Each week BusinessDesk and the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's the strategies one couple used to radically reduce how much they needed to work. Hosted by Frances Cook.

The idea of investing enough that you can live off the passive income often seems the stuff of dreams. 

Surely it's just for those who earn the mega big bucks? Or it'll take 20 years, 30 years, maybe even more. 

Well one New Zealand couple managed it in 11 years, and while they earned a decent salary, it wasn't anything crazy. 

In fact, they say they could have achieved financial independence even sooner if they'd avoided a few mistakes along the way. 

They're now at the stage where they don't technically need to work, although they do choose to work part time in order to have some extra fun money. 

That's what the financial independence world calls becoming "work optional". 

So how did they do it?

For the latest podcast, I talked to Ruth Henderson, also known as The Happy Saver.

• If you have a question about this podcast, or a question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here, and Twitter here.