Aimee’s story...
I am a self-employed physio in a small town. Live with my husband (farm motorbike workshop manager) and two kids (12 and 14). We had decided to pull the kids from school and to close my clinic a few days prior to the official announcement of Level 4 lockdown, as one of our two children is in the high-risk category.
I have been doing only a few hours Telehealth a week and have applied to help remotely with HealthLine and contact tracing if required, but haven’t heard about this yet. I applied very early for the wage subsidy for myself and one employee. Husband is able to do a small amount of paperwork from home but on full pay currently. I’m paying myself about 50% usual pay. Thankfully I read The Barefoot Investor (for personal finance) and Profit First (for business finance) nearly two years ago, so had a good emergency fund for both and no debt other than a mortgage.
I have cut back/put on hold as many of my work bills as I can (eg lowering work cellphone plan) and my landlord has very kindly halved the rent.
At home, I am continuing with weekly Sharesies investment and KiwiSaver but have stopped our other usual transfers (holiday, renovations, school etc). These are all in growth/higher risk but I’m more fascinated by what’s happening with our investments than worried because we still have about 30 years till retirement.
While our power, food etc will be up, there’s a lot of other bills that will go down so it should balance out. My aim is not to touch our emergency fund but it’s there if we need to. It will depend on how long before I can reopen my work (and the risks of this for our daughter). Our mortgage is due to come off the fixed rate in July and we’ve looked at the mortgage holiday as we are paying more than minimum, but I think we will be OK to leave it until July.
What I’m finding really interesting is my relationship with spending - I have started to live more frugally in recent months in terms of clutter, clothing, groceries etc and this situation is really putting it all into perspective about what we really need and what’s important.
Aimee