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A pink breadmaker with green dollar signs and carrots on top, two glasses of beer (one dark, one light) in front of a graph with numbers. Text on the right reads "The Cost of Being!.
Image: The Spinoff

SocietyOctober 29, 2024

The cost of being: A part-time gardener, full-time dad to a toddler

A pink breadmaker with green dollar signs and carrots on top, two glasses of beer (one dark, one light) in front of a graph with numbers. Text on the right reads "The Cost of Being!.
Image: The Spinoff

As part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, an op-shop-loving dad explains his approach to spending and saving.

Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here.

Gender: Male.

Age: 33.

Ethnicity: Pākehā.

Role: Part-time self-employed gardener, full-time dad.

Salary/income/assets: I earn $25k a year approx and my partner earns $100k as a full-time university lecturer.

My living location is: Suburban.

Rent/mortgage per week: We pay $450/week on our two-bed house mortgage, it’s the two of us plus our two-year-old son.

Student loan or other debt payments per week: We pay $23/week on an interest-free heat pump loan. I have approx. $50k of UK student loan debt but the UK has an earnings threshold before you repay the loan, and I don’t earn enough so don’t pay anything.

Typical weekly food costs

Groceries:We spend $150-$200 a week at the supermarket, $30-$50 at the farmers market. We try to prioritise organic where we can, and don’t eat meat.

Eating out: We might get beers and chips with friends every other Friday. Averages out $30/week.

Takeaways: Rarely. An occasional takeaway pizza if we’re feeling lazy, once every couple of months.

Workday lunches: I make lunch at home every day, and my wife has leftovers most days. She maybe spends $10 a week.

Cafe coffees/snacks: $0 for me. My wife has maybe one a week if she has a meeting at a cafe. $5.

Other food costs: We have a large back garden with vege beds. We probably average about 50% of our fruit and veges coming from the garden across the year, which saves a lot of money – particularly on things like herbs and leafy greens which grow abundantly and easily. I’m very lucky though in that I spend one day a week “working from home” and looking after our garden.

Savings: 30% of my income goes straight into savings, my wife has a generous Kiwisaver deal with her university, and I squirrel away any surplus each week to boost. We also put a bit of money away each month for our son and our godson.

I worry about money: Rarely.

Three words to describe my financial situation: Comfortable, lucky, privileged.

My biggest edible indulgence would be: Organic groceries which are three times the price of non-organic.

In a typical week my alcohol expenditure would be: $30-40 for both of us. We’ll probably have a bottle of wine, a couple of beers and a cocktail.

In a typical week my transport expenditure would be: My fuel is tax deductible as I’m self-employed, our other car is electric, and my wife cycles to work. Because our EV charging just comes out in the electricity bill, it kind of feels like our transport costs are zero. Though those road user charges for EVs are just coming in…

I estimate in the past year the ballpark amount I spent on my personal clothing (including sleepwear and underwear) was: $100? I love going to op shops, and avoid buying new where I can. The only new clothes I’ve got recently have been gifts.

My most expensive clothing in the past year was: Honestly, it might have been a jacket that cost me $8.

My last pair of shoes cost: This is different. I love Allbirds, and they’re the only shoes that ever seem to last for me. I only look for ones on sale though. I think my last pair of waterproof winter Allbirds cost me $170.

My grooming/beauty expenditure in a year is about: $0. My wife is my hairdresser and I trim my beard once every few months.

My exercise expenditure in a year is about: $0. Being a gardener, my job is pretty much exercise enough, otherwise I’ll go jogging or do YouTube workouts.

My last Friday night cost: $35? Couple of beers at the pub and shared some chips with my son.

Most regrettable purchase in the last 12 months was: A $30 tabletop electric juicer to experiment with making cider. Used it once and it’s sat there doing nothing ever since, and it was really slow. Not sure I’ll bother with next year’s apple harvest.

Most indulgent purchase (that I don’t regret) in the last 12 months was: A good-quality breadmaker. We make heaps of bread, ready and fresh for breakfast in the morning and it’s saved loads of money for us, and reduced our plastic waste too.

One area where I’m a bit of a tightwad is: Clothes.

Five words to describe my financial personality would be: Bit obsessive on internet banking.

I grew up in a house where money was: Comfortable, but not showy. My parents were very well off when we were growing up but they chose to invest that so that we could go to a private school in the UK. We didn’t have fancy cars or lavish holidays, but we also had more than enough.

The last time my Eftpos card was declined was: Not sure. It’s happened occasionally but only because I’ve put different money into different accounts and used the wrong card.

In five years, in financial terms, I see myself: It could go either way. If my partner stays in tertiary education, we’ll be very comfortable, but it’s an increasingly stressful and insecure environment to work. If not, we might have to be more creative.

I would love to have more money for: I’d like to pay down our mortgage more, and we’d like to build a sleepout so our son can have his own space when he’s older.

Describe your financial low: We’ve always had the bank of Mum and Dad to either lend us money, or just to be there so we know we could be bailed out, but I’ve never needed to use it, really. We might get to the bottom of our savings if we invest in something, but we’ve never had to go in debt.

I give money away to: We give $100 to our church each month, and $150 a month to a few different charities.

Keep going!
(Image: Archi Banal)
(Image: Archi Banal)

SocietyOctober 28, 2024

Labouring along: Why Labour Day still matters

(Image: Archi Banal)
(Image: Archi Banal)

Some of our MPs would like to flirt with the idea of scrapping Labour Day. For the sake of those who tire their bodies to make a living, let’s hope they don’t.

Originally published in 2023

Say “labour” these days, and most people picture a political party. Either that or childbirth. But today is Labour Day, and it’s about another kind of labour altogether: acknowledging the efforts of trade unions and others to lift the status of workers. 

Our first Labour Day in 1890 was a grand affair: parades and brass bands and banners, public picnics and tug-of-war contests. Samuel Parnell, who campaigned for the eight-hour day in New Zealand, was 81 by then, and sat in a wagon drawn by four plumed horses, as a procession made its way through downtown Wellington.

But how relevant is the L-word in the 2020s? How many of us now actually labour for a living? Do hours spent at a desk, laptop, or shop counter qualify?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “labour” as physical or mental work. Yet I suspect that, for most of us, the word implies drawing on one’s bodily resources. If you hear of ”hard labour”, you don’t picture someone sentenced to extra hours designing a spreadsheet.

Still, it’s probably the best available adjective for the holiday. ”Work Day” evokes a school fundraising project; ”Careers Day” is an expo at the local stadium; ”Job Day” was the Boy Scouts, decades back.

I‘ve had limited experience of physical labour. There were the Sundays in my final high school year when I hoed and dug in Jack Yee On’s market garden, while he scrimped so his spoilt son could go to university. There was later holiday work in the timber yard and cardboard processor. But apart from that, my work has taxed me only from the neck up.

I contrast that with my parents. He was a wool classer; she worked part-time in a tobacco factory. They stood on hard floors for hours; they lifted objects; they bent and stooped and stretched. They walked the 3 km to and from work. In the evenings, they sat wearily, uncomplainingly at either end of the kitchen table. And don’t forget the cleaning, cooking and heating, all of which involved far more physical exertion than it does now. 

It doesn’t happen much these days, does it? Of course it does. There are still people who tire their bodies to make a living. Still backs and shoulders on which the rest of us depend for our comfortable lives.

Michael and Tio have just reminded me of some. They’re friends who were both grievously damaged in a road accident some years back. He depends on carers to shower, lift and feed him. She’s in constant pain; helps all she can, but needs time for herself. So they rely on the physical strength of agency-employed carers, who, Tio says, are ”drained….worn out” by a working day’s end; who are underpaid by the agency, overlooked by the public.

You’ll be able to name other jobs. I think of when we last moved house. Three guys aged 20-40 lifted couches, beds, boxes of books; lugged them down steps and up a ramp into the truck. At the end of the day, we bought them fish and chips, gave them a few beers and a few extra dollars. They were astonished. ”A lot of people don’t even talk to us,” the eldest said. I can understand why: the sight of someone straining their body on our behalf makes us feel uneasy.

My wife Beth remembers being rebuked by her father when she joked about road workers leaning on shovels and pacing slowly to the heap of shingle. ”They have to do this all day,” he reminded her. ”All day and every day.”

Indeed they do. And because of them, I don’t have to. So I try to acknowledge them. On my old fart’s constitutional, I wave to the guys who walk the adjacent racecourse after each meeting, replacing divots with shovels in thrashing rain or broiling sun. I thank the men and women in hard hats who wave me around the trench they’re digging across the road, for fibre optic to reach my desk. 

Some people would like to get rid of Labour Day. Christopher Luxon said so in 2022, then U-turned. Act still wants to ”balance” the introduction of Matariki as a public holiday, but has now turned its attention to January 2. Curious, that ”balance” word, as if we mustn’t tip the scales towards workers. Watch this new government’s space.

Aotearoa has 11 statutory holidays. Australia has 13, South Korea 14. In terms of annual paid leave, we’re behind Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Angola, Armenia and Azerbaijan, to take just the start of the alphabet. A Greens’ proposal to extend ours by a week was rejected by all other major parties. (Well, we have to keep that balance.)

All of this makes me hope we retain Labour Day. “A youth of labour with an age of ease,” was Oliver Goldsmith’s wish for all workers. My mum didn’t live to reach the ease stage; my dad just made it. For their sake alone, I’ll acknowledge, even honour October 23.

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Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
— Politics reporter
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