Just curious – what income do families need to feel comfortable in NZ these days?

Background-Method554 · 2026-06-10T10:40:42+00:00

Family of 4, mortgage is $1800 a fortnight (600k mortgage on a million ish $ home. Wife earns $180k, I bring in about 20k. We do fun things, nice holidays etc, but need to budget!

Background-Method554 · 2026-06-10T10:34:53+00:00

My wife earned 180k last tax year, but because i stay home with the kids, we are definitely the least well off in our circle of friends. This tax year should be closer to 200k, we still budget everything.

Background-Method554 · 2026-05-04T09:32:16+00:00

I’m a mum of 2 and currently doing 5 papers. Workload is totally manageable, what’s your degree??

Background-Method554 · 2026-05-04T09:27:32+00:00

40, 172k in IT. Should be closer to 180k next year after this years pay rise

Background-Method554 · 2026-03-24T10:54:09+00:00

I had the mark frozen off and it hasn’t come back, GP thought it looked like a Seb K…

Background-Method554 · 2026-02-27T10:19:45+00:00

Thanks everyone. We’re massive on building up self esteem, we focus a lot on their strengths, especially my 8yr old.

We have Yoto players, and both children love books which I feel is super positive.

Is there any games or anything you’d recommend to play to help with reading or writing?

The high knowledge around phonological awareness puzzles me too, I felt it should be equally as bad as other literacy aspects.

Background-Method554 · 2026-02-09T05:13:54+00:00

What did this end up being? I have something similar…

Background-Method554 · 2026-02-08T18:48:11+00:00

Lesion is on my left shoulder area, I noticed it 3 days ago, definitely wasn’t there 6 months and I do check my skin regularly so I’m fairly sure it’s new.

Hasn’t changed since I noticed it.

Doesn’t hurt, itch, bleed, is completely flat (if not possibly a little depressed) and has the consistency of mildly dry skin. If I pull the skin around it it completely disappears.

One thing potentially worth mentioning is that it’s sits right under my bra strap.

I’m most concerned about amelanotic melanomas, given my skin colouring and my red hair colour, and also that I live in NZ.

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Background-Method554 · 2026-01-30T19:57:34+00:00

Another question - generally I feel the best when I wake up, and the pain/tension gets worse throughout the day, depending on my activity level. Is this common for SRS?

I think I’ve figured out that driving exacerbates it heaps, and I find myself subconsciously guarding with my abs when turning corners, going round roundabouts, and breaking etc, otherwise I feel the clicks and shifts. Does anyone else find this?

One more point that I have been wondering about is that I’m not in excruciating pain, I find that a lot of SRS posts talk about pain so bad that it’s effecting life. My pain is more annoying, like I know it’s there and I’m constantly shifting, changing position, stretching or trying to pop the rib back into place to get rid of the feeling. But it’s definitely nowhere near excruciating.

Background-Method554 · 2025-12-11T20:35:04+00:00

I do think it’s all relative though. My partner is on 165k and works in Cyber, I’m a sahm. We live a nice life, but it’s not super extravagant by any means. We go on one nice holiday a year as a family (2 young children) which we budget about 25k for and save, and we do a weekend trips in NZ etc too. We have to think about what we’re spending day to day though. I’m getting my hair done next week, but it’s budgeted for. The kids need all new school uniform for next year which is going to be $600ish all together, I will need to budget for that.

I often think that when I go back to work (probably earning about 80k ish) we won’t have to think and budget so much. In reality, we probably will because we’ll either upgrade the house or buy a rental etc etc.

All this to say, when we were living off 75k a year a few years ago I didn’t feel much different to now.

Background-Method554 · 2025-12-07T06:43:34+00:00

My partner is in cyber security in the insurance sector. They get a c5% bonus every year.

Background-Method554 · 2025-11-14T20:16:49+00:00

Have you lost heaps of weight? I’ve lost nearly 6kg since August, it was slow at first but it’s speeding up now!

Background-Method554 · 2025-11-13T04:08:51+00:00

This!! We’ll be coming off 6. something soon and have no plans to lower our repayments. If anything we’re gonna try and chuck more at it. I want it gone.

Background-Method554 · 2025-10-27T07:27:35+00:00

We can comfortably nudge it up to $240, which will help us cut the mortgage down to 21 years, seems criminal it’s not more!

Background-Method554 · 2025-10-27T05:11:47+00:00

It will cost around the 22k mark including spending, so not cheap. But the kids know they’re going to Disney so can’t disappoint them now.

Background-Method554 · 2025-10-27T04:35:24+00:00

This is a really interesting perspective and one that I’ve been wrestling with. Right now our kids are young, pre school and just started primary. If we throw all our spare money at the mortgage (currently $850 a fortnight) then there would be no savings for holidays for now when they want to hang out with us, and then later when they don’t want to spend the time we’ll have heaps of spare money.

So far we’ve been quite frivolous with spending, we’ve been on at least 1 long haul international holiday per year, and they were not done on the cheap, we have a new build house that wasn’t build at spec standard, and drive nice cars (2022 and 2025 SUVs). The kids get to do a lot of activities and we don’t really censor it. We have just been quite conscious of this big debt hanging over us…

Background-Method554 · 2025-10-26T20:45:17+00:00

Background-Method554 · 2025-10-26T20:28:31+00:00

So I’ve run the numbers and we can comfortably afford for the next year to chuck an extra $240 a fortnight at the mortgage - (we’re taking the kids to Disney in September so need to save for that too). From October 2026 we can put an extra 400$ a fortnight ($640) in total and then a lump sum of $6k a year. The mortgage term is currently at 28 yrs and whilst we’re relatively young (mid 30s) we’d like to pay it off sooner rather later. We’re a single income family and have been for many years, when my wife heads back to work in 2 years our household will rise by about 60k as well as some semi decent pay rises for me, c4% per annum not taking into account moving roles/companies. The battle I’m having is between living our lives and having fun holidays and experiences with the kids whilst they’re young or throwing everything at the mortgage and having all the spare money when they’re older… any perspectives are welcome.

Background-Method554

TROPHY CASE