Nigel Thomson, Author at Big Rock Communications Ltd

The top reasons SMEs run out of cash

More than half of all new businesses fail in their first year, and making it that far doesn’t mean you’re safe. Small and medium sized businesses don’t have the deep pockets that large enterprises do, which is why even short-term cash flow problems can sink an otherwise successful business.

Quick takeaways if you’re in a hurry

SMEs work on tighter budgets than large companies, and that means even small financial problems can sink an unprepared business.
The most common problems that can sink otherwise good small businesses are: unsustainable growth, clients who pay late, and a sudden loss of credit.
These issues can’t be totally avoided, so SMEs need prearranged facilities that allow them to manage these kinds of cash flow problems when they occur.

The top reasons SMEs run out of cash

How can a business unexpectedly run out of cash?

There are a lot of different reasons that your business could suddenly run into liquidity issues, but let’s take a look at some of the most common culprits to give you an idea of where trouble is most likely to rear its head.

Unsustainable growth

Surprisingly, too much success too quickly can wreak havoc on your finances. High demand for your products can overextend your ability to provide services, which means you need to build up your business’ infrastructure with more employees, more tools, more materials, and maybe more management support.

If, for example, a long-time client suddenly wants to scale up their service by an order of magnitude, you might end up trying to scale your operations up part-way (as your budget allows), only to lose the client entirely because they’re now unhappy with the service you can provide with your lagging infrastructure. You won’t be able to recover the investment you made in the time you had planned, and your revenue is now even lower than before you made that investment.

Clients who pay late

An issue every business owner is familiar with is clients who pay late. It’s so common that entire industries are built collecting those overdue debts. Unfortunately most SMEs don’t have time to wait for collections agencies to do their work. Businesses need reliable revenue to pay for operational costs. When a small business doesn’t get paid, things go downhill fast. Tools break and don’t get repaired, materials run out, payrolls fail, and employees leave.

Sudden loss of credit

Sometimes everything will be going fine, until you get a letter in the mail letting you know that your bank is closing down your line of credit. This essentially pulls the safety net out from under your business. If you were counting on that facility to cover any expenses due to another issue (like a late payment from a client), you’re out of luck.

These issues pose massive risks for SMEs all over the world, and the most important way to fight them is by understanding and making use of the financial tools available to SMEs.

What can an SME do to protect itself?

There are a variety of different financial arrangements that SMEs can make with business finance firms like Fifo Capital to protect themselves from these common cash flow problems:

Free standby finance facilities

A standby finance facility is essentially a business loan that is ready to go, but won’t be issued until you need it. It doesn’t cost anything to set up, and you don’t have to pay anything until you use it. They’re designed to provide immediate financing exactly when you need it. They’re perfect for situations where you suddenly need a significant injection of funding for growth, or to cover an unexpected budget shortfall due to seasonal changes or a loss of credit.

Invoice financing

Invoice financing allows you to sell outstanding invoices to a financial institution for most of their value. They collect the payment from the client, and you can get paid within hours of issuing the invoice, instead of when it comes due.

There are a few different types of invoice financing depending on the kind of institution you’re working with. Large banks often require you to sell them all of your invoices for a year or more, and come with a variety of other strings attached.

Smaller lenders like Fifo Capital offer much more flexibility and allow you to use invoice financing as a tool to give yourself a quick advance on your income exactly when you need it, and only when you need it. The trade-off is that the cost for every individual invoice tends to be a bit higher. Despite that, unless you plan to have most or all of your invoices financed, it’s still a much more affordable choice.

The threat of running out of cash costs small business owners a lot of sleep all over the world, but they can rest easy knowing that their backs are covered if they just take a few clever preventive steps.

How to manage your time as a very busy person

“The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more” – Jonas Salk

As any entrepreneur can attest, success doesn’t mean your job gets any easier. Whether you’re running your own business, or working in any modern, high-pressure job, you know that advancing in your career is synonymous with expertly managing your time.

Quick takeaways if you’re in a hurry

Managing time effectively is absolutely required for busy people who are committed to producing their best work
Maximising your effectiveness means prioritising and organising your tasks very thoroughly, and giving yourself enough time to complete them properly
Tasks that can’t fit into your schedule need to be delegated to others rather than delayed to avoid creating a backlog. Very busy people can’t afford to be micro-managers.

How to manage your time as a very busy person

Getting control of your schedule isn’t just a convenient way to get an overview of your day, it’s a necessary tool to protect your professional reputation and your health. Poor time management can result in lower quality work, tasks being missed or forgotten, and unmanageably high stress levels that can impact your physical and mental health.

There are two important skills that you’ll need to cultivate to develop good time management habits: The first is prioritising tasks to ensure that you have full control and oversight of the most vital items; the second is delegating tasks to the right people in the right way.

Prioritising

Prioritising is all about focus. Successful people don’t do everything at once; instead, they focus on the most important things, and ensure that those things are done right and on time. The secret to prioritising well isn’t just deciding to generally focus more on “important” things, it’s about organising and determining precisely what is worth your time and attention, and when.

Order your list

Create a list of all your tasks, and arrange them in order of importance (not necessarily in order of urgency). The result should place higher order tasks, and tasks most closely associated with your job description at the top, and lower skill time-intensive tasks near the bottom. The end goal is that the tasks that need your personal attention the most are the ones that will receive your focus.

Block out time for each task

Determine how much time you’ll need to do each task properly, without considering the amount of work time you have in the day or week. This is important because it’ll help to ensure that you don’t try to squeeze high-value tasks into inappropriately small time slots, which will inevitably damage the quality of your work.

Schedule everything into a calendar and stick to it

Only after you’ve completed the above steps can you sit down and schedule everything out in your calendar for the week or month. Mark out your working hours, and fill them with your indicated tasks, starting at the top and working your way down until your time is fully spoken for. Don’t assign yourself any additional tasks, the rest will need to be delegated.

By doing this you’ll make sure that the tasks you’re doing will be given the focus and attention that they deserve, and that they’re the tasks that most deserve that attention and focus. The remaining tasks on your list are also deserving of focus and attention, but it’ll need to be someone else’s.

Delegating

People who are just “regular” busy, will generally manage their time by prioritising important tasks, and then delaying less urgent tasks for later. That works for them, because they might have a few extra hours free in a few days to take care of those issues. Very busy people, on the other hand, will never have those few extra hours, so trying to delay tasks is synonymous with forgetting them entirely. As a very busy person, you shouldn’t delay work for later instead, delegate it immediately.

Give up on controlling everything

The reason many very busy people won’t delegate tasks well is because we don’t trust other people to do things right. As a result we try to force time-consuming and low-priority tasks into our own schedule, instead of handing them off to someone else. A few people (think Elon Musk or the late Steve Jobs) compensate for this by abandoning all personal relationships and free time and reducing sleep to just a few hours per night. While those iconic business people are held up as the massive business successes they are, this approach is untenable for almost everyone, and unhealthy even for those who can survive it.

What we generally do instead is overcommit ourselves, and then only delegate tasks when they’re already late. The way to improve the situation isn’t to find a way to squeeze everything in, but rather to hand those tasks off much earlier.

Develop strong trust relationships

If you’re someone who feels a strong need to be in control, you’ll need to develop close working relationships with the people around you. Delegate the same kinds of tasks to the same people, and go out of your way not to interfere in the way they handle those tasks. This is important because it’ll ensure that you don’t waste time following up and interfering with those tasks, which will inevitably draw your focus away from the higher priority work you need to be doing.

Good time management is a practice, not a quick hack you can just apply once. Choosing the right tasks to prioritise for yourself, and overcoming the need to handle or be involved in every other task you’re ultimately responsible for takes effort and time. Managing your time well, however, is more than worth it. It will help you manage your stress, improve the quality of the work you do, and help you build that ever-elusive work-life balance.

Is your work challenging enough?

When a lot of people think about their work goals, the first thing that usually comes to mind is making it out of the door as soon as possible on Friday afternoon. Many workers spend the work week dreaming about what they’ll do when they leave their place of employment. What they don’t consider is that if their career posed a worthwhile challenge, they might actually enjoy showing up.

Quick takeaways if you’re in a hurry:

It’s important to challenge yourself in ways that’ll help you grow and develop your career the way that you personally want it to.
A good challenge provides positive motivation and direction, and helps to reframe and mitigate the stress and boredom of the modern work environment.
Often, professionals can best challenge themselves by developing their skills, educating themselves, or gaining influence in their business and their industry. At the end of the day, though, these goals could be nearly anything, and have to be defined by the individual.Is your work challenging enough?

Modern work can be a drag

The modern working world was created with the industrial revolution and the increased specialisation it brought with it, but it came at a cost. Modern workers typically have highly specialised jobs that are repetitive, boring, and time-consuming while often also being very difficult. As a result, workers are stressed, unproductive, and unhappy. Only 13% of workers worldwide report that they actually enjoy their work. Ouch.

These issues have been known for some time, and businesses have tried to address them by providing benefits and leisure activities at work, ranging from free gym memberships, to snacks, to unlimited vacation days and more. While these help to reduce stress marginally, they don’t address the core issue, which is that modern work is often unfulfilling to workers; it’s very difficult to love what you do.

The issue is that our jobs today don’t feel like they really tie into our personal success and well-being, so they feel like a waste of time. The way to address that is to make work challenging again.

Challenge provides motivation and meaning

Challenging work is work that requires ingenuity and skill to achieve a goal that’s worth pursuing. Most of our jobs today require skill and ingenuity, which makes them difficult, but they tend to lack that the sense of achievement that comes with overcoming those difficulties.

That’s not because we generally don’t pursue our own goals at work. We might have performance indicators to hit, raises to earn, employee of the month awards to win, but those goals are defined by employers, not by workers themselves. Because of that, they only work for people who are interested in those things.

Defining and pursuing personal work-oriented challenges helps to make work a means to a meaningful end, and not just a place where we lose all of our precious daylight.

Making work challenging is about you

The fundamental problem with our approach to making work meaningful is that our goals are defined by our employers. Employers are focused on profits and on ensuring that their workforce is productive. The incentives they set for workers are oriented around both negative and positive reinforcement, and are focused on how well the worker is producing for their employer.

Because of that, the burden of making a job challenging is on workers themselves. Of course, some employers are more accommodating about this than others. Depending on the type of job you have, and what your personal life-goals are, there are a huge variety of ways to challenge yourself through your work.

For example, structured programs sometimes can offer what employers themselves don’t. Chartered Accountants challenge themselves by keeping up with annual professional development learning requirements to maintain their status. This keeps them on top of their game. It’s not just about accountants, of course. People in any field can use online hubs like Coursera and Udemy to educate themselves about their industry and to update and develop their skills further to help them advance at work, or to help qualify themselves for another job.

Beyond that, the sky’s the limit. You might decide to pursue a raise, a promotion, an award, a new job, industry-wide recognition, or anything else. The point isn’t the goal itself, it’s about taking control of your work life to get something that you want out of it.

The payoff

The result of challenging yourself at work is more than just the sense of achievement that you get if and when you succeed. Having a goal gives you a reason to show up, and reframes your everyday work stresses as obstacles that you’ll overcome to get somewhere, rather than oppressive nuisances that exist to torment you while you’re trying to reach Friday.

This altered focus will help you reduce the amount of stress you’re feeling, improve your productivity, and help you achieve your work and personal goals. So, what are you waiting for? Figure out how you can make your job work for you.

Business is like sport – master the basics, and success will follow

Running a business can feel overwhelming and confusing to an entrepreneur who’s just starting out, and the inherent difficulty in maintaining good oversight is one of the most important reasons that so many startups fail in their first few years.

The key to understanding where your focus belongs can be found by examining another competitive arena: sport.

Quick takeaways if you’re in a hurry

It’s vital to understand the relationships between different aspects of your business, so that you can determine what tasks need to be prioritised
Some parts of your business are critical success factors, and have farther-reaching impacts than others. They need to be identified and prioritised
Some major factors to identify as a startup might be financing, teamwork, and product development
Mastery of these basics makes it possible for businesses to focus and build toward bigger goals to become industry leaders.

Business is like sport – master the basics, and success will follow
Juggling all the different responsibilities that come with running a business is a monumental task. The first thing any successful business owner needs to do is to understand how every aspect, from finance to purchasing, to production, to marketing, to sales, to distribution works together to create a functioning system. This is essentially parallel to studying and understanding the rules of the game you’re trying to play.

Find your critical success factors

In rugby, the biggest factors in winning the game are maintaining possession, and controlling territory. Focusing on those two issues is the top priority, because without them you probably won’t be able to achieve your purpose, which is scoring points.

In business we can similarly narrow our focus. Not every business has the same critical success factors, but three that an entrepreneur might identify for their startup are financing, teamwork, and service development.

Financing

Securing solid financing in business is key to starting a reliably functioning business. Most small businesses don’t start out with massive amounts of excess capital that can be used to absorb natural fluctuations in revenue throughout the year.

Getting proper financing is like turning an amateur sports team into a professional one. Professional athletes can devote their full attention to becoming the best at what they do. Similarly, having a serviceable line of credit means your business can make purchases and continue to operate effectively during slow months, or while waiting for late payments to be made. This ensures a stable work environment and gives your team the freedom to fully focus on their work.

Teamwork

In the same way that entrepreneurs need to understand how the business operates as a whole to do your job as a business owner, employees need to understand how their own job fits in with those of the people they work with.

That includes understanding and respecting what co-workers do, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. In short, they need to work as a team. Good teamwork allows athletes as well as your employees to effectively delegate tasks to each other and compensate for each other’s weaknesses to create a more effective whole. In business, as in sports, this allows them to operate more flexibly and with less top-down micromanagement

At first that might sound like a luxury, but it’s a critical factor because it’s essential to freeing time and focus for you to deal with higher-level tasks.

Product/service development

In sport, it’s essential to develop new tactics, train, and push the envelope to take the sport to a new level. Relying on old plays and the same old ideas is the surest way to be left behind by the competition.

Achieving long-term success in business is the same. It’s only possible if your business is always committed to innovation and optimisation to ensure that it’s the best option available to your customers. As in sports, this is best done by analysing the competition, improving on it with your own ideas, and creating something new and better. The engine of progress is always running, and you have to find a way to be a part of it to avoid being left behind.

What’s Next?

Once you’ve prioritised and given the proper attention to those critical success factors, everything else will become much easier. It’s much easier to score if you already have possession of the ball, and control of the field. Furthermore, once the basics are covered, you can focus on developing more intricate plays and interesting tactics that wouldn’t have any chance of being executed properly otherwise.

When your business’ critical success factors are being properly managed, you will be able to spend more time working to close new clients, building relationships, managing growth, and setting goals for your business that’ll help to turn it into an industry leader.

How to choose a financial adviser

When making important decisions about your finances, it pays to get professional advice from a financial adviser. An expert’s guidance gives you peace of mind that you’re making informed decisions. But how do you select an adviser from the many on offer? Here are some tips on how to do just that.

Professional qualifications
Double check that the financial adviser is professionally qualified. Are they a member of the Institute of Financial Advisers which is the professional body for financial advisers? Are they registered with the Financial Markets Authority? How many years of experience do they have? Sadly there are some charlatans out there and a bona fide adviser will be more than happy to confirm their credentials.

Areas of expertise
Some financial advisers specialise in particular areas such as retirement, KiwiSaver, mortgages or investments. Others provide more generalised financial advice. If you have a particular issue or area of your finances that you want help with then you may want to engage the services of a specialist.

Customer service
It’s important to ascertain what kind of services you can expect. How does the adviser communicate with their clients and how often? What review process can you expect? Be clear about whether the level of service fits in with your expectations and requirements.
You may also want to check whether the financial adviser has any ties with a particular provider of financial products or whether they are free to recommend products without any affiliations. This will help you to determine whether there is any potential conflict of interest.

Fees and charges
You will want to be clear from the outset what the total costs will be both initially and on an ongoing basis. Ask the adviser for information on their remuneration structure. Having certainty about the costs from the start will mean that there are no surprises further down the line.

Personal relationship
This is perhaps the most important one of all. At the end of the day, choose someone that you feel comfortable with and that you can trust. It’s important that you have confidence in the relationship.

In addition, you could perhaps ask the adviser for the results of any client satisfaction surveys or for the details of some of their satisfied clients. Some form of testimonial or personal recommendation can be very helpful when making your decision.
Choosing a financial adviser is an important decision so don’t rush into it. Take your time and shop around. Compare the service offerings from two or three advisers and use this checklist to help you select the right financial adviser for you.

Five ways to achieve a happier family

Nowadays life is very busy. What with working, school activities, sports, extended family and friends, we all seem to lead our lives at a hectic pace. Sometimes all this activity is at the expense of our family lives. Here we look at some strategies you can use to ensure you have a happier family.

1. Work life balance
Balancing the demands of work and life is never easy, however, it is possible to achieve a happier medium. There will be busy periods at work when there is no choice but to put in the hours. Try to balance that by having at least one or preferably two evenings a week when you’re able to come home at a reasonable time and participate in a family meal, outing to the movies, or simply to relax together. Your family will be happier for seeing more of you and you will feel more in control of your life.

2. Communication
Keeping open the lines of communication, especially with sullen teenagers, can be challenging. However, being able to talk about the good times as well as the tough is an important life lesson for children. Set a good example yourself by talking about what’s happening in your life. Use the time at the dinner table, or in the car en route to dropping them off somewhere as an opportunity to connect with your children.

3. Quality time
Try to organise some fun family activities each week. Even something simple such as a family walk in the park, a shared Sunday lunch or a game of ten pin bowling will help to cement those family relationships.

4. Spend time with your partner
It’s just as important to spend quality time with your partner, after all, children learn about relationships mostly from their parents. Make sure you find time to discuss the day-to-day issues as well as just things that you enjoy talking about. A date night or even a takeaway or quiet night watching TV together is all it takes.

5. Look after yourself
All too often parents devote all their energies to looking after everyone else in the family and forget about themselves. Neglecting to look after yourself, however, can leave you feeling miserable and resentful. It’s OK to admit that you have feelings and needs too and it’s not selfish to treat yourself from time to time. It doesn’t have to be expensive either – 10 minutes reading a book or enjoying an uninterrupted coffee can make a big difference to our general outlook on life.
Taking a step back from our frantic and demanding lives every now and then is important for all of us to do. And our family lives will be all the richer if we invest the necessary time and effort into making them happier.

Top 5 tips for investors in real estate

With the way house prices have continued to soar in Auckland, many people are now considering investing in real estate as a business. But how easy is it to make money from real estate? In this article we look at the essential elements to successful investing.

1. Have a plan
The first essential element is to have a plan. Insufficient and inadequate planning is probably the single biggest mistake made by new investors. Often newbies are buying a house because they think it is a good deal and then they try to figure out what to do with it. This approach is back to front. The first step is to have an investment plan in place then you go out and find a property that fits the plan.

2. Do your homework
Investors often have to move quickly on deals, but this doesn’t mean that you can cut corners on your homework. It’s very important, and will save you money in the long run, if you methodically undertake due diligence for all deals. Have you got a builder’s report and a LIM? Do you know enough about the local market conditions? What’s your exit plan? Don’t make the mistake of some investors of having to draw on your personal savings because the house that seemed like such a good deal needs extensive repairs and you can’t sell it.

3. Get some help
It’s almost impossible to be a successful property investor without some help. Get together a team of people to support you: a trusted real estate agent, lawyer and lender are essentials. But you will also need a plumber, electrician, painter and all-round handyman. You can’t build a career as a property investor if you’re spending your time fixing a leaky tap.

4. Have sufficient cash flow
If you’re investment plan is to buy properties and then rent them out, do you have sufficient cash flow to cover all eventualities? It’s not uncommon for rental properties to sit empty for a few weeks between leases. And you may think that you have found the perfect tenant but what happens if they stop paying the rent or they trash the property? Having enough cash behind you to cover these possibilities and pay the mortgage at the same time is an essential component of successful property investing.

5. Have fingers in lots of pies
Focusing on one property or deal at a time will not turn you into a successful investor. It’s likely that a high percentage of your potential deals will not come off for a variety of reasons and so at any one time you will want to have your fingers in several pies with a number of potential deals in the pipeline.
It is possible to turn property investing into a business, however, it’s unlikely to be a get rich quick scenario. Careful, diligent planning and the help of the right team of professionals will make the difference between long-term success and failure.

Small business marketing: four common pitfalls to avoid

For small businesses, often with limited resources in terms of time and money, making mistakes with marketing can be a costly exercise. The key to successful small business marketing is to start small, track your results and then concentrate your resources on marketing that actually delivers.
Here we look at the top four common pitfalls to avoid when it comes to small business marketing.

1. No website
It’s surprising how many small businesses don’t even have a website. According to Statistics New Zealand as many as 34% of small businesses do not have a web presence. Some businesses think that they do not need to have a website as they are a local business. Thank again. The vast majority of consumers search online for goods and services including local ones.
Some business owners think it’s too expensive or difficult to set up a website. Think again. Simply Google ‘create a website’ and you will see that there are thousands of offerings including free and easy to use ones. You don’t need to have any great technical knowledge – even a complete novice can set up a professional looking website in a matter of hours.
Having a website is essential as without one you are missing out on an enormous potential pool of customers. And in this digital age of ours, consumers expect you to have a website.

2. No marketing plan
Another common mistake small businesses make is to not have a marketing plan in place. As Benjamin Franklin once said: ‘If you fail to plan, you plan to fail’. It doesn’t have to be an onerous task, but those businesses that take the time to plan out their marketing activities, how much they will cost and how much time they will take, dramatically increase their chances of success.

3. No record of results
If you don’t keep any record of the results of your marketing activities, then how do you know what’s working or isn’t working for you? Without that record then you are making marketing decisions based on guesswork and hunches. So whether it is tracking your goals through Google Analytics, conversions through pay per click advertising, or phone calls and foot traffic, make sure that you have systems in place to record and track the outcomes.

4. Not keeping an eye on competitors
A relatively easy and cost-effective marketing activity is to simply keep a close eye on what your competitors are doing. What marketing activities are they undertaking? Once you start tracking what they do you’ll be able to identify their successes and failures. Pay special attention to what tactics they do only once as opposed to activities that they keep doing month after month. Take advantage of their successes and failures and try to replicate the successful tactics for your business.
Get the most out of your marketing budget by avoiding these common pitfalls. Starting small, tracking results and concentrating on what actually works will see your small business getting more for your marketing buck.

Food for the soul: New Zealand’s Great Walks

A photo by Lacey Raper. unsplash.com/photos/ey1Obz7I2fw
Planning your summer holidays? Instead of the usual sun, sea and sand holiday, have you considered tackling one of the Great Walks? We are very fortunate in this country to have some of the world’s most spectacular walkways and tracks, offering a variety of unspoilt landscapes to enjoy. From glacier-covered valleys and mountain passes, to lush tropical rainforests or golden beaches, New Zealand has it covered. So why not get your hiking boots on this summer and experience one of our world-renowned Great Walks. There are nine to choose from in both the North and South Islands.

1. Tongariro Northern Circuit
Starting and finishing at the base of Mount Ruapheu, this loop track will take 3-4 days. The track will take you through the dramatic volcanic landscape used as the backdrop to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. You can expect to see active geysers, beautiful mineral lakes and incredible lava formations. The Tongariro Northern Circuit or the shorter day walk, the Tongariro Crossing, are best tackled from late November to March.

2. Lake Waikaremoana Track
The 44 km Lake Waikaremoana Track in the central North Island encircles the lake and takes 4-5 days to complete. With a backdrop of beautiful native forest and an abundance of birdlife, you will see some stunning views of the lake in this very remote location. The track is accessible all-year round.

3. Whanganui Journey
This Great Walk is in fact a 145 km kayak or canoe journey down the Whanganui River. The winding and scenic Whanganui River has played a crucial part in the history of New Zealand being an important route for Māori and early European settlers. Best traversed during October-March, the Whanganui Journey takes about five days.

4. Milford Track
The Milford Track is perhaps our most famous Great Walk and as such is very popular so you will need to book in advance. Situated in Fiordland, this route is truly spectacular with forest covered valleys, mountains and fiords. Every Kiwi should probably do this Great Walk at least once and it takes about four days. Don’t attempt to do it though in the winter months when adverse weather can make it a dangerous challenge.

5. Routeburn Track
Covering 39 km, this track will take about three days to complete. With the Southern Alps as the background, you can expect to see a diverse range of scenery with alpine flora, lakes, waterfalls and spectacular views. The spring and summer months are the best time to do the tramp.

6. Kepler Track
Following a loop from the Fiordland National Park Visitor Centre, the track encompasses the forest shorelines of lakes Te Anau and Manapouri, and offers spectacular alpine panoramas as you walk along the mountain tops. It takes four days to complete and the best time to do so is in the spring and summer.

7. Rakiura Track
Situated on Stewart Island, the Rakiura Track is arguably the wildest and most remote walk of all. Offering a peaceful landscape of birds, bush and lake, the Rakiura Track is suitable for all fitness levels and is accessible all-year round.

8. Heaphy Track
With pristine, unspoilt mountain scenery and the backdrop of the Tasman Sea, the Heaphy Track is a very popular Great Walk. Taking about five days, the track is accessible throughout the year, but it can be very chilly during the winter months.

9. Abel Tasman Coastal Track
Beach lovers will particularly enjoy this track which is situated at the top of the South Island. Covering miles of golden beaches, the track offers opportunities for swimming, snorkelling and kayaking as well as the possibility of spotting some fur seals. Suitable for all fitness levels, the track is open all year.
So why not try something different this summer. Feed your soul by hiking one of the Great Walks that make New Zealand the envy of the world.

Life insurance: five common mistakes to avoid

If you have life insurance then congratulations! As many as 43% of Kiwis do not have any form of life insurance. They are taking grave risks with the well-being of their families should the worst happen and they die prematurely. Life insurance should be an essential part of any insurance portfolio.
But how do you choose the right one for you when there are so many options available? Avoiding the five common mistakes we identify below will help you make the right choice for your situation.

1. Procrastination
As we get older our health inevitably deteriorates. You may already be suffering with a medical condition by the time you start looking for life insurance. Not surprisingly in this scenario, your options for good cover at a good price will have also decreased. Therefore, don’t leave it too late before putting life insurance in place.

2. Making choices based on price
With life insurance it’s not always possible to compare like with like. There are many variations to the different policies so simply making a choice on price alone is not a good idea. Just because the policy from Company A is cheaper than that from Company B does not mean that you are getting better value for money, nor does it mean that you are getting the right cover for you.

3. Not having enough cover
Often we make the mistake of under-insuring ourselves. You will need to factor into your calculations the costs of medical care, any existing debt commitments you have as well as your inability to work. A common rule of thumb is that life insurance should provide seven to 10 times the insured person’s annual salary. Make sure you have enough cover to protect you in the worst case scenario.

4. Not insuring your spouse
A debilitating illness or the death of a partner can be just as devastating to the family’s finances as you are forced to take time off work to care for you partner or the children. Making sure you have adequate cover for both parties will take some of the pressure off at a very difficult time.

5. Not reviewing your policy
Our circumstances are changing and evolving all the time and so the life insurance you purchased 15 years ago may no longer be the best choice for you. Perhaps your children have now left home or you have a bigger mortgage, whatever it may be it’s important that you regularly review your life insurance to ensure that it is still working for you.
Life insurance is not an expendable expense. Don’t be like the 43% of Kiwis who have no cover. Make sure you make the sensible choice and get the right life insurance to protect your family.

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