Do the banks have to work hard to get your money? There certainly seems to be enough of it just lounging around in term deposit accounts - about $65 billion according to the most recent figures. Or $15,700 for every New Zealander.
"Savings crisis? It makes you ask: 'what savings crisis?'" says David Chaston, who keeps tabs on the savings industry at his website, interest.co.nz.
Yet, Mr Chaston feels we are guilty of giving the banks an easy ride.
"If people are lazy, they will miss out on a return, basically. While customers don't move their money, the banks have no reason to offer them any more," Mr Chaston says.
Massey University director of banking studies David Tripe says term deposits are most popular either with those saving for something immediate, such as the deposit on a house, or people looking for a safe home for their retirement money and who want to live off the interest.
A more sophisticated fixed-interest investor might instead buy blue-chip corporate bonds through a sharebroker, which return about 7.5 per cent.
The great advantage of bonds is that they can be traded on the New Zealand debt market. A bond can lock in a return for four or five years, but without locking in the investor.
Bond portfolios can also be structured to protect against interest rate shocks. If the maturity dates are staggered across, say a year, three years and five years, then only part of the investment has to be rolled over into something else in any one year.
If bonds are too tame, those willing to trade off a higher risk for a higher return can do much the same by investing in finance company debentures. Providing the finance companies are chosen with care, it is possible to build a portfolio with a spread of maturities earning about 8.5 per cent.
Again, smart investors will want to balance the two kinds of risk of any fixed-interest investment, the risk of the institution going broke and not paying out, and also the risk that interest rates may be plummeting at just the moment when their cash needs to find a new home.
However, the portfolio approach is rare to find in DIY investors. Dr Tripe says bank term deposits appeal to ordinary people who just want the simplest, most secure option. They mostly choose the shortest terms possible - often as short as three months.
The latest Reserve Bank figures show a staggering 59 per cent of all term deposits are for 90 days or less, and 96 per cent are for less than a year. Only 2 per cent of money gets locked away for up to two years, and just 1 per cent for three years.
This seems a remarkably short-horizon method of investing.
A look at the yield curve for term deposits suggests one reason why.
A yield curve tells you what you get for locking away your money for various periods of time. Normally you would expect that the longer the banks are allowed to hold on to your money, the better the rate they would have to pay.
But as Macquarie Equities investment director Arthur Lim explains, the present yield curve has a negative or downward slope - shorter rates for longer terms - because over the long term, interest rates are expected to fall.
The recent strong economy and now rising inflation have pushed interest rates to a relatively high level. But pundits are picking rates to drop eventually.
ASB, for example, is offering depositors 7 per cent for 6 to 12 months, but just 6.25 per cent for three, four or even five years.
Mr Lim says given this choice, it is perhaps no surprise that people go for the shortest term deals, but they will get a shock if rates head south next year.
"Rates can really plunge and if you're not locked in for a longer term you can be caught very quickly with a significant drop in your income.
"Just to give you an idea, in March 1998, the 30-day bank bill rate was 9.8 per cent. When it became clear that inflation was not only under control but New Zealand was potentially heading into a recession, the Reserve Bank allowed interest rates to fall and by January 1999 the rate was down to 3.63 per cent."
So Mr Lim says unless retirees can cope with this kind of volatility in their income, it could be a false economy simply to chase today's best rate without worrying about the term.
The problem is that if you look closely, it appears the banks do not want you taking out longer term deposits.
Mr Chaston points out that a strange thing has happened during the past six months: deposit rates have fallen below government bonds, the safest investment possible. Banks have stuck to term rates of about 6.3 per cent, while the yield on three-year government bonds has risen sharply from 5.8 to 6.5 per cent.
The fact the banks have let government bonds overtake them shows they are not chasing customers.
This could be because banks import a lot of their two- and three-year money. They can raise this cash, which they lend out as two- and three-year fixed term mortgages - more cheaply overseas.
So they only look to mum and dad Kiwi savers to plug the shorter term gaps. Hence the miserly long-term returns.
Dr Tripe says it should be no surprise that banks set rates to suit themselves. It is up to customers to understand the trends and so know when a rate is likely to be good, and when it is mediocre.
Dr Tripe says competition does appear to be working in Internet banking. High interest Internet accounts with rates good enough to match term deposits first came on the scene in 2003 with the launch of Superbank - a joint venture by Australia's St George Bank and supermarket operator Foodstuffs.
State-owned Kiwibank soon joined the fray and its Internet account now offers 7.3 per cent, better than any of its term deposit rates.
Then in February the Dutch rural banking giant Rabobank upped the stakes again with its no-strings 7.35 per cent RaboPlus account.
Not only did Rabobank beat everyone else's rate but it could also play the trump card of its AAA credit rating - one that makes the AA- of Australian-owned banks look rather pale.
RaboPlus has stormed the market. Rabobank general manager Mike Heath reports that $620 million in deposits has flowed in over just six months - well ahead of plan.
The major banks have all been forced to respond to the Internet challenge. All have on-call accounts that pay 7 per cent - matching if not beating most of their short-term deposit rates.
In August Superbank decided to bow out. In its three years Superbank managed to gather 26,000 customers and take $570 million in deposits. But the cost of getting established proved too much and, having lost $35 million, Superbank withdrew. Customers have been given the choice of having their money returned or rolled into an equivalent Kiwibank account.
Still, high-interest Internet accounts look here to stay.
Rabobank's Mr Heath says Internet rates are good because the bank's costs are low.
He points out that Raboplus is not a transaction account, just a savings one. All the software sits on the computers back in Holland and only 12 people are needed in Wellington to run the New Zealand operation.
Kiwibank chief Sam Knowles says there is no turning back for Internet accounts because the paperwork on mostly short-term deposits is very costly to banks.
Mr Knowles says the big banks would probably offer even more than 7 per cent on their Internet accounts if they did not fear stealing from their own term deposit customer base.
As ever, it is a case of games within games in the financial world. It is up to investors to understand what drives the banks if they want to be sure they are not giving them an easy life.