All those huge numbers and complicated ratios that are bandied about to show that New Zealanders save too little, and put too much into their houses, may not mean much to you. After all, they are big economy-wide issues.
Saturday, July 19th 2003, 11:55PM
by The Landlord
But a recent article brings it all down to a personal level in a rather scary way.
In his weekly newsletter, BNZ chief economist Tony Alexander notes our increasing tendency to save in the form of housing rather than financial assets - bonds, shares and so on.
This wouldn't matter quite so much if our total savings were the same as in other developed countries but with a housing bias, he says.
But that's not the way it is. The value of our houses, relative to our incomes or the size or our economy, is not a lot higher than in other developed countries.
It's simply that our financial assets are extraordinarily low.
