Businesswoman, TV star, media icon and Treasure Island Celebrity The returning Susan Ball is the first (in over 50 episodes) to say it: “I’m doing it for the money.”
“Earlier on, a lot of people would say to me, ‘Don’t let money be your driving force.’ Well, you wouldn’t say that if you grew up in Wolverhampton and didn’t have anything. It’s my driving force and always has been. It’s a powerful motivator.”
Paul doesn’t exaggerate how difficult her childhood was.
“The part of Wolverhampton I grew up in was very low-working class. We didn’t have a shower. We didn’t have a bathroom. There was no indoor toilet, no hot running water. It was very basic,” she says.
Paul, whose mother left when she was young, was raised by her father, who cared for her but had to work long hours in a factory.
She says she did not realize they were poor until she was nine or 10 years old.
“If you only mix with people like you, you don’t know how other people live. We didn’t have cars, we didn’t have phones.”
There was no pocket money, but from the age of about 11 Paul worked in a pub sweeping and cleaning ashtrays.
“I think I got 50p and I’m going to use that money for dance lessons,” Paul says.
Brisco founder Rod Duke
Despite owning and running the company for nearly 40 years, Duke has no plans to retire.
He enjoys golf, loves traveling and socializing with his wife and friends. He invested in racehorses.
But his true passion is still retail. It’s been that way since he was a teenager.
Duke, who was born in Australia, left school when he was 16 to work in a shoe store because he loved selling things.
“I was fascinated by the suggestion of buying something and then reselling it for more than I paid for it,” he says.
“I was a very unusual teenager, and I wasn’t particularly keen on school except for the sports part of it. For me, it was all about preparing myself for the workforce. I was eager to walk into a store and learn how to deal with people and sell to them, how to buy something for An amount of money that is then sold for a slightly larger amount.
His first memories of money were of counting large piles of it. His father was a bookmaker on the Adelaide races and would ask the young Duke to count the winnings every Sunday.
“I was about 10 or 12. As usual, the bookmaker would be in the races on a Saturday. And then when he woke up on a Sunday morning, he would get the betting bags, empty out all the money, and hope there would be a lot.
His father would empty the money on the floor and ask the children to count it: “I want the bills to be counted this way, and there’s a rubber band you put around them. And all the silver, you sort it that way, and then if you sort it, I’ll go down and count it and put it away.”
It is a vivid memory that may have shaped the young duke’s passion for making money.
But he says it was never about the money itself. He began chasing independence and then set himself goals for success.
“I think so [money] “It’s a byproduct but for me, it’s not a real motivation,” he said. “Earning money for the business so I can support the 2,000 families in this business is now a bit of fun.
Sir Bill English
Former Prime Minister Sir Bill English talks about his personal relationship with money, growing up on a farm in Southland and how he rose to the top in politics after earning a degree in English literature.
“I think I was the only agricultural worker in New Zealand who got a Latin scholarship, in the early 1980s. So I went to Dunedin and got an English degree and an accounting degree.”
He also reflects on his early years in Parliament (elected in 1990) and the depth of the dark recession in New Zealand’s history that began in the economic turmoil of the 1970s and culminated with the “Mother of All Budgets” during National’s tenure as Prime Minister. 1990s.
“It was very bleak in my community, which I knew better than any other,” English says. “In rural communities, the disruption that occurred as part of economic liberalization was enormous. When I hear people talking about crises today… by the standards of the time, this is not a crisis.
“A lot of people lost their jobs, and it lasted longer than deregulation and reform advocates thought.”
English recalls the backlash to cost-cutting from Finance Minister Ruth Richardson.
“This is from 90 to 93 [period] “It was very rough,” he says.
“There were protests, and there were crowds breaking down doors to get into our meetings. There was no security in those days, so it was a very difficult introduction to the politics of change.
“It left an impression on me in the sense that it’s easy to advocate for change if you don’t have to look into the eyes of those facing the consequences,” he says.
Jack Tim
“From the moment my income became regular, my mother made me keep a balance book, and I had to calculate my amounts every month. The rule was that I had to save 65% of what I earned, and I could spend 35% of what I earned.
“So, I wasn’t wasting all my money. I saved from the word ‘go’ – in a very obsessive way.
Tammy has always had a passion for news and says he felt like he had “found his tribe” once he started at broadcasting school in Christchurch.
But he still has a flair for entrepreneurship.
“I try to get into the stock market as others do and have mixed success, to say the least,” he says.
“As a younger person, I definitely had an entrepreneurial streak and it’s funny that if I wasn’t working in journalism, even though my job is fulfilling now, business, commerce and economics are still really interesting to me.
“I think if I had another career, especially if I was starting out now, that would probably be the direction I would head in.”
ASB CEO Vitoria Short
“When I was growing up, we were facing real financial difficulties,” recalls Vittoria Short, CEO of ASB. “I remember going to the dairy, and we didn’t have any food in the house. But we had a whole bunch of bottles – I’m showing my age – you know how you can take the bottles to the dairy and exchange them for something?
“I remember dinner that night was taking the bottles to the dairy and getting some sausages and other bits and that was dinner.
“There was a sense of knowing that maybe other kids had more money in the family,” she says.
Short says her parents shielded her from most of the economic pain, but she remembers the emotional stress it caused.
“It’s kind of hard to know when you’re young and growing up what’s causing what, you know. You’re listening to your parents talking around the kitchen table, and sometimes it’s hard to understand,” she says.
“But the thing I learned very quickly was how destabilizing it was, how much emotional stress and stress came from the financial decisions and things that have happened since then in our family.
“So, early on, it wasn’t about what was happening in the economy, or the environment, or business. It was much more about the emotional impact.
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Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It’s not about personal finance and it’s not about economics – it’s just popular New Zealanders talking about money and sharing stories about how it has impacted their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dunne, the Herald’s business editor-at-large. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also hosts and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcastor wherever you get your podcasts.