Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's the mistake being made with KiwiSavers, and how to fix it. Hosted by Frances Cook.

KiwiSaver is really important, not only for our long term futures in retirement, but also our short term futures of buying first homes.

Figures from the IRD show this year, in July alone, $125 million dollars was pulled out of KiwiSavers for first homes.

In fact, research from Canstar shows about half of 18- to 29-year-olds are putting money into KiwiSaver purely to get that first home.

So that's a pretty major factor.

However, that same research also showed something a little worrying.

Those same 18- to 29-year-olds are quite confused by the different fund types, and how to use them.

That's crucial, because the fund you use could mean you put in the exact same money, but get something totally different at the end.

For the latest Cooking the Books I talked to Jose George from Canstar.

We discussed what the Canstar research shows, and how to understand your KiwiSaver so that it works better for you.

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