Te Kahukura's on the money! 'WE CAN ALL BE MILLIONAIRES'

The young entrepreneur is on a mission to help Māori bridge the wealth gap

- Kasia De Vydt-Jillings

Te Kahukura Boynton has been a self-proclaimed hustler since she was a child. Seeing how money impacted the lives of those who did and didn't have it around her, she decided financial prosperity was a priority from a very early age.

At eight, she read money bible Rich Dad, Poor Dad, sold a toy cot to the local daycare centre and went door to door selling pens she found around home.

“I was always trying to find ways to make money,” Te Kahukura, now 21, remembers. “I busked at Pak’nSave with a ukelele I borrowed from school, and one day made $60 in half an hour and thought I was balling.”

Then at 18, during the hardest year of her life, she began an online social media account called Māori Millionaire, detailing her aspirational journey to become just that. It was a gutsy move for a teen who shares that at the time, she was desperately battling with her physical and mental health, and had an unhealthy relationship with money.

Living with endometriosis – a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows painfully in other places – Te Kahukura was in near-constant pain and turned to drugs to manage it when, she says, prescribed medications weren't working.