Feel like you are doing things tough right now in NZ? well that is because you are. Apparently we are in the middle of the worst / deepest recession NZ has seen since the early 1990’s. Yes, it is even worse here in NZ right now than the global financial crisis of 2007-9. Meanwhile, the UK, who had a lock down for longer, are already seeing economical growth. What the devil is going on?
I have to say that lately I have felt more naffed off with this country than I have in a very very long time. I wondered if it was just me, but no, the news says that the economy is pretty shot up here right now.
Only a few years ago, I felt like I was doing ok. I had an ok amount of expendable income and a wee bit spare to be able to add to savings. Right now, we seem to have to work really hard to keep the grocery bill to $200 / week (it used to be around $120). We have to limit the amount we use the car to go anywhere because we can only afford a limited amount of petrol per week and if the rates come in the same week as the electric bill we run into problems.
What the hell happened? Butter is now well over $10 a block, when it used to be $5. Beef is more than double the price it used to be so we can no longer afford to get it. We have cut almost all our subscriptions, taken part of the cellphone bill to PAYG and never eat out, rarely even buy a coffee (which, incidentally is marching swiftly towards $10 a cup!!) Despite all this we still feel like we constantly struggle to balance the accounts every week.
Almost daily I read about another NZ business that has gone into liquidation. Unemployment is more than double. Its hardly surprising that mental health issues are on the rise.
What or who is to blame?
Despite the UK having a waaaay longer lock down that NZ, they came out of recession in 2023. Even Australia are doing better. So I asked the internet why. Now I have a very limited understanding of all this gobbledigook so if I have not got this quite right, I stand corrected. But.. here is how I understand it.
The reserve bank in NZ hiked interest rates a lot more aggressively than a lot of other countries, post COVID, to attempt to curb spending because there were soooo many problems with the supply chains (remember the Gib crisis!!?) thing is, they seemed to have been far too slow to reverse this, and the economy has been hit much much harder than they expected because almost 2 years later the stats are tons worse than they thought and consumer confidence is still at rock bottom. Yip.. we still are not spending. (Because we cannot bloody afford to!!)
So that is my joe bloggs understanding of it all. It doesn’t give me any answers, but as far as I see it, the reserve bank need to now slash interest rates even more to get things back on a level and get us all a bit further away from the bread line.
Like, who knew there was such a term as the working poor. Those of us who work our butts off, have decent jobs and STILL can’t pay the bills.
Yes, you are not alone. Hang in there brothers and sisters. It aint like we have much other choice lets face it!
I went to ASDA supermarket yesterday and brought a block of Anchor butter…it was only £1.75 a block (200g)
😲
It isn’t going to get better soon, because we have an ineffective Government