nearly two decades watching this play out. She has seen the data. She has lived it herself.
The pattern is consistent. Income rises.
Spending rises. Wealth stays flat. The solution, she suggests, is not to earn more.
It is to decide what to do with what you already earn. That decision has to come before the lifestyle adjusts upward. If it does not, the formula does not matter.
The money is already spent.
