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Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

SocietyOctober 10, 2023

The cost of being: A family of four in Auckland

Image: Archi Banal
Image: Archi Banal

As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a mother of two with a full-time job and a side hustle explains how she makes the sums work.

Gender: Female

Age: 36

Ethnicity: Indian

Role: Mum, communications manager, co-founder of a small business.

My living location is: Auckland

Mortgage per week: $1,050

Student loan or other debt payments per week: Gem Visa card – about $400/week. We got the card when we bought our house to help us with furnishing it and we were going to stop it after the 36 months were up. But there’s always some big expenditure coming around the corner so the six months interest-free really helps.

Typical weekly food costs

Groceries: About $350 – $400 (for two adults and two children).

Eating out: $150 a month.

Takeaways: $60.

Workday lunches: $30.

Cafe coffees: $15.

Other food costs: We pay someone to help with the weekly cooking. A treat for myself to save me from the grind of feeding hungry children which costs $75 a week, not including ingredients.

Savings: $200 a week that goes in an index fund for the kids’ education/a rainy day (in the last six months it’s been getting harder to do this). Also, Kiwisaver – 4% contribution for retirement, which I know is not enough.

I worry about money: Sometimes.  

Three words to describe my financial situation would be: Comfortable, well-earned (I work a full-time job and also run a business so that’s about 55 hours of work each week – not counting unpaid hours of being a mum), ambitious (I’m trying to save up so I can go full time into my business).

My biggest edible indulgence would be: It’s not edible, but a pizza oven I bought for Christmas. However, it’s already helped us save the $50/week we used to spend on pizza so technically an investment?

In a typical week my alcohol expenditure would be: We don’t drink.

In a typical week my transport expenditure would be: $80 every 10 days for petrol in the family car, and $42 for the train to go to office three times a week.

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Lifestyle costs

I estimate in the past year the ballpark amount I spent on clothing (including sleepwear and underwear) was: No more than $350. But the kids’ clothing costs more as they are constantly growing out. Theirs would be $500.

My most expensive clothing in the past year was: I only buy clothing when it’s end-of-season sales.

My last pair of shoes cost: Skechers, $80.

My annual grooming/beauty expenditure includes: Waxing, haircuts twice a year; essential oils and wholesale beauty stuff like a tub of shea butter to make my own beauty products and moisturiser.

And the annual cost would be about: $1100

My exercise expenditure in a year is: Nothing. I try to go walking every day and take advantage of free community classes

My last Friday night cost $60. Takeaways for the kids.

Most regrettable purchase in the last 12 months was: A secondhand car that gave up on us after just four months and cost us $7000.

My most indulgent purchase (that I don’t regret) in the last 12 months was: $600 collectible for my husband for his 40th birthday and $3000 spent on learning and personal growth like coaching etc.

One area where I’m a bit of a tightwad is: Clothes. I just buy the basics I need.

Five words to describe my financial personality would be: Careful, knowledgeable, hustler, splurger (on learning), saver.

I grew up in a house where money was: was: Tight. It was just my mum and me and we came to NZ with just $5000. I started working part-time jobs to help Mum and I’ve always been scared that a turn of events will mean that I don’t have money again. That’s why financial independence is one of my biggest goals.

The last time my Eftpos card was declined was: Touch wood, never.  

In five years, in financial terms, I see myself: Working full-time in my business with my partner.

I’d love to have more money for: Travel. I hardly travelled in my 20s as I got married young; now I dream of being able to do more of it.

My biggest financial low was: I had a business before that I ran by myself and it had revenue but not much profit. As a woman who has always earned decent money, I found it hard to not be bringing in “my equal share” for the family and that led to me feeling bad for buying the things I wanted. I’m a big believer that both partners need to be bringing in equal money to maintain equilibrium in a marriage so no one has the upper hand.

I give money away to: Putting a bunch aside for the kids, helping my parents when they need anything. 

Want to contribute? Send us an email briefly describing your situation at costofbeing@thespinoff.co.nz

Read the previous Cost of Beings here.

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Fire and smoke rise above buildings in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike on October 8 (Photo: IBRAHIM HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
Fire and smoke rise above buildings in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike on October 8 (Photo: IBRAHIM HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)

SocietyOctober 9, 2023

The war in Israel has deep roots and may spread

Fire and smoke rise above buildings in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike on October 8 (Photo: IBRAHIM HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)
Fire and smoke rise above buildings in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike on October 8 (Photo: IBRAHIM HAMS/AFP via Getty Images)

The new conflict in Gaza is part of a much bigger power struggle with a long, complex history.

In a shocking development on Saturday night (NZ time), Hamas militants launched attacks from the Gaza Strip into Israel by land, sea and air. The assault, in which civilians were killed and others taken hostage, prompted an immediate declaration of war from Israel and a pledge by prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to inflict an “unprecedented price” in response to a “murderous terrorist assault”. The latest estimates are of more than 600 dead in Israel and more than 400 in Gaza.

The astounding strike into Israel with missiles, breaches of supposedly impregnable fences, microlite aircraft and boats on the coast has been condemned around the world. For the forces of Hamas it is seen as a historic success. It also represents a historic failure by Israeli authorities that pride themselves on sophisticated surveillance, deep penetration by intelligence, and advanced military technology.

As shocking as it is, the eruption of a fresh war between Israel and the forces of Hamas in Gaza is part of a much bigger power struggle in tiny slivers of land: Israel is smaller than Waikato and the Gaza Strip is about the size of greater Wellington. Israeli and Palestinian civilians will be the victims but the wider battle involves Iran, Saudi Arabia, and different visions of the future.

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— Wellington editor

It is easy and understandable to buy into the tropes of the extraordinary Hamas attacks against Israeli towns and missile strikes further afield as part of a supposed colonial struggle against the oppression of Palestinians by Israel since its foundation in 1947.

There is a truth in that idea of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli oppression, including a 16-year blockade of Gaza. There is also truth in the sense of existential threat that Israelis feel, whether from Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah in Lebanon – each of which is backed by Iran, a theocratic and oppressive state that badly needs an enemy to defend its domestic control and international influence.

In a matrix of complex, overlapping local and regional agendas, three factors are worth considering:

  • Iran backs Hamas and opposes US-led attempts to “normalise” relations between Israel and its Arab regional neighbours.
  • Hamas is in an internecine struggle to dominate Palestinian territories, having taken control of Gaza in 2007, and despises the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.
  • Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu thrives in a crisis and may use the attacks to reinforce his right-wing government and counterprotests at home.

That the attack happened during the week of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was also taken by surprise by Arab neighbours, was surely no accident. It cuts to the core of Israeli identity: a state built in the wake of the Holocaust carving out a God-given right to live in sacred territory surrounded by hostile neighbours.

Why now?

Thinking about “why now” opens a set of questions that, as usual with the Israel-Palestinian conflict, opens out into regional and global issues of leadership, conflict and human rights. 

Iran, whose Islamic leadership gains strength from oppression at home and chaos abroad, backs Hamas not out of the goodness of its heart to support Palestinian ambitions of statehood and progress in Palestine but to use as leverage – a mechanism through which it can exert influence through terror and extremism. Moves towards the normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia will only have added a sense of urgency in Tehran.

The same is true to the north of Israel, in Lebanon, where Iran backs the Hezbollah militia and political faction. The ambition is not to create a stable and successful Lebanon but a sliver of febrile chaos which, as with Israel, engages the attention of much bigger states because of the potential for regional and international blowback through religious or racial strife.

Lebanon is a warning of what the current crisis could foment in Israel: a chaotic and corrupt amalgam of ethnic and religious complexity overlaid with foreign interference. Add to that the interests of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, other regional Arab states and Iran – plus the United States, China and Russia – and it all becomes rather complex.

It is also true that at times in its history Israel has destabilised Lebanon. It is not a pretty story and it is well documented in contemporary accounts and movies. It is inextricably tied to the foundation of Israel in 1947 and what Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe) – the expulsion or withdrawal, depending on whose history you prefer – of millions of Palestinians from what is now Israel in the face of terror and Israeli determination to carve out a state.

Millions of Palestinians still live in what have become permanent refugee camps or communities in Lebanon, Jordan and, more centrally to this conflict, the West Bank or Occupied Territories and the tiny coastal statelet of Gaza on the border with Egypt. We can expect the weekend attacks to create flare-ups, especially in the West Bank where Hamas may exploit dissatisfaction with the corrupt and moribund Palestinian Authority.

US president Bill Clinton stands between PLO leader Yasser Arafat (right) and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin as they shake hands on September 13, 1993 at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords (Photo: J. DAVID AKE/AFP via Getty Images)

A long history

The Authority is the legacy of the Palestine Liberation Organisation of Yasser Arafat whose legacy is the Fatah leadership in the West Bank and their hated rivals, Hamas. It is  complicated and ambiguous: the Palestinians are divided and so are Israelis, but only one side has a real and recognised nation with a world-class military and nuclear weapons.

Not only is it 50 years since the Yom Kippur War, it is also the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords. The result of years of talks organised by Norway, Oslo led to a famous White House agreement with president Bill Clinton, when then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin (ultimately assassinated by a hardline Israeli) and Arafat shook hands. It is hard to comprehend quite how far we are away from that moment of potential peace – including the recognition of the so-called two-state solution to create a Palestinian nation.

Recommend reading and resources

To stay on top of the story overall, it is hard to go past the major media organisations that have people on the ground – on both sides, in most cases of my recommendations, and with clear ethical and corrections policies and open sites: Reuters; BBC; Al Jazeera; CNN.

The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz offers comprehensive reporting and the more conservative Jerusalem Post takes a slightly different but still strongly reported perspective.

This Gaza war didn’t come out of nowhere on Vox is an interesting rapid analysis that focuses on decades of Palestinian frustration.

From an editorial in the Economist (paywalled): “The longer the fighting drags on, the greater the chance that violence spreads to the West Bank or Lebanon. The death of many civilians in Gaza, especially if seen as wanton, would harm Israel’s standing in the world as well as being profoundly wrong in its own terms.”

PLO: History of a Revolution is a comprehensive package on Al Jazeera.

‘The next days were hell’: how the Yom Kippur war realigned the Middle East is a valuable historical view from The Guardian.

Apeirogon, by Colum McCann, is a fictionalised account of a true relationship between a Palestinian and an Israeli united in grief at the loss of their daughters to terror attacks.

For more international coverage like this, sign up to the The Spinoff Members and receive The Bulletin World Weekly, Peter Bale’s round-up of the biggest stories in world news, in your inbox every Thursday.

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