The New Zealand Budget is the Government's plan for what it does with the money it gets from taxes and other sources. It's presented each year in May by the Finance Minister -- this year's will be delivered on Thursday.
It's like any household budget. It shows how much money the country needs, how the money can be raised and how it should be spent.
Treasury and the Finance Minister are the heads of the household. Together they look at the shared bank accounts, calculating how much debt we have, how much we're earning and how much we have saved.
Government ministers are like the kids. They come to the Finance Minister with a wish-list of what they want money spent on.
It's a pretty big list: education, health, roads… The list goes on.
The Finance Minister decides which items on the list to fund, just like a household decides how much to spend on groceries, wifi and the car.
Newshub.
