'Think with abundance' - Luke Kemeys from Keep the Change | More Than Money

Luke Kemeys wants you to give money to a stranger.

The financial literacy champion and host of Keep the Change reveals how starting a business has transformed his perspective on money—and his entire worldview.

Luke reckons that while money isn’t necessarily easy to come by, it starts with believing that wealth is attainable, and all around you.

“If you believe that every dollar you get, you've got to hold on to, and you'll never have another dollar, then you're probably gonna live scarce."

In this episode of More than Money, Luke opens up about the grind of entrepreneurship and the power of giving without expectation, and even tells us how you can apply accounting concepts in your own life.

More Than Money is a series exploring the wealth choices that change us. In these conversations, Kiwi legends give us a revealing look at one important money decision that helped determine where they are today: the strokes of genius, the near-misses, and the tough calls. Episodes drop every Monday and Thursday in January. Watch this episode on YouTube or Subscribe to the Shared Lunch feed so you don’t miss a thing. 

Appearance on Shared Lunch is not an endorsement by Sharesies of the views of the presenters, guests, or the entities they represent. They are not financial experts and their views are their own. Shared Lunch is not financial advice. We recommend talking to a licensed financial adviser. You should review relevant product disclosure documents before deciding to invest. Investing involves risk. You might lose the money you start with. Content is current at the time of recording.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are more ways to wealth with chairs eas save
with a great rate, ensure your car with no worries.
We'll join the key. We see this scheme with real choice.
It's your wealth, your way, do more with chairs eas.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
I honestly getting into business for me, that that changed
my whole life, like it's just been unreal for me
and to help me see life completely differently. I think
I've kind of learned to think a lot bigger. And
as the bills and business and in life have gotten bigger,
how can I think bigger to solve some of those
You never know what the feeling is like to give
to someone with our expectation to a complete random if

(00:35):
you don't do it.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
GOODA koto. I'm Garth Bray and we're doing things a
little differently on shared Lunch for the next few weeks.
More than money is about exploring the wealth choices that
change us. Let's open up the conversation about what wealth
really means beyond investing. We'll hear from some familiar folks
and chat about the choices they've made on their wealth journey. Today,
shares He's co founder and co CEO Layton is talking

(01:07):
to Luke Kemmy's from Keep the Change First though, what
is wealth to you? I don't know. From our social
media team hit the streets to find out.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Culder.

Speaker 5 (01:14):
My name is Kardina and I work for Cheress and
I'm joined by Kurder.

Speaker 6 (01:19):
I'm Kylie.

Speaker 4 (01:20):
What is wealth to you?

Speaker 5 (01:21):
New experiences? This is outside of money, of course, but
obviously money does contribute to those things. But being able
to experience things, especially like things I want to do,
you know, the norms like traveling, which is huge for me.
I love traveling, meeting new people and experiencing that, or
just anything like new, like trying some new things every
now and then.

Speaker 7 (01:40):
Well, yeah, I mean I'd like to be rich because
now I have to think about money. But if you
can afford just what you want, like the cost of
living is insane. If I could just work full time
and also live normally, that would be great. I've been
I was actually laid off recently with from one of
a lot of the stuff happening for the news. Then
we lost our jobs there. So I've just been chilling.

(02:02):
Give anybody candy glass ye doing stuff, yeah, rock climbing,
just going outdoors, doing enjoying being unemployed to be nast.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Wealth means feeling secure and comfortable, being able to get
my mouth, get the clothes I want. But also yeah,
my long term goals as well, which are very important
and usually revolve around having money. So yeah, I'm waiting
for one to be a material girl.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Because I'm like same.

Speaker 8 (02:30):
The experience is shared in this episode are not advice
or a recommendation or opinion by guests to invest or
act in the manner they have. An appearance on the
series is not an endorsement by Shares's of the views
of the presenters or guests. Their views are their own.

Speaker 9 (02:44):
So we've got Luke awesome to catch up again, Luke,
So thanks so much for joining us today. I'd like
to give you some rapid, quick fire questions and just
say whatever first comes to mind. So the first one,
what's the best or a great financial decision that you made.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Honestly getting into business for me that changed my whole life,
like it's just been unreal for me and just help
me see life completely differently and see so much more
opportunity and abundance, So that would have to be it awesome.

Speaker 6 (03:13):
What about the hard stuff?

Speaker 9 (03:14):
Have you been through tough financial times and How did
you stay on target?

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah, for sure. I mean even you know, starting a
business and trying to build something from scratch to get going,
even you know, start and keep the change. And every
time I start something, you start from zero and I
don't know, I've gotten better as you build more stuff
in your life of you know, you just have to
hang in there and keep doing it and that you'll
get rewarded for it, whether it's building an audience, doing
podcast episodes, going in on a Saturday, going in on

(03:37):
a Sunday, showing up when you're a little bit sick,
all of that stuff. Man, it is a grind sometimes.
And yeah, sometimes I'm like, you know what, I don't
really want to do this right now. But teaching myself
that now you have to do it because you know
you'll get rewarded for it in a year has been
such a good way for me to make sense of
hanging in there and doing things even when it's tough.

Speaker 6 (03:58):
Nice everything above zero compounds.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Ah, Yes, I love that. That's good.

Speaker 6 (04:02):
How is your perspective on money or wealth change?

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, massively. I think I've kind of learned to think
a lot bigger and as the bills and business and
in life have gotten bigger. How can I think bigger
to solve some of those How can I help more
people so that intern the world rewards me? And how
can I provide enough value in the world in the marketplace?
And I just as well, Like what I used to
do is I would go around and I'd see a

(04:25):
helicopter and I'd think, wow, you know, someone can afford
the pilot, someone can afford the fuel, Like, how the
hell are they doing that? To teach myself abundance rather
than scarcity, and I think we're marketed to heavily, you know,
especially in a contracting economy, around how hard it is
and how we've got a lack of And then even
just driving here, I looked at Commercial Bay and I thought,
whoa Like someone built that, someone funded that, Like someone's

(04:47):
outside having their lunch. Someone went in there and brought
their lunch. And I just look at it and think,
there's so much money changing hands. And when I started
to turn my mindset to there's a lot of money
out there rather than no, there's not you know, there's only.

Speaker 6 (04:59):
A little bit.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
It's pretty hard and all this stuff. Once I unwired
that to figure out, like what's going on here, I thought, well,
why can't I sort of participate in the game. So
just thinking more abundantly has been so healthy for me.

Speaker 6 (05:11):
Awesome, It's a great word abundancy, easier step to improving
your financial situation.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Gee, that is I reckon, Like, I'm a massive fan
of a cash flow forecast and the business sense, but
when I moved it into personal finance, it's basically, what
cash do you have in the bank? What have you
got coming up in terms of what's coming in and
what's going out, so you can see that and you
can visualize that. Some people call that a budget. I don't.
I think you're forecasting and you're tracking what you've got

(05:40):
coming in and going out, and then every month tracking
your networth, so your asset values and then your debt values.
And this is what businesses do. This is what they
report on. And I just modeled it and thought, well,
if it's good enough for businesses around the world, why
don't we do it individually as a framework. And I
think if you do that for eighteen months, it will
completely change the way that you look at your life
and you start wrapping some goal around that. So it

(06:00):
was actually one of the first tools that I built
as part of Keep the Change to give people for free.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
You know, thousands of people have.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Downloaded it every month. Then I say I'm doing it,
and people are like, can I get the templates, And
I'm like, you can have the templates, but you have
to do the doing, and you have to do it
month and month out. So I reckon that that's a
game changer because it's a great place to start to
get really clear on what assets you've got, what debts
you've got, and then what cash you've got coming in
and what's going out, and then how you play the
game from there or what you need to change up.

Speaker 6 (06:27):
Well, I love that.

Speaker 9 (06:28):
One funny story when Brooke and I were around the
time we started cheeseys or we'd quit our jobs so
we sort of basically lost our income. We'd also opened
a brewery and micro brewery. Not that long that we
had a few pressures going on, and not that long
after that found out we're gonna have a baby.

Speaker 6 (06:47):
But anyway, we started getting really minute.

Speaker 9 (06:49):
On cash flow, to the point we did this thing
like we're just a payday every day spreadsheet, so I'll
have to check yours out, but we literally like every
day we would powersells some money to make sure weren't
a head. And it also like it would compound into
the weekend so that we didn't have to give up
on weekend fund and all this sort of stuff as well.
It was just like this, very like quite a specific

(07:10):
point in time I remember really well. So I love
the cash flow forecasting. And last one for you, if
you had a challenge for for our listeners, what would
that be?

Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah? Nice. I was actually going to run this as
a workshop for Keep the Change, but I was about
to say I don't have the time, but I just
didn't prioritize it in the end, so that's my bad.
But what it would be is to make two hundred
dollars before the end of the year, and you get
a hundred of it, but the other hundred of it
you have to go and give to an absolute stranger,
so you have to pay someone's groceries. You just walk
up to someone. And I tru try and do this

(07:39):
every Christmas. And I was coming back from a viaduct
lunch a couple of years ago, and I just walked
onto the bus and gave this lady cash that was
driving it, and she was so like what the hell
is going on here? But she was so thankful and
so stoked, and it always sort of stuck with me.
And I think why I think this is important is
it challenges us to a you know, think about where
we might have a couple of hundred bucks that could
be sitting around the house or in the garage. It

(08:01):
might be you know, doing a little bit extra. It
might be just you know, doing something for your neighbor
and getting paid for it, but challenging yourself to actually
do it. But then you've got to go fifty to
fifty for goodwill, so you've got to keep a hundie.
But the first hunter you have to give to somebody,
And that's teaching you that you can give money away
and that's okay, it will come back, and it's forcing
you and challenging you to think of it differently. And

(08:23):
also you never know what the feeling is like to
give to someone without expectation, to a complete random in
the street if you don't do it, and if you
do do it, then you get the feeling of it.
And it could be that you realize that you're a
massive giver and that really gets you going, and so
then you become a massive philanthropist in your life or whatever.
But if you believe that, you know, every dollar you
get you've got to hold onto and that's it, and

(08:45):
all this stuff and they'll never you know, you never
have another dollar and stuff, then you're probably going to
live like that and you're going to live scared. So
my challenge is basically to try and encourage people to
think with a bit more giving abundance to make someone's day,
and that you can make more money in this money
all around us.

Speaker 6 (09:01):
Mate, what a way to round that out.

Speaker 9 (09:02):
You're already democratizing wealth and education and now you're bringing
in democratization of philanthropy as well.

Speaker 6 (09:08):
So very cool.

Speaker 8 (09:15):
More than Money is a series about the wealth choices
that change us as Cheeseys grows. We want to be
able to provide a space for shared experience that can
benefit everyone who wants to grow their wealth, whatever path
it takes. Now you can do more to build wealth
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(09:38):
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