Cooking the Books podcast: Is the KiwiSaver carnage as bad as it looks?

Traders work the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York last month as stocks swing sharply, with talk of bear markets and recession increasingly dominating headlines. Photo / AP

Each week BusinessDesk and the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's the sea of red in your KiwiSaver, and how to work out if yours is as bad as it looks. Hosted by Frances Cook.

If you've looked at your KiwiSaver, or any investments lately, you've probably winced and wondered if you're doing something wrong.

For about 13 years now we've been in a bull market, which means values have been going up, and we've all got pretty used to the money game being a fairly easy one.

That's all starting to change, and there's increasing talk of bear markets and recession.

That means that as KiwiSaver statements land in your mailbox or inbox around this time of year, it might make for unpleasant reading.

That's if you read it at all – the latest stats are that 22 per cent of us read it thoroughly, 54 per cent of us skim it, and the rest of us really just don't bother.

But there's a wealth of info in there, even when things are a bit gloomy as they are at the moment.

So here's how to smarten up your KiwiSaver game.

For the latest podcast I talked to Tim Murphy from Morningstar, and Tammy Peyper from the Financial Markets Authority.

For the interview, listen to the podcast here.

• If you have a question about this podcast, or a question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here , Instagram here, and Twitter here.

• Listen to the full interview on the Cooking the Books podcast. You can subscribe on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.