Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how to figure out the new rules of a low interest rate environment. Hosted by Frances Cook.

It may sound unsexy, but interest rates are actually the secret sauce for understanding your money.

That little percentage determines how much debt costs you, and how much an investment will make you, as well as a bunch of other things.

So when you're making decisions about your money, interest rates play a huge part.

The problem is they're acting a little weirdly right now.

As governments both here and around the world pump cash into the economy to try and keep us going through that whole pandemic thing, interest rates are historically low.

That means that the usual advice for how to pay off debt, and when to start investing, has changed a little bit, at least for now.

For the latest podcast I talked to ASB senior economist Chris Tennent-Brown.

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 https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook

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