Mortgage holiday? Financial expert Hannah McQueen tackles the hard Covid-19 money questions

These are uncertain times, with New Zealand being in lockdown to fight the spread of Covid-19.

Laura, Sam and Toni spoke with financial expert Hannah McQueen about all the questions people might have.

Hannah explained that everyone is in a different category: survival (will probably lose their jobs), stabilise (unlikely to be impacted), maximise (will be positively impacted) and that it was important to people to know which category they are in.

She also noted that a lot of people who are in the stabilise and maximise categories are still panicking about their finances when they don't need to.

One of the big questions people are asking themselves, is "should I take a mortgage holiday?"

Mortgage holidays are actually mortgage deferments., Hannah explained. You might not be making payments but the interest that you're having to pay gets added to the mortgage balance. And then you're paying interest on the mortgage balance = interest on top of interest.

She suggested that if you can still afford to pay your mortgage, you still should.

Hannah is hosting free webinars on financial resilience amid Covid-19: Click here to check them out.