It's Time to Resist the Gadgets

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.

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