Tracy’s story...
Well, we do not have big debt but until very recently we had big expenses. We rented in Wellington for a whopping $610 a week! Over the Xmas/New Year period we had actually sat down and had some good conversations about “where to” this year. We'd decided we wanted to buy a house (and until recently that included relocation to Brisbane, which is off the table now though) and to that, we had chosen to 'house hack' and move in with a friend who has a daughter the same age as ours, a spare room and a mortgage!
This cut our rent costs by 50%, and a raft of other household expenses was cut too. When did we plan this move for? March 28th 2020! With some incredible fortune telling we decided to fast forward our move to the 21st March, we could see where the country was going in terms of COVID, so we were 90% out of our place when the lockdown was announced. That kicked off a crazy 36 hours; hiring a storage unit and a truck, liaising with Trade Me purchasers to come and pick up their things ASAP, emptying and cleaning one house, moving into another, packing two cars, and actually escaping to my parents in Palmy so we could have childcare support to keep working over the lockdown! Whew!!
We are paying for the groceries while we are here, and we have our rent and fixed bills (Spark, car insurance etc), but things like gyms and daycare costs have been put on hold. And because we decided in Dec/Jan to knuckle down and get rid of our debt - to the tune of $16,000 - it means that all our money at this crazy time is OURS!
We want to get our joint account to be at least one month ahead on all our budget lines, and channelling everything else into our savings account to rapidly build our house deposit to take advantage of the market dip we anticipate coming. We also dumped all the cash from selling our things into an emergency fund ($2,000) and used our bond refund to pay for our moving costs and the rest went into savings. On top of that, travel cancellations have meant refunds on airport parking and hotel bookings, as well as a credit on our Air NZ flights.
All in all, we have come out okay.
Neither of us are essential workers, but we both have sufficient work to get us through to at least Easter and then I'm actually starting a new job! My husband's work has been great, they have a “special leave then 80%” pay arrangement, but they are adamant they will not have layoffs because the work is absolutely there once we all get out of lockdown.
I have watched my super account with interest over this time, it's stable at the moment (i.e. hasn't moved for a couple of days LOL) and it’s down about $8,000 in value (a little over 12%) so nothing major considering it's in a growth fund. We just keep buying :)
So we are keeping afloat through a mixture of good decisions and, oddly enough, good timing. It will take some careful management if my husband does end up in a leave without pay situation, but we've got our expenses well and truly inside my income so we are all good. And if I lost my job, well now we have emergency fund and savings on top of that - we'd be okay for a few months - for the first time ever!
It's a good feeling.
Tracy :)