When I talk to women about returning to work I find they base their plans on what they used to do. This makes sense – it’s what they know. What this approach fails to acknowledge is that so much has changed.

Financial advice is like diet advice. There are some basic tenets that hold true: for diet it’s things like ‘Don’t eat more than you need’, and ‘Eat loads of green vegetables’.

Somehow we’ve ended up with a narrative where women are excellent at investing, which I think is often intended as a way of encouraging more women to invest. Great goal. Yet is this narrative accurate? I suspect not.

In the UK, one organisation is aiming to stop companies from overcharging loyal customers. The situation is exactly the same in New Zealand, where companies lower their prices and offer incentives that are only available to new customers.

FIRE stands for financial independence, retire early. It’s a way of making frugal living and sensible investing sound sexy, like a marketing exercise for personal restraint and minimalism.