Leading questions: Scott Bartlett

Scott Bartlett is chief executive of internet service provider Orcon. Photo / Richard Robinson

Are you generally frugal with your own spending or do you consider yourself a big spender?

I'm almost a zero spender. I've got an amazing partner who is a banker and so Adrian pretty much looks after the money.

We bought a house six months ago, and I had, prior to that, no mortgage and no debt.

I had a few toys. I had three motorbikes - a dirt bike, a four-wheeler and a Ducati - but when we bought the house they wouldn't fit in the new garage and we needed to get the deposit up on the house so the toys have all gone.

Do you like shopping? If so, what do like to spend your money on? If not, what do you dislike about it?

I'm not a shopper at all, I just don't like it. It's a chore.

The one part of shopping I do enjoy, although it's quite stressful, is Christmas shopping.

What to get my nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters and Mum and so on. I quite enjoy that but otherwise about the extent of the shopping I do is supermarket shopping, which is my job.

Can you recall an experience (good or bad) from your youth that taught you something important about the value of money?

The first car that you buy typically ranks in the top 20 silliest decisions of your life and mine was no different.

When you're younger you never factor in the true cost of owning something.

It's fine to go buy a T-shirt because that carries no real additional cost unless you look horrible in it.

But I bought this car and never really factored into my thinking about insuring it or the cost of petrol and actually running a car.

I remember I bought this car (Honda Civic) and the very next month the transmission went in it and I had no possible means of actually maintaining and owning this vehicle.

The true cost of things is never the sticker price. There's a much higher cost to everything you buy, especially motorbikes and houses.

Do you have a piece of advice or a favourite quote about money for those just starting out?

People need to learn about money. Make it your business to.

When you get your driver's licence most people, on the quiet with no one else in the car, go out and teach themselves to parallel park. None of us know how to do it by default.

Why? Because most people know that it's just going to be a life skill. You need that life skill.

What I see a lot, though, is people do not learn about money, do not understand money and do not understand the concept of saving, of investment, of cashflow.

You need to start when you're 15 or 16 because that's when you start getting jobs.

Make it your business to learn because your stress levels go down once you know.