Can my library refuse cash? - Ask Susan

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My local council - Kāpiti Coast District Council - has announced that from next month our council-operated local libraries will stop accepting cash, including for things like photocopying, charged at 20c per page. They operate libraries in the towns of Paraparaumu, Waikanae and Ōtaki. Can the council do this, legally, when cash is legal tender?

In general, businesses can decide how they want people to pay and can refuse to accept cash, as long as customers are given clear notice.

The question of how this applies to organisations like a library is an interesting one, though. I spoke to Jon Duffy, Consumer NZ chief executive about this.

He said there was an argument that public service organisations like libraries might have a moral obligation to provide a range of payment services and excluding cash might exclude some parts of the community.

"The other question we have is whether there's a secondary legal obligation on them to accept cash if someone is paying off a fine from late fees for books, because technically you could potentially argue that as a debt and therefore the Reserve Bank's advice is that they should accept cash for that sort of payment."

I did contact your council to ask for more information but didn't hear back before my deadline. I note on the website it says the change will allow it to serve customers more quickly, reduce operating costs, reduce the risks of cash on site and reduce the time staff spend handling cash.

My wife has been in NZ in August for 12 years, she is 65 in September. We approached WINZ about her receiving the full pension. She got a work visa three months after her arrival, so has been paying tax since then. However WINZ advises that she cannot qualify for her own pension until 12 years after the approval of her residency visa, which she gained in August 2016. Can you confirm that is the case, as I would argue that the countdown for the pension should start from when she started contributing to the NZ economy by paying tax.

I asked the Ministry of Social Development about this.

Its general manager of centralised services, Shannon Soughtton, said "resident" would generally mean a person had made New Zealand their home and had been living here on a permanent basis.

"This can include times when a person was living in NZ on a temporary permit or visa if at that time, their intention was to make NZ their home for the foreseeable future. We consider a range of factors if it's not clear whether a person intended to make NZ their home when they were on a temporary permit or visa.

"Residence only includes periods of time when a person was resident and lawfully present in NZ. Some people may be able to use time lived overseas in NZ Realm countries or countries we have a Social Security Agreement (SSA) with to meet the residence criteria for NZ Super.

"Everyone's situation is different. We would encourage anyone with questions about their eligibility to get in touch with our NZ Super team to talk through their situation."

People who were born between 1 July 1961 and 30 June 1963 need to have lived in New Zealand for at least 12 years after they turned 20 to be eligible.

Do you think it's worth changing from ASB KiwiSaver to Milford investments, I had a company approach me and do all the sums, not really sure what to do, Milford have higher fees.

I can't give personalised advice. My general thought in relation to changing providers is that you could look at the returns after fees that are being delivered by each. Sorted's Smart Investor tool allows you to do this.

Try to compare them over longer periods of time, too, not just the last three months or last year.

You might be happy to pay a higher fee if you are getting reliably higher returns.

On the other hand, it tends to be hard for fund managers to outperform the market over a long period of time and proponents of lower-fee, passive investing think that it's not worth paying a higher fee to try to do so.

You'll need to think about what you're comfortable with and what works for you. There might be other things that you value, too, like access to advice, or online tools.

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