WELLINGTON, June 27 — A chartered accountant who spent nearly two decades helping New Zealanders get ahead financially says high income earners often struggle to build wealth because their lifestyle expands to match their income. Hannah McQueen, founder of the financial advisory firm EnableMe, shared this observation with former deputy prime minister Paula Bennett on the latest episode of Ask Me Anything. McQueen recently launched a wellbeing service called Age Brightly.
The core problem, McQueen said, is a widespread misconception. “I think most people think incorrectly that if you just earn more money, you would be okay,” she told Bennett.
“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 McQueen’s own practice backs that up. Some of the highest earners she has worked with were also some of the people making the least financial progress, she noted.
“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.” McQueen speaks from personal experience. On a mission to escape mortgage debt, she contacted the calculus department at the University of Auckland.
“Will you help me work on a formula to structure my debt to pay it off as fast as possible at the lowest possible interest rate with the maximum flexibility?” she asked. That call led to a three-month collaboration with Dr Jamie Sneddon. Together they devised a formula that optimised her debt structure.
But the formula alone was not enough for McQueen to take control of her mortgage. “It assumes I’ve got money left over to pay the mortgage off faster, which makes sense, apart from the fact I didn’t have any money left over. So I was earning good money, but I was still living payday to payday,” McQueen said.
For a chartered accountant — someone trained to read financial statements and optimise cash flow — that admission cuts to the heart of the issue. The maths of money, McQueen argues, is only half the equation.
The psychology of money — how people actually behave with their earnings — is where the real gap opens up. This dynamic has clear parallels for markets beyond New Zealand. In Central Asia, where remittance flows and commodity-driven incomes can spike sharply, the same pattern often emerges: higher earnings get absorbed by imported cars, bigger houses, and consumer goods rather than channelled into productive assets or debt reduction.
The formula might work on paper, but if the household has no surplus left at the end of the month, the maths is irrelevant. McQueen’s new venture, Age Brightly, suggests she is now applying those lessons to a broader demographic — helping people manage not just their money but their overall wellbeing as they age.
But the core insight from her conversation with Bennett remains the same: earning more does not automatically build wealth. The discipline to channel that income, rather than spend it, is what separates progress from stagnation. For high-income professionals in any market — from Wellington to Almaty — that is a warning worth heeding.
The next episode of Ask Me Anything will likely explore how that discipline translates into practical action.
