Murder House memories: why KiwiSaver investors need to brush-up on good financial habits

If you are a certain age and someone mentions the Murder House, it is quite likely the following will happen to you without even thinking:

• your smiling face will drop to a contorted painful look of sheer horror;
• you will make some involuntary noises like ooooh, arggh and take a sudden gasp of breath;
• the buzz of the drill and the smell of methylated spirits will flood your senses;
• your memories will drag you back to the dreaded death-walk to the building that housed the wooden leather chairs, swirling sucking saliva tubes, bright lights and a spitting-bowl covered in blood; and,
• memories of scary fairies and snowmen dangling above your face, smiling like the clown from Stephen King’s IT, with the demonic whisper of “open your mouth wide” said in a slightly sadistic way, as your nails dig deep into the arms of the chair, followed by the bone-chilling screams from the person beside you.

That experience changed my behaviour forever around maintaining my teeth. Instead of regular annual checkups I still, today, avoid going to a dentist at all costs until I cannot take the pain anymore.  I suspect some readers are thinking, ‘toughen up kid’. However, I believe many, if not all, of my fellow Gen Xers and Boomers might have a little more sympathy because I bet most have had a similar experience.

So what does this have to do with financial wellbeing you might ask? Well, you could conclude that I have had to spend a lot more money over the years than those who regularly kept their teeth in good order. Why? Well, we all know how much it costs when what could have been a simple filling, if caught early enough, turns into a root canal.