This is how much 25 Aucklanders make and how they feel about money right now, in their own words.
Bus driver
$76,000
I’m 48. I live with my husband and my 6-year-old. My older child goes to university in the South Island. My husband is not working because he’s too sick. He needs to pay for the doctor, tablets and blood pressure medicine. I applied for the sickness benefit for him, but Winz said my pay is too high. We pay $400 a week on rent. That’s why I need help [from Winz], to make it easier for my family – it’s only me working.
Fire engineer
$120,000
I was a fireman. I knew nothing about fire engineering, so I went back to university at quite an old age and started working in it. I’m on a single income. My wife is currently studying at university. It’s tough, like it is for everybody, but we are where we are. We have a 13-year-old.
For me, it’s definitely not about salary these days. It’s more about the quality of life because eventually you spend that salary. There are not a great deal of fire engineers in New Zealand. Recruiters are often seeking me out. There are some days I don’t enjoy it; it’s quite a stressful job, but it’s got its rewards. I’m not in debt, but we don’t put a great deal away every month.
Social media manager
$86,700
I lead the social media team for a few large social media pages. I make $86,700 a year in salary for a 40-hour week (but it often goes longer). I manage a team of people working across a few pages and working on brand partnerships. I’ve been in the industry [I’m in] for nearly 10 years now, but I got started in social media around 2020.
Between my partner’s wages and mine, we have enough left after rent, food, and bills to have a little to play with, but not really enough to seriously save for a deposit on a house. My job isn’t physically demanding, but it can be fairly tedious and stressful. I think I should be hitting the six-figure mark by this stage. Some of my friends in similar roles are paid less than I am, others $20k+ more.
Mental health support co-ordinator
$80,000
I support our inpatient communities in the mental health sector. It’s been almost three years now that I’ve been doing this. I own my own home. I pay a mortgage, more than $1000 a week. I don’t have any other debt. I have a partner who earns and we also have two kids.
I am feeling pretty tight at the moment. Things are pretty expensive. But I guess I feel blessed with whatever we have. Obviously, we want to earn more, but in reality, that’s not our focus because we have our own Christian values. That’s what motivates me. Sometimes I have just enough to survive for the next payday and a little bit of saving, especially if we set goals to go on holiday.
I’m looking at starting my own lawnmower business. I want to do my own thing.
Uber driver
$59,800
The pay depends on how many hours you choose to do. If you work 55 to 60 hours a week, you can make around $1150 a week before tax. I live alone and am single. I pay $240 a week in rent. Sometimes, money is a really bad struggle. Especially when the [bills] pile up at the same time, like insurance, income tax and GST. Then, you have to cut back on something. But you can only cut back on food. That’s it. You can’t stop paying bills.
My food budget is $150 to $200 every week. This includes coffee every day. My phone costs $110 a week. The car is on finance, so I pay $200 per week on that. And $72 a week on insurance. Sometimes you speed, or you accidentally enter the bus lane, and then a fine comes, so these things also take money.
I want to earn at least $2000 per week after tax. That’s how much money you need if you want to live in this city in a good way.
Hairdressing student
Unemployed
I’m 18. I don’t work, but I am doing a fulltime hairdressing course. I needed to take a student loan for it, which is $12,000. I want to become a senior stylist. I’m living with my parents. They pay for everything. My mum helps me a lot. She puts money on my [bus] card. I go home to eat, but sometimes I’ll bring snacks from home when I’m out. I want to get an apprenticeship next year. I can’t this year because I’m playing football. I heard hairdressers make good pay, so I’m not really worried about the cost of living. I think they make $55 an hour.
Journalist
$60,500
I work as a junior reporter for a media company. I have been in my current role for over a year. I love the ins and outs of the job. It’s hard to get bored when there’s always an opportunity to learn something new and push myself out of my comfort zone.
I’m often unsatisfied by how much I’m paid, especially when comparing salaries with other people my age. The job can be stressful.
I typically set aside $150 a week for groceries and one meal out, around $50 for fuel and transport, $265 for rent and household expenses, and $100 for recreation and entertainment. I also pay for my gym membership, car insurance, phone plan, streaming services when they come through. The rest is then put into a range of investment accounts.
Food delivery worker
$57,200
I’m 37. I moved here from Bangladesh 11 months ago with my husband and child. For the first two months, I was working in a café, but the schedule was harmful for me because I have a kid – I have to have time to take care of my son. So I started doing Uber delivery.
It’s a freedom job. When I want to work, I just go online and when I want to go home, I just go offline and go home. My husband is a student here, and he has a part-time job. He can’t work more than 25 hours a week because of his visa. So, that’s another reason why Uber delivery suits me. Right now, we are renting. I feel good financially. We are perfect.
Builder
$50 an hour
I’m 55. The amount I earn varies because I contract, but I charge $50 an hour, and I’m okay with my pay. My savings vary a lot – at the moment, I don’t have a lot of constant work. I’m on a single income. I don’t have debt and I don’t have dependants. I pay $250 a week on rent. I’d like to be optimistic when thinking about finances. I can see there’s a bit of an economic squeeze at the moment, but that generally runs in cycles. Sometimes there is plenty of work, and then there’s not a lot. There are good years and bad years. I would like to own a house.
Asset manager in tourism sector
$120,000
$80,000 from café business
I manage assets, projects and compliance for a tourism company in the Marlborough Sounds. It’s a family business. The cost of living’s quite high, but I’m comfortable with how much I’m earning. We have a dual income and three kids. We have a mortgage but no other debt. I am definitely feeling the pinch with the cost of fuel and the cost of food within the cafe.
Of course, I would like to earn more; I’m doing two people’s jobs. I’m satisfied, but there are bags under my eyes. Gone are the days when you work hard and reap the rewards for it, because you just get taxed more. So that’s a bit of a pain in the bum. Getting by is not a problem. Getting ahead is a bit of a challenge.
Radio producer
$79,000
I’m in my early 20s. I work graveyard hours. I went to broadcasting school and then did a journalism course and got a job from there. I rent in the city with other flatmates. How much I make is enough to get by, but I hope I’ll make more as I get older. It’s not like I can’t afford to live, but it’s not like I have amazing savings either. I find myself often putting healthcare off – dental care or going to the GP – mainly because every time I go, it’s going to be a huge expense. It’s $70 to see the doctor, and then you’ll pay for all this other stuff on top of that.
Administrator in health sector
$84,000
I book healthcare appointments and I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’m not happy with my pay. I want more. I love my job and look forward to going to work, and I execute my work with love and dedication. However, my pay was very low for more than two decades, only increasing by a pinch each year for inflation. Only recently, I got a bigger bump. I think I should be earning $95-100k now, given my years of experience. But I do pick up some weekend shifts, which boosts my pay a bit.
Financially, I’m okay now, only because my children are grown and my mortgage is finally paid off. But money has been a source of stress for most of my life. I try to save as much as I can and keep a strict budget. I don’t invest in shares because I don’t know too much about it. I don’t eat out. I permit myself to travel internationally once a year for just a few days – any more than that and I won’t hit my retirement savings goal. I do also own two rental properties, but I’m not making any profit from them – the tenants’ rent pays the mortgage repayments and that’s it. I plan on selling those when I retire soon.
Bank manager
$132,000
I’ve been with this bank for 13 years. I started in the front line and then worked my way up.
Now, I feel okay with how much I make. But the pay progression wasn’t steady increments. I just had the right manager a couple of years ago, who bumped me up to what I potentially should have been on for a while.
It’s still a struggle paying for things. My husband and I are full-time workers. We probably make an equivalent of $240,000 per year. But we’re still renting. Neither of us can stop working. We have two kids. We have two cars. I feel like the last two years we very much [have been] counting how much money we’re spending all the time.
I recently went to Australia and was tripping out at how cheap everything was. A food shop costs me $400 to $500 in New Zealand, and it was around $150 over there. The cost of living here is chaotic.
We want to purchase a home. The challenge my partner and I have is we are terrible at budgeting. The irony is that I work for a bank, but I have so much fear of being judged by them after they look into my accounts. So that’s what holds us back. We have a massive assumption that we’re just not going to get a house, so we just don’t do it.
Cleaner
$52,000
I’m 60 this year. I started working as a cleaner in 2000. My kids were young then so I wanted a job to have money for their schooling, and something that let me work part-time so I could do things for them. They’re grown now and I work full time. My husband also works. We just make our money to pay our rent.
It was hard in the beginning, especially for us Pasifika people here, because it’s not like in the Islands, where you have extended family supporting you. We were alone here. But I’m really happy with my job and my heart says to keep working – I think I won’t stop until God calls me. A lot of people pass away once they retire, because they stop moving their bodies. I don’t want to do that.
Nurse
$111,239
I’ve been a registered nurse since 1982. Every day, I organise the gastrology list and assist doctors with procedures. I’m happy with how much I earn and have no debt. I own my own home.
University student
Unemployed. $300 a week from student allowance
I’m studying education (teaching). I’ve taken out about $15,000 in student loans so far, but I’m taking out another $15,000 this year. My parents help with my student loan, but I also have to pay them back $7,000. I have a student allowance on top of that, which is $300 a week from the Government. I live in the city with flatmates. My rent is about $350 a week. That doesn’t leave me with much money. I’m lucky I have my parents to help me.
Finances are a bit of a struggle, but I am managing. I’m lucky that I have my parents to help me out, but I don’t have enough money to spend on other stuff for myself. I’m having to cut out going out with my friends. I’m more careful with what I spend on groceries, healthcare, all of that. Some of my friends are also struggling with money and we’re all just trying to make ends meet.
High school teacher
$114,000
I’m the history curriculum leader – or the teacher in charge. I’ve been doing it for 17 years. I trained as a teacher because I loved history. I love my job.
I’m fine with my salary because I’m single. I rent with flatmates so I don’t have to pay a mortgage. But I’ve just been over to Australia, and I found out that the starting salary for a teacher in New South Wales is $114,000, which is what I earn. So while I’m very happy with what I earn, I have a hard time recommending to new student teachers they should stay in New Zealand.
I’m established in my career so I don’t want to move over, but if I was starting fresh, I’d be looking at New South Wales. I think teachers should probably be paid about $10k higher than we are. We’re not going to compete with Australia, I understand that, but I think a teacher like me should be on $125k.
My rent is only $260 a week, my food budget is around $150, and I spend about $100 a week on petrol. I spend a lot on travel.
I can’t get a house. There’s no chance of that. Unless I get left an inheritance, there’s not going to be a house in my future. It definitely hurts that there’s no possibility of saving up for that. That’s why I travel so much. The cost of a deposit goes up ahead of my salary – there’s no point in saving.
Change manager in insurance
$110,000
I’m 34. My job is the people side of project management. I’ve been doing this for four years. In terms of salary, about $10k higher than what I get now is probably about right for the role, but I think I’m living comfortably. My partner is working too, and we own our own home.
We spend about $100 a week on groceries. We buy a lot of food online in bulk, especially meat products, to get the cost down. We’ve got a bit of vegetable gardening going on as well, and that helps with costs.
If there were a sudden emergency, financially, we would be secure. If I got fired tomorrow, it’d be stressful, but we’re still going to make our mortgage repayments.
Gardening manager
$82,000
I’m 62. I look after a team of gardeners. The wages aren’t great. My wife’s retired, she’s on a pension, and we rent. I’ve managed to work my income up to what it is now through going into supervisory roles. Before that, I was actually working a secondary job to get by, and I did that for 14 years.
I’ve been lucky enough to rent the same place for 20 years, which is about $500 a week. But we are freaking out about when we have to move from here, with the lack of social housing for people, especially in our age bracket. There’s a lot of stress involved with that.
My children are grown, but we help with our grandchildren. They have to live outside of Auckland to survive. They live in Warkworth. It’s a bit cheaper out there to live and rent there, but what kills them is the daycare costs.
I never seem to have enough money to save properly. I try to put a little bit away, and I save in a super scheme. But when you do the calculations and you realise, God, that’s not going to be enough for me to retire at 65 anyway. We’re not in a good state.
Financial strategy manager
$175,000
I’m 55. I work for a bank. I‘ve been working in the field for about 35 years. We have a household income of $275,000. We own our own home.
Money is probably tight. We owned homes in the past, then rented for 20 years. We’ve recently bought a home again. I had a redundancy a couple of years ago, soon after we bought the house. We had quite a big mortgage. The impact of that was quite large. I was out of work for about 18 months.
Getting by in terms of paying for the mortgage, bills and essential costs is not easy. There is no travelling, no eating out. We have basic, repetitive meals and do what we can to get by.
We had a few debts that we needed to borrow money [for] when I was redundant. I think if we can pay a few things off, we’ll be in an okay position.
Learning and development consultant
$167,000
I’m 53. I’ve been in this field for 26 years. My wife doesn’t work, but she receives a passive income from investments, between $60,000 and $70,000 a year. We have two kids. We own our home.
I feel secure financially. I’m paid enough. We’re pretty careful with our outgoings, that’s the main thing – see how much income’s coming in and work out our spending. We can afford all the things we want.
About $9000 a month comes in. The mortgage takes around $1800 of that. We spend about $500 a week on groceries. We do travel. Nothing extravagant – we fly Jetstar most places. Maybe once a year we’ll go somewhere international, but we’re happy to also go in a campervan or go camping.
Insurance claims assessor
$80,000
I’m 29, married with two kids. Our household income is around $140,000. We both come from big families, so as much as we’d love to have more children, sometimes we feel the economic crunch of being able to financially provide for all our children equally. For example, we’re talking about sending our son to a private school. However, you can’t send one son to a private school and then not send the rest of the children.
My family and time spent with my family are my primary factors. If I were hitting around $100 to 120k a year, it would bump our overall income to a good place. But any further than that, and I think I’d have to start working longer hours and committing more to the role. At the moment, I still have that kind of healthy work-life balance.
I’m less focused on where I could be and more on taking accountability for what I have and trying to make what we have work, because it’s quite unstable times at the moment.
Auditor
$100,000
I’ve been doing this type of job in New Zealand for 2 and a half years, but in total, about 5 years.
I think my salary is liveable. But, considering how many hours I work, I’d prefer a higher amount. I flat with my sister and her partner. Half of my income goes into savings. Rent is cheap because it’s with my sister – around $400 a week. I’m trying to save up to buy my own place.
Video producer
$110,000
I’m 49. I’ve been doing this job for about 10 years. Financially, it was okay when I started. Now I’m not very comfortable. Our household income is $170,000. We’re renting – we pay $800 a week – and $200-300 a week on food. We are looking into reducing the kids’ sports activities now because it’s really tough to afford everything.
Before, I was supporting my wife and two newborn kids. Now my wife is working fulltime and hardly saving anything. And if you save, there’s always something to pay for. Registrations, cars, insurances, kids’ football gear, outfits, equipment, etc.
We never go out for dinner. We treat ourselves with takeaways, but that’s once every two months.
The more you earn, the more you spend. I don’t want to be rich. I love working and I want to work. I just want to be able to live normally and afford things for a normal family of four.
I should earn enough to have normal things around me, like going on holiday once a year, signing up my kids for a football or art class, and providing decent food. Not super cheap [food] like noodles, but nutritious food like fruit, vegetables and healthy meat – meat prices have gone through the roof.
We are also considering leaving New Zealand, but I don’t know where for. The whole world is now going through a similar situation with the cost of living. I don’t see a future for my kids here. Where are they going to stay to buy a house? And how?
Lawyer
$210,000
I’ve been working for 13 years as a lawyer. I own a home and am renting. My mortgage is around $4000 a month. Rent is around $3000 a month. Financially, I feel all right, I suppose. But I don’t feel financially wonderful because I’ve just moved back to New Zealand after earning about $320,000 in Sydney.
I moved because there are better long-term career prospects here. What I do is highly specific to my industry. I wouldn’t move back to Sydney because I’ve got family here, and I want to [pass the] bar, which is not something that can be offered in Australia without many more years of work.
It doesn’t hurt anywhere financially in a meaningful way. I can’t nip off and go skiing at a very nice place or go to Europe at the drop of a hat. I definitely could be better with money – I’m probably too flippant with spending.
Varsha Anjali is a journalist in the lifestyle team at the Herald. She is based in Auckland.