{"id":537608,"date":"2026-07-21T22:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T22:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/537608\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T22:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T22:52:09","slug":"older-people-facing-impossible-choices-as-cost-of-living-continues-to-bite-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/537608\/","title":{"rendered":"Older people facing impossible choices as cost of living continues to bite"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThese latest increases<\/a>, and particularly at this time of year, when they\u2019re having to make those awful decisions of whether or not to heat their home or go and buy groceries, they are now living almost beyond their means where they simply can\u2019t make ends meet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamb said that, in the past year, Age Concern Auckland had seen a 20 to 30% increase in calls for help.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re dealing with potentially vulnerable older people who don\u2019t have support networks around them, they don\u2019t have a family to support them, they\u2019re living in loneliness and isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lamb added that climbing rates bills were putting a lot of pressure on superannuants and it was too hard for older people to get rates relief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are living in a multi-generational home where you have an older person, for example, you\u2019ve also got younger children and a family\u2019s living there where you might not get those rebates. It\u2019s incredibly difficult to just sort of cope with an increase of the sorts of levels we\u2019re seeing. It\u2019s just putting too much pressure on people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Lamb said that many seniors who asked Age Concern for help didn\u2019t know that they could claim a rates rebate.<\/p>\n

Households not benefiting from low wholesale electricity prices<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Consumer NZ said it was seeing record levels of interest in its electricity comparison website.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been going 25 years, and last year was the busiest year by far,\u201d said Powerswitch manager, Paul Fuge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had over a million users of our site last year, and that\u2019s continued into this year. What it indicates is people are really struggling with the cost of living and electricity prices are a big part of that, and they\u2019re seeking relief through trying to find a cheaper provider.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuge said the \u201clion\u2019s share\u201d of the increase in power prices was due to an increase in transmission and distribution costs.<\/p>\n

He said those costs were regulated and were therefore unavoidable.<\/p>\n

But Fuge said households were not seeing the benefit of record low wholesale electricity prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of procuring electricity in the wholesale market, those costs have actually fallen. So, the costs of purchasing electricity in the wholesale market are less. And those costs, those savings, should be being passed through to consumers now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat electricity companies are saying is they\u2019ll, you know, likely result in lower prices or flat prices in the future. We\u2019re saying that in any other market, when those input costs fall, consumers in a competitive market would see the benefits of that more immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fuge said power bills should drop \u201csoon\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf not, the regulator should be looking at why not.\u201d<\/p>\n

– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThese latest increases, and particularly at this time of year, when they\u2019re having to make those awful decisions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537609,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[806,26630,138,9217,13982,4187,9881,68636,4188,111,139,69,1118,24808,37250,384,16189,61],"class_list":["post-537608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-as","tag-bite","tag-business","tag-choices","tag-continues","tag-cost","tag-facing","tag-impossible","tag-living","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-older","tag-penny","tag-people","tag-smith","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}