Cooking The Books

Each week the New Zealand Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's balancing the need to budget with still letting yourself have fun. Hosted by Frances Cook. You say budget, I say no thanks. The idea of budgeting makes me picture a flat, grey world, where I’m trapped in the house in worn out clothes, sadly watching my friends outside have fun without me. To say that budgeting has an image problem is like saying Donald Trump can be a bit impulsive sometimes. The thing is, it’s necessary. New Zealanders have hit record levels of debt, with 237 billion in housing debt, and 15 billion in consumer debt, as of June. Yeah, that’s what happens when you don’t have a budget and stick to it. The Commission for Financial Capability recently released a survey they did on people’s attitudes to debt. They found some pretty interesting results. First, was that a third of people felt they worked hard, so deserved to spend their money. Fair enough. But that also backfire