Cooking the Books podcast: How money silence is hurting us all

Not talking about money can even impact mental health. Photo / 123RF

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how just talking about money could change things. Hosted by Frances Cook.

If you would rather talk about literally anything other than money, you're not alone.

It turns out, New Zealanders would rather talk about alcohol, politics, or drugs, than what they're doing with their KiwiSaver or if they have a savings account.

Now this might be understandable with co-workers or people we're only loosely friends with.

But shockingly, many of us aren't even talking to our significant other about what we're doing with money.

According to a survey from the Commission for Financial Capability, 58 per cent of us don't talk to our partner about how much we earn.

We're even quieter when it comes to retirement planning. Even for those aged 55 to 64, only 52 per cent of us have talked to our partner about what the plan is for our golden years.

There can be good reasons for keeping quiet, but these numbers are seriously high.

It links in with another stat – 69 per cent of New Zealanders are worried about money.

And honestly, anything we're not talking about is something we're anxious about.

Just talking about it can be the key to getting it under control.

For the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to Tom Hartmann, from the Commission for Financial Capability.

We discussed why so many of us are stressed about money, and why talking about it can help.

For the interview, watch the video podcast here:

Or you can listen to just the audio here:

If you have a question about this podcast, or 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.

You can subscribe to this podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple podcasts app, or Spotify, to make sure you never miss an episode.