We did it!

So in amongst all the current doom and gloom, I thought I would tell you about a small victory that we've had recently that, to me, has been mammoth!

We are credit card debt free!!!

Cheers

I feel a little embarrassed admitting to the state the our credit card was in by the time we got to April last year. It was maxed out at NZD$11k.

Despite stringent saving and budgeting, planning and selling as many of our belongings as we could bear to part with to get to Ireland, the 'measly' $23k we saved proved to be nowhere near enough. This was compounded by Jared and I both finishing work before Christmas 2018, and Jared not getting his first paycheck here until 28 March 2019.

We had happily indulged our way across the States with a YOLO philosophy in Jan and Feb and landed in Ireland, assuming we'd both walk in to fabulous jobs, and would be earning similar to what we were in NZ. This, it turns out, was completely untrue. At least Jared had a job lined up, and he'd be getting paid at the end of Feb, right? Also untrue.

Snowed in at the Grand Canyon for 24-48 hours

Grand Canyon

We arrived on Feb 16, and moved into our apartment on 1 March, and woke up the next morning and realised that we had nothing but a bed and a couch. Despite seeking out a fully furnished apartment, there were no things like cutlery or cups or plates, and so we had to start from scratch.

Trying to set up in NZ dollars in Europe is very expensive. IKEA is treated as the panacea of homeware, and sells moderate quality stuff for moderate prices - but you only get ~€0.60 for each NZ $1, and the prices certainly aren't like The Warehouse.

When we first got our credit card, I remember thinking this is an insane amount of money! When will we ever get anywhere near $11 000? Turns out we did. Since we're laying all these cards out on the table, it was actually more like $17 000 spent between Oct 2018 and April 2019.

How, you may ask? I certainly wondered!

Given it started with only a few hundred on it when we left, I did ponder to myself how in the world we got to such a predicament. How do you spent more than NZD$40 000 in 6 months? Well, let me tell you... with much more ease that would be believed.

I was so perplexed by this, I made a pie graph. This pertains only to the credit card, as my ANZ account is no longer available to analyse.

To explain this in terms that others might understand - 7.6% went on things for our NZ house. Nearly 16%, or $2700, went on setting up our apartment, and a further 7% was on setting up our pantry. Transports took a sizeable chunk with 15% between public transport and taxis. Miscellaneous includes a host of random things like travel insurance, marriage certificates, new passports, and a horrendous $167.50 on parking at Wellington airport.

Roughly 16% accounted for eating out and entertainment, which given that we were eating out for 3 meals a day for 5 weeks, is actually less than I expected. This also includes tickets to Broadway shows in New York - because when in Rome...

Initially I was aghast that I had let us get into such a financial predicament. Debt is bad, right? Thankfully, most of it had 6 months interest free!

There were 3 versions of the budget that I had estimated prior to leaving. A no-frills one for about 20k, a some frills one for around 30k, and a pre-pay everything on the house, go hard and enjoy everything fully in the States version for about 40k. Our experience was closer to the go hard and enjoy everything fully end, which was wonderful - but the problem was we didn't start with 40k, and none of them included 6 weeks of no pay in Ireland.

The larger problem was not the U.S. stint or indulging in Broadway shows - in fact even if we'd missed this out, it may not have entirely changed our fate. The problem was Jared not getting paid for 6 weeks after we arrived because we couldn't open a bank account.

Truly boring tidbit - Vegas is that high because I shelled out $1200 on insoles to stop shin splints, not gambling :'(

I was constantly torn between 'we only live once' and 'we also need to live next week', and just because you can eat/drink/go to the movies now, doesn't mean you should.

Eating out is obviously an easy way to save some money, but how do you avoid eating out when you are living in hotel rooms?

All well and good not spending so much on taxis or transport, but you need to get around, and living an hour out of the city comes with its own expenses. (Transport costs were actually exaggerated because we paid for Ubers and people paid us back in cash.)

Should've set up our apartment from second hand stores? Yes, maybe we should have. But when you move to a new country, you lack not only money, you also lack local knowledge of where to go and how best to do things, you don't have the benefit of time to ponder these choices, and it's also super awkward to try and transport a shelf on the bus, so hiring a car and doing it all in one hit is faster, more efficient and less mentally draining, though slightly more expensive.

I have spent an awful lot of time wringing my hands and fretting about how we would ever be able to pay off such an enormous sum when we're only making about around half as much money here as we did in NZ, and our costs of living were way higher. There was a constant knot in my stomach when it came to doing our budget for each new month, knowing that there was simply not enough coming in to cover all the needs and wants.

I have doubled my income from the meagre part time minimum wage I started on in April last year, and that has made a huge difference, but the biggest one was getting a flatmate in to share the horrendous costs of renting in Dublin. That has been a game changer, and since she moved in we have been able to slam the bills, which has been just so liberating. Sending money home, we also had an advantageous exchange rate, which helped greatly.

There was this miasma of slow burning panic that had been ever-present in me since we moved here, and with the shadow of debt gone, it has abated a lot. A welcome relief! There's now an exit option, should we need one.

At some point I just had to choose not to care because the debt served as an interim tool to get us to living in Ireland. There were other ways we could've done it, sure, but that's not how things played out. We lived to tell the tale, and last year was tight, but we still had fun.

So in amongst all of the chaos, illness and uncertainty, I'd just like to give myself a little high five and a quiet 'Yes!' It is done.

Now to work on savings...