How can you prepare for the next financial emergency?

Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's what we can learn from how New Zealanders responded to Covid-19. Hosted by Frances Cook. <br /><br />If you wanted to find out if New Zealanders are financially resilient, then 2020 was one heck of a trial by fire to keep an eye on. <br /><br />Well the Financial Services Council has done just that, spending the year tracking how we're all doing, in response to one of the most significant challenges of our times. <br /><br />Some of the results of their Financial Resilience Index are a little surprising. <br /><br />New Zealanders have stayed reasonably financially confident through the year.<br /><br />Despite the madness, more of us have decided to give things like investing a try. Which you might think is chaotic timing, but actually makes sense when you think about this year as a wakeup call, and the need to make sure we're looking out for ourselves. <br /><br />Less good, but also not at all surprising, is the increase in people worrying about job security. That went from 30% of us in March, to almost 50% in both April and August. <br /><br />Overall money worries also weren't great, with more people saying it was on their mind, and impacting things like their physical and mental health. <br /><br />So what should we make of all of this information, and is there a way we can guard against the quite reasonable worries? <br /><br />For the latest podcast I talked to Richard Klipin, CEO of the Financial Services Council.<br /><br />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 <a href="https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/" rel="noopener">https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/</a> Instagram here <a href="https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/" rel="noopener">https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/</a> and Twitter here <a href="https://twitter.com/FrancesCook" rel="noopener">https://twitter.com/Fr