Canstar Consumer Pulse Report

This week financial journalist and author Mary Holm talks to Jesse about the latest Canstar Consumer Pulse report. It shows that 55% of New Zealanders are spending more than they earn.The latest Canstar Consumer Pulse report made for worrying reading, says financial journalist Mary Holm.It shows that 58 percent of New Zealanders are spending more than they earn. And the figures were worse still for the under 40s, she told Jesse Mulligan."They said 65 percent of people under 40, spend more than they earn. So that's nearly two thirds of people under 40, are spending more than they earn."That's a real worry."Another finding of the survey was 55 percent of New Zealanders have non-mortgage debt - car loans, personal loans, credit cards, student loans and buy now pay later debt.The average debt was $23,000 and for people in their 30s and Aucklanders it was $34,000.And a decent slice of these regularly miss payments, she says."They also asked people how they handled repayments and interestingly 10 percent of women said yes and 29 percent of men said yes so three times as many men missing their debt repayments."And the one thing that particularly worried me about all this was that they are not worried; only a third of the people said they were worried about the finances."About 85 percent of people with debt said they thought the debt was manageable, she says."I thought if you have got thousands of dollars of debt, that's not really manageable."Assuming there are no exceptional circumstances like a temporary financial set back, this is bad news for people's future, she says."If you're in a steady situation, and you've got thousands and thousands of dollars of debt, the thing about that is people are paying high interest on those sorts of debts, and they're going to end up way worse off in retirement."It's a habit that means people end up with maybe a couple of $100,000 less to spend and have fun in retirement, it's just such a horrible habit to get into, to be paying that high interest."One quarter of those surveyed said they saved nothing at all, she says."A big chunk of people in KiwiSaver are not regularly contributing, they're signed up, but they're not putting money in, they're on a savings suspension, or they're off work or for whatever reason."And that's a real pity, if you're not keeping on putting that money into KiwiSaver and getting the government contributions coming in. That's just really a pity."To turn this around, she suggests start small…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details