'Paycheque to paycheque' - A quarter of New Zealanders can't cover a $500 shock, Kiwibank savings survey suggests

'Paycheque to paycheque' - A quarter of New Zealanders can't cover a $500 shock, Kiwibank savings survey suggests. A quarter of New Zealanders do not have enough in their accounts to cover an unexpected $500 bill, the 2026 Kiwibank State of Savings Index suggests. The third Kiwibank annual survey found 61% of those surveyed struggled to save, with almost three quarters (74%) pointing to the cost of living as their biggest saving barrier. Main barriers to saving - Kiwibank Savings Survey Breaking that down even further, asked to choose up to three cost-of-living bills that were putting the most pressure on household balance sheets, groceries came in top at 68%, followed by rent/mortgage at 46%, power/gas at 42% then petrol/diesel at 31%. Forty per cent of the total pool of respondents had taken on debt to cover increased cost-of-living. Of the 40%, almost half had taken out debt via buy now pay later schemes. Cost-of-living bills putting the most pressure on household balance sheets - Kiwibank. Kiwibank chief executive Steve Jurkovich said the 61% with saving challenges showed people were living "paycheque to paycheque." Of the 28% of people who could not cover an unexpected $500 expense, Jurkovich said; "like a punctured tire and a broken windscreen... a broken tooth, that's pretty easily comes to $500." "A lot of us would be thinking, geez, that's probably not that unexpected, and would happen pretty regularly." Those surveyed were asked, 'would you have enough in your accounts to cover an unexpected bill of $500 without borrowing it, selling something, or putting it on a credit card?'. Only 47% of renters were able to cover the bill, compared to 72% of those with mortgages or 86% of outright home owners. Jurkovich said the consistency with the percentage of people struggling to save over the last three years "really does show that savings habits or lack of, really stick." "We've had pretty volatile economic times. I always expect that you would see more change in a time like this, but actually, the people who save regularly do so." The other point was around the lingering effect of high cost of living. "It was going to be survive till [20]25 and then whatever it was for [20]26. Now it's [20]27 It sort of feels like a bit of an ongoing grind, doesn't it?" The survey found women (66%) were more likely to struggle to save than men (54%). And of those who faced barriers to savings, women were more likely to cite cost of living at 78%, over men at 68%. "We unfortunately see that show up in a lot of things like lower KiwiSaver balances and all those sorts of things," Jurkovich said. "Part and parcel of it is who is the main and primary caregiver. Who's working... and reduced hours. I think there's a whole combo of things, but it's really one of the uncomfortable, consistent findings." The survey also found a significant increase in people using AI tools to choose banks. "We are really having to reshape our web content to make sure that agents and LLMs (large language models like ChatGPT) can pick up more clearly what they react to. That's not surprising that so often people are going to be using a tool like that in everyday life to help guide them, and maybe that's the financial coach of the future. We need to think really hard about that because I think that's that's got the potential to be pretty positive." Another change Jurkovich had noticed was that through his role as a board member on the Banking Ombudsman Scheme was that he sees AI being used to help pull information together with complaints. "And I know that I can see, what I describe as sometimes, a little bit wild accusations, that have been AI generated that land on my desk." "I mean the amount of stuff that can be generated in a split second, is really going to clog up everything that's a dispute resolution. I think you're going to see a world where... more and more people will have support to pull together their argument. There'll also be people who raise arguments that don't have merit that have got a lot more tools that can help them produce a lot more faster." Pollsters Talbot Mills Research conducted the survey of 1,534 respondents between June 15-21. The maximum sampling error at the 95% confidence level is ±2.5%.