Card spending falls for the fifth time in June as households face ongoing financial strain

NZ has too much private debt, quick lower rates so we can take on more debt. 

NZ = total basket case.

Sounds like a huge flip flop from HouseMouse again...

The retail market has the bouyancy of a common item of fishing tackle.

Is that just seasonal variation? 

That's right - it's a mixed bag. Groceries are still going up, meat is going sideways, and vegetables are going down. 

Was over 20 bucks yesterday for a double mediocrity burger with cheese combo at Maccas.

People will likely pay over the odds for convenience for a while to come.

Priorities. Many have no problem spending $50/week on beers... Or upgrading the iPhone every year. Or the car every 4 to 5 years.

I'd say there's a lot of fat to be cut still.

The number of push to cut articles are going to come thick and fast over the next few weeks. There is zero resilience in the NZ economy, businesses here will start dropping like flies.

Random shoutout/promo...#ad?

"hunger in the public space for education", lol that is actual hunger you are mistaking. Whatever people want in NZ sadly for most the populace, especially those coming down the pipe, education is rarely the most desired or valued. Just look at how the STEM fields are being stripped. To the point many graduating teens and youth cannot many do simple sums or understand simple concepts (like what a percentage is) even using a calculator. It is not education which is desired the most and for most we, as a nation, have been steadily devaluing the lessons of it for the past 20 years. To the point a sharp reset is needed even to save those starting now.

What people need most is the base needs to survive first, then a sense of purpose, justice & community, then a larger series of goals & cultural fulfillment to strive for. Instead we have it upside down and are failing badly with much worse wellbeing outcomes the result. We think by fulfilling the least functional and least essential fields that people can survive without base needs for shelter, safety, medical care & food. It does not happen that way and you don't need much of an education through human history & physiology to see why. Education is essential for all communities to survive as a whole and for people to understand key factors in their lives. But as much as it is a key factor in the later levels NZ still cannot provide an environment to satisfy the essential needs, medical needs, and long term safety.

If you think people suffer without financial education you are right but a person can live a lot longer without knowing how to do basic math then they can without food & shelter (as NZ so keenly proves in our poorest & vulnerable). However for too long we have focused support solely on a racial basis rather then a socioeconomic one (where collective ownership managed by limited people does not translate to equitable wellbeing... on many levels). So many essential needs and social supports are denied to those who are in socioeconomic need. Much the same way we also discriminate heavily by age for financial benefits & social supports. We do not target those who need support. Rather we fund more wealthy groups with very low levels of need and deny any support to those who are denied essentials. We think this makes us more egalitarian but instead we have only become more inequitable, and more ageist (more likely to also have a growing level of harm towards those who are destitute).

Like the incredibly wasteful funding for mandatory budgeting courses that run up against the same problems for those denied social support: you cannot budget key medical care when you have zero available income. You cannot even budget for survival in those conditions and so many don't survive. We knowingly have people die before retirement age with conditions that do not affect lifespan and are treatable. Hence these ill planned financial education & budget courses are worse then wasteful. They are actively harmful, financially wasteful, often traumatic and result in removal of funds from initiatives that could have helped instead.

Even targeting of funding for services is incredibly out of touch and inequitable. Of over 100 providers of medical support services nationwide we have only one (which unlike the others is restricted to no contact with people to save funds) to cover all ethnicities, ages, abilities (although it cannot even support those most able most the time), and so we do not even cover the majority 80% of people with medical support. Especially noticeable in unmet need studies when we have stats to prove the majority of need is in the excluded 80% and that most people are going without essential care. Is it a surprise really that financial education is one of the least important things when such exclusion of basic needs occurs. 

This plays out in most of our services. E.g. lets take one branch where financial & maths education can help the most say gambling prevention support;  even gambling in stocks, currencies, high risk ventures etc. Education can help identify the clear harm, provide easily teachable ways to loss prevention, clear actionable goals and results tracking, (where financial education & immunization against behavioral targeting tricks helps incredibly). Yet for gambling addiction there is practically no available support services in most areas. There is not even services or supports to help recover and access private gambling support physically in any region. Since the addictive harm can be closer then arms reach now there is far more harm out there & sadly there is even far less addiction support then we had 20 years ago. Financial education is worthless in such cases as it is without the medical support and fails to understand and counter the psychological tricks inducing gambling. Knowing the odds of loss are far greater does not stop addiction. Neither does telling people high risk speculation or "investments" is money down the drain. It requires key social and medical support as well to help with the addiction and NZ has defunded MHS to more then 80% of the population.

NZ is sick but sadly the idea that a quickie slapdash cheap budget & investment tricks education will suffice as a cure is actively harmful dialog to most, especially for those who are suffering.

Like all wealthy chartered accountants Luke shows they are completely ignorant of simple costs, basic budgets when in destitution. When accountants reach a point of destitution (often when they decide to take a long term holiday at the age of 65 to just sit on a benefit on the couch or some other normal life event) they cry blue murder at how impossible it is to get by without the funding for essential living needs and medical care. Even in cases of financial investment supporting long term living they fail to account for the time that is required to enable that, ironically since time is key in equations, and then fail to understand that it will never work for those unable to survive without essential needs in that time. Knowing intimately the mindset and education of accountants it is easy to see the simple failings & mathematical errors. There is a reason they can only go up to a certain level of mathematics education and not beyond. Why even though a budget template is replicated more then hundreds of millions of times it has not worked for most cases of poverty and destitution and in fact we have growing levels of inequity while at the same time more access to these cheap fatally flawed and mathematically irrelevant tables.

It is like Luke has never heard of unforeseen costs in life at all; the thing that is the downfall of most accountants as their significant partner leaves them, a flood washes out their home with insurance limited or their kid gets sick & they lose everything in an effort to have them live (that is if they were the sort of accountant with an ounce of humanity but then many don't). There is a reason why yet another cheap budget table & patronizing irrelevant advice that only works for those already wealthy is not going to help much for those in real need. Why it does not even class as education at all but yet more vaporware. See even the examples above. Oh and when his partner and family do decide to split, (easy to see why given the website content and tone which gives big abusive & controlling relationship vibes with many lines a word for word copy from the worst scams & relationship abuse recognition guides), here is a tip: don't do the accountant thing, instead follow legal advice first & support the family as a whole to emotionally process the change.

Sadly most accountants don't have the mathematics and financial education to weather significant life events without a lot of support from outside. Then they wonder why those without the initial wealth don't weather life events that have occurred to them much sooner in their lifetimes. I would have loved to see some of these accountants go through Lake Alice or Marylands etc and finally understand why their advice does not meet the needs of people and it is not an education gap when real medical harm, significant abuse and real neglect of essential needs is present. Not that I would want anyone to be put in those positions again, we had so much damage & eugenics occur to much of the population from our "care" & school facilities for those who were destitute. But it does show most accountants in NZ have significant education gaps even with understanding simple equations. I get that it is from a place of primarily ignorance and not malice but given the language used on Luke's site, he is pushing far closer to include malice as well then most. Most likely he is setting up to grab some of that free grant cash handed out for the wealthy wastes of time then anything else.

The work of a chartered accountant is mostly work providing how you can best avoid tax and claim incentives for things. It is little more then a get out of jail free card for financial matters. Even for payroll we have other solutions that are more realistic in budgeting and predictions. But a chartered accountant, they can help reduce the tax paid and increase the amounts you claim. Which can be best boiled down to they have a limited set of advice that can be easily replaced by reading a national guideline of tax laws. When it comes to budget & financial education they have less understanding then many of the materials out there you can copy and they are less applicable to most of the population. It is a matter of limited education & training for accountants in which we have unfortunately denied them more comprehensive education in their field. Even for financial investments accountants often resort to really simple mathematics and limited options. They really like property but cannot understand the generational harm etc. Hence as we favored the wealthy with benefits many accountants are useful in working our how to maximize milking the public teat while reducing the social responsibility and now the chickens are coming home to roost. I really hope it serves them well in retirement when they cannot get an ambulance for a heart attack and the medical services are collapsing and there is no social workers or carers for them to help when they are elderly and more disabled recovering after a stroke (if they survive).

Check what people are buying though, probably much more necessities now compared to a year ago.

They know it more than most of us.

People seem to think maintaining everyone's lifestyles is part of the RBNZs mandate.

And what tools does the RBNZ have to reduce these non tradable inflationery increases - hint is begins with a Z. Orr is determined to create a deep recession to preserve his record of being wrong on everything every time by being to little too late or too much too soon but at least he gets a mention the history book as the worst BanK Govenror ever alongside the othe worst politicians ardern and robbers son.

Sorry, annual inflation still at 4.0 percent. Better keep our foot on the throat of the economy until it stops twitching.

Nup, she's not poked enough yet.