Renata Wiles

We've got joint savings, we've got emergency fund, things like that.

And one of the conversations that we had very early on when I got pregnant was, okay, but like, what about my KiwiSaver?

Because

You've got a salary and you pay some of your income into your KiwiSaver and your employer tops it up.

And I don't have any money going into my KiwiSaver.

And if we're planning that I'm going to be at home, you know, raising our kids for some time, like I was off for about two years, two and a half years with my daughter.

That's like a lot of money that I'm going to be missing out of from just KiwiSaver is like one example, let alone anything else.

Yeah, we decided that from our joint money that we would pay into my KiwiSaver.

Because we moved back at the same time and he had not lived here before I had, he started with zero on his KiwiSaver.

And so now we look at his KiwiSaver and we look at my KiwiSaver and we can very, very clearly see what I've missed out on over the last couple of years of

being a stay-at-home parent and then now being self-employed.

And so I pay into my KiwiSaver from, again, our joint money, but from the money that I'm earning as well from these different things that I'm doing.

I think it's been quite important for me to think, I want to make sure that I have that like,

you know income going in there as well and I don't want to be missing out and have this like motherhood tax and this self-employed you know um disadvantage of KiwiSaver and things like that and I don't know but I feel like it's something that a lot of stay-at-home parents don't necessarily think about or have that conversation around and I think now that I'm earning money again yes I'm self-employed but it's even more important for me to make sure that I'm kind of like overcompensating for that lost like savings that I've that I've made and I think the other thing um

That really got me thinking a lot more about money as well, is that the end of last year, my partner who was like our main income earner, or still is really our main income earner, got made redundant.

And so his company did like a massive, I think 70 people just before Christmas got let go.

It was huge.

And

Nice.

Yeah, I know.