January 2026 Report: Sad Girl Summer

Life Update

PhD & WORK 

• I am well behind on all of my ongoing work and deadlines. But I can't bring myself to care. 
  
  

HEALTH & LIVING

• I need to get a flatmate. I decided that I wouldn't even look for one until after my defense, whenever I feel ready for that. I need time. I need space.
  
  
• I am waiting until my fieldwork is over in Feb to sign up for the gym again.
  
  
• My well person check in November revealed I have very low iron (ferritin) and I was put on oral iron tablets. I need to get my iron checked again now, as well as my cholesterol, which apparently has spiked out of nowhere. 
  
  
• At my Nov appt., I asked about issues with my thumb/hands, feeling dizzy when I stand up after sitting for a while, and perimenopause. The doctor just looked at me like I was a hypochondriac. She said she should refer me to get scans but won't if I don't have health insurance. I decided to buy it for a year, and during that year, get all of the scans and such. I won't be able to afford it for more than a year, though. Unless my job changes...
  
  

TRAVEL, FAMILY, & FUN 

• Yeah, none of that is happening. My sister has gone into the hospital twice since I left the US in mid-Jan.
  
  
• This is the second full month without my Dad. Life is incomprehensible without him. I cannot believe that I will have to go the REST of my life not hearing his voice or getting to tell him all about my highs and lows, or getting his advice.
  
  

MONEY THOUGHTS

• I met my $1K spend for my new AAdvantage cc. I'll get 80K AA miles. This will replenish my miles that I used to take my 2nd ever first class flight from the US to NZ (that was a great experience, and I desperately needed the pampering after my dad's passing).
  
  
• I revamped how I calculate my Net Worth, to try to encourage me to stop hoarding liquid cash that just sits in my (high yield) savings accounts losing value to inflation. I need to take that cash and spend it on what it is intended for or invest it. I'll keep an emergency fund, of course, but the rest can and should be spent within a year or two or moved to a place where it'll have a chance to grow.

 

MONTHLY CHALLENGES

• Now that I'm back in NZ, I need to get back on the Healthy Food and Exercise train. I have been weighing myself every day and record it in a Health Tracker form I created on Google forms. The form also tracks my mood, food intake, day of my period, exercise, number of steps, any supplements, etc. Eventually I will break down the numbers and figure out what it all means.

January 2026 Budget

I am earning a full salary now so things are very comfortable. I returned from the US to NZ in the middle of the month.

Income: $6,123.69

Salary: $5,667.04

Lending Crowd repayments: $126.43

Zagga repayments: $5.22

Garage rent: $325 (5 Mondays)

Spending: $3,623.69 (59.2%)

Savings: $2,500

Spending categories (budgeted amount in parentheses):

Rent: $2,119 (no flatmate)

Groceries: $449.46 ($500)  

Electricity & Internet: $160.15 ($150) 

Charity: $0 ($50) 

Cell phone: $20 ($20) 

Medical: $30 ($100) - to renew a prescription

Eating out: $82.40 ($250) - breakfast sandwich at the airport; $15.10 mcdonalds; $34.10 french toast at a Hamilton cafe; $20.40 for a delicious smoothie (Maui Eatery) and some food; 

Misc: $762.68 ($959)

alcohol: $0  

entertainment: $44.06 - 2 x libro.fm audiobooks: I bought The Circle and The Every by Dave Eggers as I really wanted to listen to them and my library didn't have them - that was $26.06; $18 for entry to Hamilton Gardens

self care: $218 - spa pedicure @ $55; brow wax and tint and lash tint @ $67; haircut and luxurious smelling, good quality korean shampoo: $96; 

fees: $203 - $40 for chatgpt for a month - to help me parse some dense tax legalese, work through the options for NZ health insurance, help me edit several difficult emails, and manage my daily ADHD schedule; $163 for 5 TB Google One storage

gifts: $30 - thank you flowers and gifts for friends that looked after my flat while I was away in the US for ~6 weeks. 

goods and wants: $144.13 - $26.39 for a sleeping bag liner for an upcoming camping trip; $70 for a camping pad pillow; $47.75 to ship two rare books from the estate of a prominent scientist in my field in Australia to NZ 

transportation: $113.09 - $2.39 for an escooter; $57.70 for mevo car; $53 for mevo car;  

travel: $10.40 - supershuttle extra bag cost

Savings and Funds Activity Update

• I transferred $5K to my US bank account this month. Some of that money will go towards my US credit cards, and about $2K will be used to buy US investments - once I have $3K to buy Admiral funds.
  
  
• I have about $104K in Rabobank. I really need to transfer some funds elsewhere because $100K is the limit that is insured by the NZ government. The funds are split between a notice saver, a premium saver, and a regular old raboplus account. There is apparently a trick I can use to move funds from my premium saver account which requires the balance of the account to be $50 more than at the start of the month in order to qualify for a higher interest rate. 
  
  
• I have $50K+ in an on-call account earning 2% p.a. in Squirrel, with $3700 of that money invested in various peer-to-peer loans at $100 each at 6 to 6.5% p.a. About $3.3K of the money in the on-call account is waiting to be invested in personal loans at 7% p.a. when they become available (the wait times for those is about a year!). 
  
  
• I made no Zagga investments this month (again). With the housing market being so soft, I just don't...trust it? It is also $1K a pop in investments, and I'm not comfortable putting that many eggs in one basket. I have ONE loan out and I'm seeing how it all works.
   
• I am waiting for Lending Crowd to start up again.

• I've met all of my short and medium term savings goals, and then some. In lieu of goals, I have decided to save up for the eventuality that I will have no home and no job this September. This slush fund will also serve as a a start up fund in case I go freelance as well. I am calling it my "Freelance Consultancy Start Up Fund."

   

Net Worth Tracking

NZ Savings (cash): $150,027.50 NZD. This does not include funds invested in peer to peer loans.

Peer to peer lending: $5,874.55 (Zagga, Squirrel, open principal at Lending Crowd)

• LendingCrowd: $1,090.48 NZD - principal still owed, repaid with interest in weekly installments
• Zagga: ~$1K NZD 
• Squirrel: $3,799.73 NZD

Kiwisaver: $128,307.00 NZD

US investments: $67,051.16 USD

Total Net Worth - NEW METHOD (January 2026): $309,332.25 NZD

Starting from scratch a bit here. I now only count long-term savings and investments in this number, so it has gone down since last month. This is a decrease of $81,264.31 NZD since last month, and an increase of $N/A since the beginning of the year. 

What is counted in my Net Worth now: 

$60K NZD Former House Down Payment Fund (I will drip feed this into US investments)

$129,111.19 NZD Kiwisaver (NZ retirement)

$16,918.22 USD Roth IRA

$34,440.32 USD Traditional IRA

$1,191.24 USD Berkshire Hathaway investment fund (non-dividend yield fund) 

$16,168.49 USD non-retirement investment account (+ $2K held in US bank account. Once this hits $3K USD, I will buy VTSAX, which has a minimum of $3K USD for Admiral (low fee) shares). 

Unless I create new short- or medium-term goals, in which case I will save up for them of course, ALL 'extra' money leftover at the end of the month will get converted to USD and invested in VTSAX in my non-retirement brokerage account.  

This ONE Mind Trick Will CHANGE EVERYTHING (or, a major shake up to how I view my finances)

[This was written in October, before my dad passed]

Don't you just love the clickbaity articles and youtube video titles?! (Not.) I have to say that they kinda work on me sometimes, though!

While in the last few tumultuous years of my PhD, I dreamed of what came after, and purposefully saved a ton of money for those goals. I was stuck inside working / trying to get myself to work, skipping fun times with friends, not going on fun trips, and generally denying myself a lot of what I knew was healthy (no exercise, no stretching, no social life, lots of quick easy meals that were not necessarily nutritious, overeating to avoid work, tons of anxiety). At the very least, I thought, I could save money so Future Me could enjoy her life post-PhD. 

That time has come. It is almost post-PhD!  

I recently have realized that I have started to have a problem: I never want to spend my money. Even on things I know I want to do/buy. Even when I specifically saved up for that thing/experience. This is a problem how, you may ask? 

Well, this has effed up my monthly budgets majorly. Over my US trip this past fall, I didn't move my "2025 US Trip" Fund $$ over to my bank account as I usually do. Since my income is higher, I thought I'd just *absorb* the cost of the trip within my monthly budgets. Easy, right? 

NO.

I have a shameful secret (that I actually have talked about before, so is not really a secret): when I'm on vacation, I don't really restrict my spending. I do track it when I need to meet a minimum spend on a credit card, as happened during my trip this year, but I don't pay attention to the amount beyond that. If I know I need/want something that I cannot get in NZ and have been thinking about for months, I will just buy it. No dilly dallying about sales or whether I can get it cheaper elsewhere - I just buy it. Far too often I've dilly dallied and then totally regretted not buying the thing once I'm back in NZ. I've learned my lesson about this too many times. 

Anyway, my monthly budgets for August, Sept, and October are now all wonky, because I didn't track my spending and also assumed I'd just absorb the spending within my budgets. If I expected to include that spending within my monthly budgets, I needed to track it!!! It's like the most obvious thing ever!

One may say, well, then, you've solved the issue - just track things properly next time! But no, this misses the point, and doesn't actually solve the REAL problem underlying my decision-making.

I started thinking - I can afford to buy the stuff I bought, and then some, so why is this such a big deal which "pot" of money that the vacation spending comes out of? My internal spending gauge kicks in easily after decades of practice now, and I completely trust myself to spend wisely. So my spending ALSO isn't the issue.

I realized then what the root of it all is: I am subconsciously avoiding moving the money from savings to checking because I do not want my Net Worth to go down. I want it to keep going up up UP (it's our moment - thank all the gods for the gem that is KPop Demon Hunters!). 

But that mindset means that I will just hoard my money forever. If my NW can never go down by me voluntarily spending money, where TF does that leave me?! Never having fun, not going on trips, never again buying things that I have carefully thought about and want, not ever spending more than I can make in one month...THAT'S where. The discretionary spending from my monthly income essentially puts a firm cap on the amount I can spend on big ticket items and experiences. And that is NOT what I want my life to be like.

To fix this, I think I need to do a difficult thing. I think I need to remove my savings that are in short and medium term funds from my Net Worth. This will make it go down down down. It's a takedown, if you will. Yes, this will be PAINFUL. I feel like I've scratched and bit my way to try to break the $300K NZD and then the $350K mark over the last few years, and am ABOUT to hit the $400K mark... But I think it is necessary if I'm going to be able to enjoy my life the way I want to.

Here is my funds list, with those that will be affected marked with an asterisk: 

Completed Short-Term (~1 yr) Funds:

$5K 2025 Christmas? US Trip Fund* - we just found out that my dad probably has lung cancer and this might be his last Christmas with us. Plus, my defense is on December 12 - we will have something to celebrate at least! I have bought flights home after my defense, for Dec 15, to surprise my parents and sister :)

$5K 2026 US Trip Fund*

$650 Premium Gym Membership Fund*

$4K Furniture Fund*

$5.2K Rent + Bond Fund*

$1K New Smartphone Fund*

$2K New Laptop Fund*

Completed Medium-Term (1-5 yrs) Funds:

$10K EF*

$5K 2025 Post-PhD Hand-In Pre-Defense Travel*

$13K Post-PhD Graduation Travel Fund*

$10K Post-Defense Life Set Up Fund*

$5K Post-PhD Hobby Fund*

$10K Medical Fund*

$5K Tax Advisor Hire Fund*

$4582 Freelance Consultancy Start Up Fund*

Completed Long-Term (5+ yrs) Funds:

$60K Former House Down Payment Fund

 

*This money was saved up to be SPENT later. NOT saved. It has a near-future purpose. Therefore, it shouldn't be counted in my Net Worth. Those funds are to be used for investment in myself, my health, my quality of life, my peace of mind, to save me during emergencies, etc., over the next 5 years.  

The problem is that you could consider EVERY fund/savings expendable in the very long term. 

Retirement funds are meant to be spent during retirement, after all. House down payment funds are meant to be spent on ...a house down payment. Etc. Ad nauseum. So what does it matter? That is a tricky question, but short- and medium-term vs long-term is where I've decided to draw my line. Any savings that are meant to be spent in the next 5 years does not go into my Net Worth, full stop. Any money saved up to be spent after that horizon, is counted. At least for now.

The only fund that I do not think should get caught up in this round up is my $60K House Down Payment Fund. I had pipe dreams of buying in NZ but have since realized that is never going to happen on my salary. Maybe if I get a decent inheritance (hopefully far down the road), but I do not want to count on that. That money really belongs in investments rather than liquid savings. I'm waiting on financial advice, the US-NZ currency exchange to get better, and to explore some tax efficient investment options here in NZ before I can do that. 

The rest - about $85,500(!) - needs to be taken out of the calculations for my Net Worth. This drops my Net Worth down to just above $300K (dependent on the stock market and the US-NZ currency exchange). OUCH. This is brutal, but I think this is a very necessary step to:

1. Prevent me from becoming a stingy miser who never spends money even on things she wants and probably needs, 

2. Encourage myself to think more carefully about what I am saving up for. Do I really want it? Is it a short- or medium-term goal, or a long-term goal? Where does that money belong in the grand scheme of things? and 

3. Have a realistic picture of my *actual* Net Worth.

This will be a painful change, so I'm waiting until the new year to make it. Starting January 2026, I'll shift how I calculate my Net Worth and make new goals accordingly.  

The new SideBar is up NOW!

Catching Up...Slowly

I have a slew of posts I have partially written over the past 6 or so months and not had the time/inclination to finish and post. My monthly budget updates, for example. My new $$ strategy. My new credit card. An experience in first class long haul flying. 

I'll just start finishing them and posting them, so there will be a glut of posts over the coming days to weeks.