{"id":468184,"date":"2026-06-09T10:12:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T10:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/468184\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T10:12:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T10:12:08","slug":"the-cost-of-being-a-21-year-old-software-engineer-who-invests-500-a-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/468184\/","title":{"rendered":"The cost of being: A 21-year-old software engineer who invests $500 a week"},"content":{"rendered":"

As\u00a0part of our series<\/a> exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a software engineer shares their financial comings and going.<\/p>\n

Want to be part of The Cost of Being? Fill out the questionnaire here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gender: Male<\/p>\n

Age: 21<\/p>\n

Ethnicity: NZ European<\/p>\n

Role: Software engineer, full time work + contracting<\/p>\n

Salary\/income\/assets: $120k\/year salary, $80\/hour contracting, $60k in stocks, $10k in crypto<\/p>\n

My living location is: Suburban.<\/p>\n

Rent\/mortgage per week: I pay $166 per week but I live in a 5-bedroom flat which is in total $830<\/p>\n

Student loan or other debt payments per week: $70k student loan debt. No other debt apart from my credit card which is paid off in full every month.<\/p>\n

Typical weekly food costs<\/p>\n

Groceries: Probably about $60 per week. I eat as much as I can in the office for free (snacks\/breakfast food) and we get free lunches weekly so that cuts down on my food spending a lot.<\/p>\n

Eating out: Previously when I was dating I\u2019d eat out for about $30 a week or so but now we\u2019ve broken up so it\u2019s pretty much $0 outside of the rare work lunch.<\/p>\n

Takeaways:$0 almost every week.<\/p>\n

Workday lunches: Almost always leftovers brought from home.<\/p>\n

Cafe coffees\/snacks: $0, it\u2019s just not worth it to spend $6 for a coffee when I can make one at home or work for pretty much nothing.<\/p>\n

Other food costs: N\/A.<\/p>\n

Savings: I auto-invest about $500 NZD a week into major US ETFs. I don\u2019t really have any cash savings as I\u2019m looking for better returns than savings account interest and it\u2019s very unlikely I\u2019d need a lot of money out of nowhere.<\/p>\n

I worry about money: Rarely.<\/p>\n

Three words to describe my financial situation: Stable, ambitious, conservative.<\/p>\n

My biggest edible indulgence would be: Absolutely love Vietnamese food \u2013 Banh Mi or Pho gets me every time.<\/p>\n

In a typical week my alcohol expenditure would be: It used to be a lot higher but recently I\u2019ve been cutting down a lot, on average now I\u2019d say it\u2019s maybe two boxes a month so ~$12 a week.<\/p>\n

In a typical week my transport expenditure would be: About $20 a week in petrol, I ride a motorbike to the city from the shore as my commute which is quite fuel efficient.<\/p>\n

I estimate in the past year the ballpark amount I spent on my personal clothing (including sleepwear and underwear) was: Probably about $500.<\/p>\n

My most expensive clothing in the past year was:\u00a0Some pants I really wanted but had to pay $50 for shipping from the UK \u2013 they were on a black Friday sale so in total it was only about $150 but still pretty steep.<\/p>\n

My last pair of shoes cost:\u00a0Motorcycle boots \u2013 $380.<\/p>\n

My grooming\/beauty expenditure in a year is about: I avoid getting a haircut whenever possible \u2013 I just hate going to the barbers and I don\u2019t really do anything else, so probably about $80 a year for two haircuts.<\/p>\n

My exercise expenditure in a year is about:\u00a0Cityfitness basic plan \u2013 about $350\/year.<\/p>\n

My last Friday night cost: About $70, $50 for a gig ticket and $15 worth of alcohol at pres.<\/p>\n

Most regrettable purchase in the last 12 months was:\u00a0A Northern bass ticket \u2013 never been so wet in my life.<\/p>\n

Most indulgent purchase (that I don\u2019t regret) in the last 12 months was:A three-month solo travel Europe holiday \u2013 first time out of Aus\/NZ and was very expensive but I\u2019d just finished my degree and needed a break and it was absolutely worth it.<\/p>\n

One area where I\u2019m a bit of a tightwad is: Buying drinks at bars\/clubs, it\u2019s just so difficult to justify buying alcohol at 3-4x the price it would have been at pres.<\/p>\n

Five words to describe my financial personality would be\u2026Invest heavily, but don\u2019t forget to have fun.<\/p>\n

I grew up in a house where money was:\u00a0My parents never really talked to me about money \u2013 we rented and me and siblings went to public school, we were comfortable but I don\u2019t think my family was very well off, certainly they\u2019re much worse off than anyone who bought a house in 2000.<\/p>\n

The last time my Eftpos card was declined was:\u00a0Probably about three years ago when I was a broke student.<\/p>\n

In five years, in financial terms, I see myself: Hopefully purchasing property in a major European or UK city, I\u2019ve had enough of New Zealand \u2013 there\u2019s just not enough to do here when you\u2019re young and it\u2019s still very impractical to buy property as single income, even with a high salary.<\/p>\n

I would love to have more money for: Travelling \u2013 it\u2019s the only thing I really enjoy.<\/p>\n

Describe your financial low: During third year uni when I couldn\u2019t afford to feed myself because my casual work hadn\u2019t given me any shifts recently and had to survive off free foods from the church on Symonds Street and uni events.<\/p>\n

I give money away to\u2026 Know Your Stuff \u2013 absolute legends who are going so far for harm reduction in this country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As\u00a0part of our series exploring how New Zealanders live and our relationship with money, a software engineer shares…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[492,300,111,43,139,69,2935,13087],"class_list":["post-468184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-comments-enabled","tag-money","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-society","tag-the-cost-of-being"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}