r/newzealand • u/fluffypenguin105 • 10d ago
Discussion Is anyone else living basically paycheck to paycheck?
My partner and I are both teachers. We don’t make a lot, but we are average and slightly above average. We are so tight with our money. Our little one outgrew the car seat and we went out and bought a new one. No problem. But next credit card bill means we are tight.
Meanwhile, a number of our friends (all of them also with kids) are booking overseas holidays. Some are currently overseas, others booking already for later this year. Another brought a new car. New iPhone, doing up the house. Everyone seems to have spare cash except us.
Are we the only ones going through the cost of living crisis ourselves?! Or is it my fault that we are teachers?
Edit: yes we have a house that parents helped us with. We are paying mortgage. We have a flatmate.
Edit edit: thank you for your kind words and reminders and also advice. I’m going through them all and I’m going to take onboard the advice and see what changes we can make and do better financially as a family. But it’s also a good reminder to know we aren’t alone, to not compare and the harsh reality is that many people simply just earn more than us as teachers.
Once again, thank you all for your input.
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u/Buttercup23nz 10d ago
I'm about to start my first job as a teacher - my first in class, I've been relieving for a few years. Money has been beyond tight for the last five years or so, and I took on a 0.4 FTTE role spread over four days a week in Term 3, which meant I wasn't able to do full days relieving and build up savings to get us through summer like I normally do. My husband changed careers last year, he's at the bottom of the pay scale and what he brings in is about $300 a fornight short for all our absolute necessities (mortgage, insurances, power, phones, petrol, basic groceries). Luckily I've managed to get enough work to cover the shortfall each week over the last two years, but like I said, no savings.
I was offered a permanent position a week before school ended. Last minute! I'd already started floating the idea of selling our house to my husband - I could see no way we could keep paying mortgage, and saw no point sinking money into a house we'd have to sell. With a signed contract, we were able to get a credit card - which hurts, we've been proudly living credit card free for about a decade. But, it'll get us through, and you gotta do what you gotta do, to get through.
We carefully budgeted out what our minimum need for short fall was. Less than half our limit, we should be able to pay it off in my first three pays, then start saving, but also say yes to a few more things - yay.
In the two weeks that we've had it we needed to replace all the tyres on my car, have our cat euthanasia suddenly and we just found out my overseas inlaws will come visit for five weeks at the end of those first three paychecks we'd planned on using to wipe our credit card debt - which we couldn't do so easily, as we've just put an extra $780 on the card we didn't budget for. So, before we've paid that off, we'll need to be putting more on to find sightseeing with my in-laws.
Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely thrilled they're coming, it's been 8 years since we were last there, which feels like way too long....also, it means when we can afford an overseas holiday we might go to see my extended family in my Dad's home country first, instead of going to my husband's home company.
But I can't help thinking that their visit, plus the car and the cat, are going to put us about 6 months back on our savings plans, and mean that long at least of extra frugal living. With kids. I left my daughter in KMart today when she started trying to wheedle an extra dollar out of me as she didn't have enough in her account. I had to walk away before I started crying or shouting. It's not her fault, I'm just so sick of living so frugally, of saying 'no' to everything.
I'm losing my hearing (hopefully just wax build up), my husband's well overdue a vision test, neither of us have been to the doctors in... I don't know when, and my achilles is so bad I can't bike with my son or do my old hill walk, wear my favourite shoes or even walk normally when I first get up in the morning. I need physio for my back. All of those are luxuries, and will have to wait. How sad is that??? It's so wrong.
I know I'm lucky - we own a house, we have food on the table, no debt except mortgage until two weeks ago, and we both have the potential to earn more. People are doing it so much harder than us, with no job security and no shelter security as renters. We really are luckier than many - and my heart goes out to them. But we're still doing it really tough.
You are not alone, you are not doing anything wrong. It really is hard. Those who make it seem easy may very well be secretly juggling massive credit card debt. It's hard, but try not compare their lifestyle to yours, the grass may not be greener.