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 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 Minnie, 38, a Sales Manager from Wellington – and click here to see all of our previous editions!
Name: Minnie
Age: 38
Location: Wellington
Living situation: With wife and one child, 12
Job: Sales Manager
Salary per year: $122,000
Any other income: No
Total income for your household per year: Our combined salary is $217,000
Take-home pay per week: $1,632 for me, $1310 for partner – total per week is $2,942
Investment returns: $5,337 from investments (over 12 months)
My situation:
I live in Wellington with my wife and our daughter. We own our home. We bought 10 years ago so we’ve been able to weather a lot of the interest rate rise as we’ve always predicted highs and lows – we have a separate account that we pay into when rates are low that we can dip into for times like these and it’s really helped as a lot during the cost of living crisis. I can’t take credit for that though, that’s all down to my wife’s careful planning. We both work full-time.
WEEKLY BUDGET:
Rent/mortgage: $830
Food: $280
Bills: At the moment it’s higher (Wellington winter) – we’re around $300 per week right now.
Childcare: N/A
Investments: $100
Debt payments: $100 towards credit card.
Savings: $1000 – we’re actively saving to build up a fund for a European family holiday, and in the next five years we’d like to have enough for us to look at purchasing an investment property.
Spending: $300(ish) – if we don’t use it all we’ll chuck it back into the savings pot.
What’s inside your bank account?
Savings: In total, including our rainy day account and interest rate slush accounts, we have combined $68,997.
Kiwisaver: Mine is currently at $85,126, wife’s is $33,001.
How do you approach budgeting? We’ve been really good at budgeting, and we’re currently in a decent financial position because of hard work we put in years ago. We got into good habits of saving as much as we could, buying our home at a good time and not over-expending ourselves at the beginning so, combined with pay rises we have been fortunate. But the habit of saving so much, even when interest rates were low, was a good move in hindsight.
Are you a spender or a saver? A bit of both but luckily my tastes don’t verge to the high-end most of the time although I do have a bit of a weakness for records. I have more than 300 now and I can’t help adding to my collection.
Do you have any debt, and what is it from? We have a credit card, but it’s only really for Airpoints. We always pay it off every month.
How has the cost-of-living crisis affected you and your spending? Obviously the mortgage payment is bigger but as I said above we have a contingency for when this happened. It was never going to stay around 2% for long!
What are your financial goals? To make our money work for us. We’ve taken the first steps by investing, and we’re actually seeing a personal finance advisor next week (we read about it on Capsule actually!) to get some advice on how we can do this more aggressively. Buying an investment property is high on our priority list as we see this as a retirement move.
What’s the best thing you’ve bought in the last three months? Normally it would be a record but it actually has to be a mattress topper from Briscoes. It’s changed the game massively and if you are struggling to get a good night’s sleep give one a go.
What’s the thing you regret buying the most in the last three months? A winter coat from Glassons that doesn’t have buttons, just a tie. I don’t know what I was thinking, it is not Wellington appropriate!
What (if anything) are you saving towards? See above – but I also wouldn’t mind a new couch. Our cat has absolutely munted ours.
Aside from the big stuff (rent/mortgage, bills etc) what’s your biggest source of discretionary spending? For me it would be records, for my wife it would be personal grooming like hair appointments and nails and things. But as a family it’s our daughter – from soccer fees and school bills and everything else she needs (well, that she says she needs from Mecca – we don’t buy it) it’s a lot.
Do you worry about money? I’m a worrier by default so yes, but I also can see how privileged and lucky we are that we actually have a lot. I worry less these days because we managed to get into a good position and build on it, and I’m really proud of us for doing so.
How much money (honestly) do you think you’d spend on an average day? I take my lunch to work mostly (the wife is an amazing cook so there’s always good stuff) but occasionally I’ll buy – that’ll mean around a $30 bill all up. On a normal day it’s about $10 between a coffee and maybe a snack in the afternoon.
Where do you think it’s worth spending money, and where do you think you can save it? We spend a bit on food because we do like cooking, and we love eating as fresh and as healthy as possible most of the time. I do think it’s worth buying quality there. But you can save on red wine. We live in NZ so it’s all going to be good! Also I don’t like shopping at designer stores. All of the clothes come from the same place! It just feels like such a waste of money to me.
Do you have any money-saving tips you’d like to share that work for you? Interest rate slush fund account.
What’s the first and last thing you would cut from your spending if you had to make some savings? I’d probably cut my snacks, and we could reduce our savings. I wouldn’t cut my coffee. I work near the best barista in Wellington and it’s a non-negotiable.
If you’d like to contribute to a Money, Honey story (anonymously!) please email hello@capsulenz.com – the more we talk about money, the more we demystify it!
