Being robbed blind by banks
obstructed their view somewhat.
Last week ANZ announced a record annual profit of $1.99 billion, while Westpac’s profit statement, released this week, came in at a bonny $1.017 billion.
To put those figures into perspective, ANZ made twice as much profit this year as all of Fonterra’s cows, almost four times as much as Air New Zealand, five times as much as Spark and more than seven times as much as the profiteering petrolheads at Z Energy.
Naturally, both banks were keen to point out that we should actually be grateful they’re making fistfuls of loot off us because it’s a sign of a strong economy.
I have seven accounts at three different banks. ANZ isn’t one of them, but Westpac is. However, in middle age, I’ve become more fiscally patriotic, if no more prudent. I figure if anyone’s going to fleece me for stepping foot in a branch or making too many transactions each month, it might as well be Kiwibank.
At Kiwibank, my bank manager is an avatar called Gary. I have no idea if he’s also a real person because I’ve never met him, and that’s just the way I like it.
Unlike the good old days, when everyone knew their local branch manager from golf/squash/ tennis/bridge/Rotary/Lions, I prefer to ghost Gary.
Maintaining a degree of anonymity makes it less embarrassing when you lose your credit card and have to confess that the last three transactions were, ahem, at Burger King, Burgerfuel and the drive-thru at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts.
It pains me to speak ill of the dead but my mistrust of money lenders stems back to primary school peer pressure from an ASB-sponsored elephant.
Kashin featured on the front of our paper passbooks and she conned all my classmates into parting with their pocket money each week. Remember, she said, and I still do.
I remember that even then the bank wanted to get its hands on my cash with no intention of giving it back because the mustard-yellow plastic elephant money box we were all issued had a slot for deposits in its back, but no method of withdrawal other than going big game hunting with a hammer.
At five and seven, my children don’t have bank accounts yet. They still have no concept of the value of a buck, or what it takes to earn it, though they’re fairly savvy foragers of any spare change left around the house.
They also know that money doesn’t grow on trees because it is conjured up magically with the swipe of a plastic card, rather than a well-timed thwack to the belly of a plastic pachyderm.
Kashin featured on the front of our paper passbooks and she conned all my classmates into parting with their pocket money each week. Remember, she said, and I still do.