Guides

These are the New Zealand money questions people actually type into a search box, answered properly rather than in sixty words. Every one of them is written by a licensed financial adviser, every official figure in them is read from the authority that publishes it and cited with the date it was read, and none of them is trying to sell you a product, because this firm takes no commission from any bank, fund manager or product provider.

They are general information, not personalised advice. Where a question turns from “how does this work” into “what should I do”, that is where a conversation starts.

Tax you might be paying without knowing

• Is your KiwiSaver taxed at the wrong PIR? How to check your prescribed investor rate, what Inland Revenue does at the end of the year if it is wrong, and the four costs that are real even though the internet’s usual claim is not.
• Do I pay tax on overseas shares, and when do the FIF rules start? The NZ$50,000 threshold is measured on what you paid, not what the shares are worth now, and crossing it is a cliff rather than a slope.

Where your money should go

• Should I pay off the mortgage or invest? Almost everything written on this was written for another country’s tax system. Worked through on New Zealand rules, ending in a decision rule rather than “it depends”.
• Revolving credit or offset: which actually saves more? They save the same amount. What differs is how much of it you keep, and that is a question about your cash flow rather than about the product.
• Am I in the right KiwiSaver fund? The fund label is not the question. The date you need the money is, and that is true at 25 and at 65.

Working with an adviser

• What does a financial adviser cost in New Zealand? Everyone else publishes a range. This one publishes the number.
• What “independent” and “no commission” actually mean Two words nearly every adviser in the country uses about themselves, and what has to be true for them to mean anything.
• What is a Statement of Advice, and what is in one? The document you are actually buying, section by section.

Two things on this site that are not guides

• The company’s own investment results since December 2021, measured against the S&P 500, with the basis and the limits of the comparison stated. Almost no New Zealand adviser publishes anything comparable, and it is the page worth reading before you decide whether any of the rest of this is worth your time.
• The value gap calculator, which puts a number on the difference between what your money is doing now and what it could be doing.

Who writes these, and what it costs to go further

The guides are written by Vitaly Klestov, the financial adviser at VIS.finance, a licensed Financial Advice Provider holding a full licence, FSP1010421. The licence, the scope of advice and the complaints process are all set out on the public disclosure page.

When a question needs your actual numbers rather than a general answer, the price is published rather than quoted: $950 NZD for a Statement of Advice, one-time and GST inclusive, covered by a no-find no-fee guarantee. Everything is done by email, and the terms are on that page in full before you commit to anything.