We’re broke, exhausted, doing everything right - yet still called ‘merchants of misery’

Friday, 22 August 2025

The Minister of Finance also received assurances from banks and investment funds that we're still considered a safe place to lend money to.

Here's Verity Johnson's personal experience of the desperate economy. How have things been for you making ends meet? You can tell us in the comments.

Johnson is an Auckland-based writer and business owner.

OPINION: My $6.99 automatic bank transaction declined due to insufficient funds the other day. Actually the same day that Nicola Willis told off naysayers about the economy for being “merchants of misery”.

It certainly gives one pause for thought. Mostly the thought, “Sweet Jesus, I absolutely refuse to be told off for feeling poor by the Chief Scrooge of the, ‘I’m Wealthy And Sorted’ Government who’ve single handedly overseen the worst recession, excluding covid, since 1991”

(Especially when the treasury expressly told them last year that they could both afford to, and actually really should, increase the debt to GDP ratio, borrow more, invest in the infrastructure pipeline, raise real time wages and hence up spending…the coalition deliberately chose not to.)

Then I thought, “And my God, I’m one of the lucky ones.”

When I say lucky ones, I’m referring to a lot of other “naysayers” out there (including the Reserve Bank) who know first-hand how bad the economy is. But specifically, other small business owners.

Us sorry lot, the small businesses that generate 28% of NZ’s GDP, employ over 600,000 Kiwis, comprise 97% of all businesses nationwide and are the backbone of this country’s economy.

Who, over the past five years, have been simultaneously punched in the face, knocked out, stomped on and talked down to by a Government whose best advice has been, “yeah, it’ll get better”.

Or, to be more specific and quote Christopher Luxon the other day, “I know it’s difficult especially in our big cities… but I think at this stage it’s keep doing what we’re doing.”

Visionary. Absolutely visionary. Visionary business advice from a visionary CEO that the small business community really needs to hear right now. We have had five years of repeated, desperate calls for help. And this is what we get. An AI chatbot doing debt collection for a loan shark could have done it better.

And then, just to piss all over us while we’re face down on the canvas, they tell us off for being “merchants of misery.”

Of course, we’re miserable.

“Small business industry has had five years of repeated, desperate calls for help,” says Verity Johnson.

Let me put this in real terms (because if I tell you that Auckland’s GDP has contracted by 1.3%, or a five-year slump in consumer spending, it’s all too abstract.)

Running a small business through the pandemic and the recession cost me personally $50,000 cash. (Not including any Covid loans.) That was all my business cash reserves and my own life savings.

For the past five years, on weeks I could pay myself, I paid myself $23 an hour, worked 7 days a week, averaging a 60-hour work week, and had an average of $12 a week in my bank account. I defaulted on automatic payments because I didn’t have $50 to pay my internet bill.

And the irony was that we were good at what we did. People loved it. People came to us. We got booked for festivals and tours. We were in the Washington Post. People came up to me in the street and told me how amazing we were.

But it was hard. And harder. And then we broke. 18 months ago, the city closed its wallets. The public, especially in Auckland, just stopped spending. We hung on, then two months ago, I had to fire myself.

I had to cancel all my contractors’ agreements, let go of all the incredibly talented people who’d been loyal, hard working and done everything right. I fired myself, and my business partner, and I had to get a job.

“We are the people who have been repeatedly, desperately asking for help - now we’re being told off for being merchants of misery?” says Verity Johnson.

And hey, I’m 30. I’m young. I don’t have a house, a mortgage or a family.

Other hospo veterans (not rookies but established and well-loved industry leaders) have gone from doing 7k a night to doing 1k. From doing 25k a week to doing 5k. From an average spend of $200 a brunch table to $70 a brunch table. You can’t live on this money. There’s no cash buffer to get you through it (even if we hadn’t already spent it to get through similar slumps in 2023 and 2024).

They’re not sleeping, they’re not eating, they’re on SEEK at 3am looking for Plan B - and the irony is they’re doing everything right. They’re institutions, they’re savvy, they’ve been doing this forever, they do their marketing, they invest in staff, they proactively plan, they usually have 3 - 6 months of cash in the bank to tide your business through rough times.

But that’s long gone now. And they still have probably $25k of debt from Covid to repay.

Now they live week to week, not paying themselves, working every shift themselves, transferring money out of their savings each week so they can make payroll. And their family home is on the line for them if they fail.

We are the people who have been repeatedly, desperately asking for help - now we’re being told off for being merchants of misery?

From the kind of government run by people who own several houses, mortgage-free, and earn $200K+ a year?

From the type of people who, let us be clear, are wealthy and sorted?!

From the type of people who fiddle with the cash rate while small businesses burn - and then tell us to be more chipper?!

We’ll be as miserable as we like. At least it’s free.