Each week BusinessDesk and the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's what's behind the soaring cost of living, and what you can do about it. Hosted by Frances Cook.

If you're struggling to pay for, well, anything, you are far from alone right now. 

You'll see inflation has been hitting the headlines a lot lately, which is just the term for how things cost more as time goes by. 

The thing is, the cost of living has been increasing far more than usual lately. The latest figures from StatsNZ showed prices were up by an average of 6.9 per cent, which is the biggest jump in 32 years. 

That's only a little bit less than the amount of time I've been alive. 

These price increases are hitting all of our core costs, food, petrol, housing; you know, the stuff that's really hard to do without. 

So whose fault is it, how do we fix it, and is there any way that we as individuals can reduce the pain at the cash register? 

For the latest podcast I talked to Consumer NZ CEO Jon Duffy, and Sam Lind from the Kiwi Mustachians group.

If you have a question about this podcast, or a question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here, Instagram here, and Twitter here