Cooking the Books podcast: Why the OCR is the key to your financial life

Don't be fooled into thinking interest rates don't have an impact on your daily life. Photo / File

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking The Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's the subtle ways interest rates influence everything money. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Listen to "Cooking the Books: Why the OCR is the key to your financial life" on Spreaker.

Talking interest rates, or the official cash rate, tends to make all but the most hardened personal finance nerds glaze over.

The rates go up, they go down, who cares, what's for dinner and has anyone taken the dog outside yet?

But don't be fooled into thinking this dry talk of percentages has no impact on your daily life.

In fact interest rates are the key to many of your most important money decisions.

It even flows well past credit cards and mortgages, to change our housing market, and even the sharemarket.

So now the Reserve Bank has decided to keep New Zealand's official cash rate at the historic low of 1.75 per cent. It's even expected to stay down there, all the way until 2020.

You can bet that's important to your back pocket.

For the latest podcast, I spoke to Chris Tennent-Brown, senior economist for ASB Wealth.

We discussed why you need to care about the OCR, the weird and wonderful things it affects, and how to make the most of the current situation.

For the interview, listen to the podcast.

If you have a question about this podcast, or an idea for the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here and Twitter here.

Don't forget to subscribe on the Apple podcasts app or iHeartRadio, to make sure you never miss an episode.