{"id":138696,"date":"2025-11-17T22:05:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T22:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/138696\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T22:05:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T22:05:11","slug":"kiwi-households-earning-more-than-200k-seeking-help-from-budgeting-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/138696\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwi households earning more than $200k seeking help from budgeting services"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cOver the last couple of years, we saw all the mortgage rates go up, you know, doubling, almost tripling.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThat\u2019s something that\u2019s actually sort of trended off now as the interest rates have come off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">But relief from interest rates has been countered by increases in other everyday essentials like food, electricity and insurance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">This week, Stats NZ said food prices increased by 4.7% in the 12 months to October.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cYou only need to get little variations &#8230; it\u2019s going to affect you and it\u2019s on those it\u2019s all on those basics. It\u2019s all those everyday things that you walk in and get,\u201d Verry said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">Verry said it was very tough on people right now.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThere\u2019s nobody that\u2019s immune from it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cWe used to like to be back to people within 24 hours of them contacting us. Some budget services now have a two or three week wait to actually get in front of a financial mentor to just start discussing their budget to try and find the solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/business\/fraud-and-double-dipping-as-kiwisaver-hardship-withdrawals-spike\/S3ZJDSKJWJGYZMMDWMNTNUNZFE\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/business\/fraud-and-double-dipping-as-kiwisaver-hardship-withdrawals-spike\/S3ZJDSKJWJGYZMMDWMNTNUNZFE\/\">Record numbers of Kiwis<\/a> are turning to KiwiSaver hardship withdrawals to seek relief from cost of living pressures.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">According to Inland Revenue Department (IRD) data, September was a record month for KiwiSaver hardship withdrawals ($48.9 million) and the number of people dipping into their retirement funds (5530).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wzdDHKkU\" style=\"display:none\">Already, in the first quarter of the financial year, $134.6m has been withdrawn from KiwiSaver for hardship reasons, up 22.5% on the same period last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOver the last couple of years, we saw all the mortgage rates go up, you know, doubling, almost&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[86084,86082,69438,25788,2113,114,46808,25781,5866,21133,268,9066,3417,23634,85,32674,46,84721,1017,14775,266,267,86083,2956,28639,9074,9071,10190],"class_list":["post-138696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-86084","tag-200k","tag-among","tag-bite","tag-budgeting","tag-business","tag-continues","tag-costofliving","tag-crisis","tag-earning","tag-finance","tag-from","tag-help","tag-households","tag-il","tag-incomes","tag-israel","tag-kiwi","tag-more","tag-over","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-seeking","tag-services","tag-than","tag-those","tag-with","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}