{"id":185984,"date":"2025-11-17T21:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/185984\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T21:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T21:45:11","slug":"kiwi-households-earning-more-than-200k-seeking-help-from-budgeting-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/185984\/","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":185985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[104595,104593,89209,104596,832,79,69072,68470,20084,1089,18,6154,22203,50996,19,57284,17,7710,25515,17707,234,235,104594,827,17705,40357,2046,20206],"class_list":{"0":"post-185984","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-104595","9":"tag-200k","10":"tag-among","11":"tag-bite","12":"tag-budgeting","13":"tag-business","14":"tag-continues","15":"tag-costofliving","16":"tag-crisis","17":"tag-earning","18":"tag-eire","19":"tag-from","20":"tag-help","21":"tag-households","22":"tag-ie","23":"tag-incomes","24":"tag-ireland","25":"tag-kiwi","26":"tag-more","27":"tag-over","28":"tag-personal-finance","29":"tag-personalfinance","30":"tag-seeking","31":"tag-services","32":"tag-than","33":"tag-those","34":"tag-with","35":"tag-zealand"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}