How much are we all earning? How does your profession add up? How are women your age spending their money? Is everyone in debt? And is the cost of living crisis biting everyone?
It’s time for some honest, candid conversations about money and budgets as we steer down a recession – so welcome to our new series ‘Money, Honey’, where we’ll be diving deep into the bank accounts of wahine across the country to truly get a sense of what’s going on in our piggybanks.
Up this week it’s Auckland teacher, Penelope!
Name: Penelope, 33
Location: Auckland
Living situation: Living with husband, two young kids and two pets
Job: Teacher
Salary per year: $140,000
Any other income: Contractor and property investor
Take-home pay per week: $3,700 (net)
Investment returns: $95,000 (gross) on rental properties
My situation: I’m living in Auckland with my husband, two young kids and pets. My husband and I combine our finances (we don’t split the bill). Both our earnings are put in the same account – this means we can track down where our money is going and what is left. It allowed us to plan strategically in terms of investments. We have a multi-million dollar property portfolio in Auckland that we manage ourselves (we are also property managers) and a shares portfolio, as well as our KiwiSaver that we never used. We like to diversify our investment and not put our eggs in one basket. We are working hard to build generational wealth for our kids since we grew up poor and we hope to work part-time and do more volunteering work when we reach mid-40s as well as travel the world with our kids.
Weekly budget:
Rent/mortgage: $800
Food: $350
Bills: $250
Childcare: $320
Investments: $1000
Debt payments: We don’t have other debts apart from mortgages
Savings: $1000
Spending: $600
What’s inside your bank account?
Savings: $150,000 (shared with my husband)
Kiwisaver: $85,000
Anything else: We have a property bank account with savings also shares savings and emergency funds.
How do you approach budgeting? Always believe in paying yourself first – this means putting away money for investment first before spending on other things. It’s also the “planting a seed” mindset.
Are you a spender or a saver? Saver
Do you have any debt, and what is it from? No – For university I had a scholarship for the whole four years worth $40,000 for studying teaching. I used some money as a deposit to buy our first home when I was 22.
How has the cost-of-living crisis affected you and your spending? No.
What are your financial goals? Build generational wealth for our kids and grandkids and so on!
What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last three months? Pants from Kmart (haha).
What’s the thing you regret buying the most in the last three months? Temu products (some are bad quality!).
What (if anything) are you saving towards? Another rental property and a family car.
Aside from the big stuff (rent/mortgage, bills etc) what’s your biggest source of discretionary spending? Tattoos!
Do you worry about money? Not really
How much money (honestly) do you think you’d spend on an average day? Not much maybe $25?
Where do you think it’s worth spending money, and where do you think you can save it? I think its worth spending on extra curriculars because it’s for self-development and mental health – also health care, health is wealth.
Do you have any money-saving tips you’d like to share that work for you? Put away as much as you can for investments/savings and spend the rest – not the other way around.
What’s the first and last thing you would cut from your spending if you had to make some savings? Junk food and short trips to the supermarket buying random things.
, Penelope tells us how she manages a multi-million property empire through investments){kind=link}