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Main barriers to saving – Kiwibank Savings Survey<\/p>\n
Breaking that down even further, asked to choose up to three cost-of-living bills that were putting the most pressure on household balance sheets, groceries came in top at 68%, followed by rent\/mortgage at 46%, power\/gas at 42% then petrol\/diesel at 31%.<\/p>\n
Forty per cent of the total pool of respondents had taken on debt to cover increased cost-of-living. Of the 40%, almost half had taken out debt via buy now pay later schemes.<\/p>\n
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Cost-of-living bills putting the most pressure on household balance sheets – Kiwibank.<\/p>\n
Kiwibank chief executive Steve Jurkovich said the 61% with saving challenges showed people were living “paycheque to paycheque.”<\/p>\n
Of the 28% of people who could not cover an unexpected $500 expense, Jurkovich said; “like a punctured tire and a broken windscreen… a broken tooth, that’s pretty easily comes to $500.”<\/p>\n
“A lot of us would be thinking, geez, that’s probably not that unexpected, and would happen pretty regularly.”<\/p>\n
Those surveyed were asked, ‘would you have enough in your accounts to cover an unexpected bill of $500 without borrowing it, selling something, or putting it on a credit card?’. Only 47% of renters were able to cover the bill, compared to 72% of those with mortgages or 86% of outright home owners.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jurkovich\u00a0said the consistency with the percentage of people struggling to save over the last three years “really does show that savings habits or lack of, really stick.”<\/p>\n
“We’ve had pretty volatile economic times. I always expect that you would see more change in a time like this, but actually, the people who save regularly do so.”<\/p>\n
The other point was around the lingering effect of high cost of living.<\/p>\n
“It was going to be survive till [20]25 and then whatever it was for [20]26. Now it’s [20]27 It sort of feels like a bit of an ongoing grind, doesn’t it?”<\/p>\n
The survey found women (66%) were more likely to struggle to save than men (54%). And of\u00a0those who faced barriers to savings, women were more likely to cite cost of living at 78%, over men at 68%.<\/p>\n
“We unfortunately see that show up in a lot of things like lower KiwiSaver balances and all those sorts of things,” Jurkovich said. “Part and parcel of it is who is the main and primary caregiver. Who’s working… and reduced hours. I think there’s a whole combo of things, but it’s really one of the uncomfortable, consistent findings.”<\/p>\n
The survey also found a significant increase in people using AI tools to choose banks.<\/p>\n
“We are really having to reshape our web content to make sure that agents and LLMs (large language models like ChatGPT) can pick up more clearly what they react to. That’s not surprising that so often people are going to be using a tool like that in everyday life to help guide them, and maybe that’s the financial coach of the future. We need to think really hard about that because I think that’s that’s got the potential to be pretty positive.”<\/p>\n