Mary says at the moment about half her wages go on petrol, while her partner is spending $300 a week in fuel to get to work.
Photo: RNZ / Quin Tauetau
Despite having jobs, some workers are relying on credit cards to manage their bills while others are skipping meals and calling in sick to work to cope with the surging cost of living.
The price of fuel has pushed already tight bank accounts as people struggle to make ends meet.
Mary from Levin is a cleaner, while her partner is a mechanic based in Lower Hutt.
At the moment it’s costing him $60 a day to get to work, or $300 a week in fuel.
Her Prius she takes for cleaning jobs 45 minutes away in Palmerston North is about $130 a week.
“Pretty much half of my wages a week go straight on petrol… then on top of that we’ve got rent, power, gas, food, you know, internet, insurance.
“Often it feels like we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul just to make ends meet and that doesn’t cover like the credit cards and Afterpay’s and loans and all the other stuff that has to be paid next week.”
She said as a couple they were watching everything go up in price.
“Even the rubbish collection’s gone up by two bucks a month… everyone’s feeling the pinch.”
Each week she sits down to pay the bills, or attempts to.
“It might be, well, actually, I can’t afford to put money on the power bill this week because that $50… is going to have to be used to pay insurance or, you know, he’ll put money onto his credit cards one day and then two or three days later we’ll go and use that to buy groceries because actually we can’t just keep saving money.
“Like we don’t have savings now because we have to use it to just get by… There’s nothing extra.”
Mary said everything was a juggle and there was absolutely no room for luxuries.
“We don’t remember the last time we had takeaways.
“We don’t remember the last time we went out for like a date day.”
There’s no chance of saving anything for her daughter’s birthday, she said.
And it was starting to eat at her quality of life.
“It sucks. It’s really tough.
“We both get paid and we sit there and we go, okay, so what are we going to pay?
“And then we sit there and stress and go, well, we’ve missed that bill two weeks in a row, We’re going to have to make the payment next week.
“How are we going to make that work?”
Her partner picked up extra hours where he could, but it was taking its toll. And her work hours change, sometimes driving 45 minutes just for two jobs, rather than a full day’s work.
“I just keep thinking that somewhere out [there] there’ll be a light at the end of the tunnel, and we [prices] will start coming back down, I don’t know when that’ll be but hopefully this won’t go on forever.”
A Wellington man who studies full-time and does hospitality work says he sometimes skips meals so he can afford to drive to his unpaid study placements.
Photo: 123rf
This man was also staring down that same tunnel. Money was so tight he would call in sick some days because he couldn’t afford to get to his placement.
He co-owns a house in Wellington, studies full time and fills the gaps and his bank account with hospitality work.
But the holes in the bank account were hard to fill. It’s a 40 minute drive north to get to his unpaid placement.
“I’ve had moments, you know, over the last month or so where it’s been a choice of like sometimes I’ll skip meals so that I can do that and sometimes I will pretend to be sick and not see clients who need support because I can’t afford petrol and it doesn’t feel like a good excuse for them or the school that supports me.”
“It doesn’t feel good.”
He will usually top up $30 to $50 at a time, hoping for it to last a week or so and eats the same meal for days at a time.
“Just doing meal prep all the time is not very exciting. And again, it takes a bit of a mental toll.”
He said he did not see friends or whānau as much as he would like and had become a bit more reclusive.
“The underlying stress is just physically tiring as well.”
Rebecca also co-owns a house in Wellington and works 30 hours a week for health reasons.
She described herself as in a weird position, owning a house, but still flatting to keep payments manageable.
She’s feeling the pressure the most on food.
“I don’t eat out, unless it’s maybe a dinner with friends, like a social special occasion, but I don’t ever buy lunches anymore. If I’m too tired to meal prep, I get quite upset because I have to spend money on a lunch.”
Rebecca opted for the local green grocer over supermarkets where she can, and said savings were a thing of the past.
“I mean it’s very optimistic, but I try and save maybe $100 a week and often… by the end of the week or a few weeks later, I’ll have to dip into that. And so it basically doesn’t move.”
The only streaming service she pays for is Spotify, she doesn’t have a gym subscription or buy new clothes, and her weekly public transport costs were about $25 each week.
She remembers being a student and still be able to afford international flights to visit family, that was no longer an option.
But there were a few parts of her life where she wasn’t willing to make concessions.
“I could save more if I live more reclusively. But I do also want to have some beers in town after a long week. I want to have the occasional dinner with friends.
“So it’s kind of, I’m not willing to, you know, not have that lifestyle.
“Like I want to see people and go to gigs. And that just means I can’t save.”
She said it was frustrating to look across the ditch and see people living their lives while managing their money.
“They all seem to go for dinners and drinks and really frequently and live this kind of fun life and they get paid a lot more and so sometimes it feels frustrating that we have to do either or.
“We can save and be financially well off or we can have a good life.”
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