New data from Centrix shows a 14% year-on-year increase in financial hardship, with nearly 50,000 individuals struggling to pay bills—24,000 of whom are facing mortgage stress.
Mortgage, credit card, and personal loan issues make up the bulk of hardship cases, particularly affecting 35- to 49-year-olds.
Although household arrears have plateaued and the percentage of credit-active Kiwis in arrears has slightly decreased, the number of people behind on bills rose to 485,000 in May.
Meanwhile, company liquidations are up 27% compared to last year, with the construction, property, and hospitality sectors hit hardest. Business credit demand is also increasing, particularly in retail and hospitality, as financial pressure mounts across industries.
Image credit: Kelly Sikkema
Although one may take out a huge student loan to train in a trade, a profession or an occupation guaranteed to give life satisfaction, nowhere is there recognition of the need for realistic, on the ground business interface and the type of experience which is necessary for financial survival. The whole system is geared toward satisfying the taxman at the expense of sanity and courtesy, which are the first things to fall by the wayside in the real world. The type of shady business which succeeds by ‘leverage’ (a polite word for sneaky bullying tactics) is lauded and celebrated in the press and the beehive alike, with no consideration for the human fallout which is reflected here in this report. Our bureaucrats are asleep at the wheel as lawyers for the filthy rich throw them crumbs under the table or in plain sight, either way, while parliament writes laws with chatGPT and whinnies to the press on their ‘achievements’. Sickening.