Ryan Bridge: The path to improving financial literacy

Ryan Bridge: The path to improving financial literacy

From Early Edition with Ryan Bridge by Newstalk ZB

April 23, 2026 · 2 min

About this episode

Ryan Bridge discusses the implications of providing financial incentives to students for learning about investing.

I see ACT is flying a kite on free money for school kids.  Which sounds odd given the party's aversion to free lunches.  Seymour's talking about giving each Year 11 student, 5th form, $500 each to invest. It'd cost $30 million a year and could be funded via the KiwiSaver subsidy.  They'd be able to invest in a term deposit, managed fund, and equities. It'd be a controlled fund so they couldn't go nuts or withdraw, but they might learn something.  Trump's done something similar in the US, though with the help of private capital.  This is a great way to get young people interested in investing and learning about investing.  But isn't there an inherent problem with this? Giving them free money doesn't teach them the value of earning it in the first place, which I would have thought was central to ACT's philosophy on life.  I spoke to Fraser Whineray, former Mercury boss, a few months back about his idea for KiwiSaver 2.0.  He reckons we should overhaul KiwiSaver and give every newborn Kiwi kid $5,000 instead of giving adults the $250-odd per year they currently get from the Government.  With compounding returns, the $5 grand becomes…

People in this episode

Host: Ryan Bridge

Topics covered

  • financial literacy
  • investing
  • KiwiSaver
  • youth education

Keywords

  • ACT party
  • Fraser Whineray
  • compounding returns
  • investment education

Mentioned in this episode

Products: KiwiSaver 2.0, KiwiSaver

Places: US

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