Financial wellbeing - a snapshot

New Zealanders’ sense of financial wellbeing slipped in the first three months of 2025, according to a survey by the country’s biggest bank.

After rising in the December 2024 quarter, the ANZ Financial Wellbeing Indicator score fell in the March 2025 quarter from 58.2 to 56.8. This is the lowest score in the last five years.

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A Financial ‘Pulse Check’

The ANZ Financial Wellbeing Index is a ‘pulse check’ on how Kiwis feel about their financial situation.

The Indicator Score comprises three components: Meeting Commitments, Feeling Comfortable and Resilience.

All three segments fell in the March quarter.

Meeting Commitments:

This measures how well people can pay their bills, mortgage or rent, and other living costs.

This segment fell to a new low of 68.5, below the previous low point of 68.7 set back in the third quarter of 2023.

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Feeling Comfortable: The second component of the Indicator Score is whether people are feeling comfortable financially.

This came in at 48.1, down from 49.6 in the December quarter. This was still above the low point set in Q3 2023 of 46.6.

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Resilience:

The final element in the score is Resilience, how well people are placed to weather any ups and downs in the economic environment. And this has also fallen to the lowest level recorded.

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A key factor in Resilience is household savings.

In the March quarter we saw this figure fall to a median of $3,680 from $5,900 in the previous three months. This is the lowest median savings figure we have seen since June 2019.

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The Financial Wellbeing model groups people into four segments - Struggling, Getting By, Doing OK and No Worries.

Unfortunately, there was an increase in the number of people in both the Struggling and Getting By categories.

The number of people who said they were Struggling almost doubled to 16.6 per cent.

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Where these numbers go will be determined by factors such as the employment rate, the cost of living and the future path of interest rates.

For those with mortgages, as the time comes for their fixed rates to roll over, they will likely move onto lower rates. This can provide options: either reduce the maturity date of the loan and pay less each period, freeing up cash, or keep the payment amount the same to pay off the home loan faster, potentially saving thousands in interest over the loan’s course.