The Truth of Work Life Balance in New Zealand

Hey, hey guys, so we are back. Finally. Finally, we've been gone. Charlotte had double ear infection. Again for the millionth time we've luckily scheduled an ENT appointment to hopefully get some tubes in the ears to help with that. And then I had the flu. It was much worse than COVID. Sorry, sorry, you had the man flu. The man flu. Yeah. For four days, I missed work. Like it really knocked me out. I couldn't do anything. It was worse for him like he said in COVID. So my body it hurt so bad and I lost weight because I couldn't eat so. So we had to get Krispy Kremes today so he could gain some of that weight back. Not very hard to do so. No, but so today's video is just gonna be pretty easy where it's kind of going to talk about like work-life balance in New Zealand versus the United States. In the beginning like one of our big reasons why we wanted to move here was work-life balance. So just kind of wanted to like hone in on like what it's actually like now that we are here. We've experienced it. We know what we're into. Exactly. So I will say like starting like now like we're still working the same amount of hours. We're still working 40 hours a week. Whereas in the I mean in the United States Dana was working more than 40 though. Just had to work like after school hours. 55 to 60 a week probably. Right. I feel like I was maybe working a little less like teaching. We were able to get out a little bit earlier, which it's harder here working a little bit later sometimes. But with that I feel and I think you can talk about how you feel that like work here is definitely less stressful because like when we walk out of the door like. It's done. We're done like we can think about like family time or talk about like what we're gonna do over the weekend like. Next YouTube video we're gonna make. Next YouTube video it's only about us when us and our family when we walk out of the door rather than like having to focus on like planning for the next day of work or being so stressed out about work. Teaching plans, lesson plans, how these thinking about how these kids are doing or what kids are struggling and who needs more attention, who needs to be yeah. It's just a lot less stress. Yeah, so I would say like even though currently we are working 40 hours a week, which is what we were doing in the United States like it feels like kind of like less to me. Not as stressful of work, which is nice. I would also say though a lot of people don't typically work full-time jobs here. No, and why are we able to why are you able to not do that? Because in the US you have to get health insurance, right, for 40 hours per week. So you have to like work full-time to get the full benefits. Right. Here you don't need insurance. It's free. Free health care. So that little I guess golden nugget of a free insurance for working 40 hours doesn't exist here. No, you don't have to work 40 hours to get insurance because it's free for everyone. So people are like well yeah, I'm not going to work 40 hours a week. I don't need that much money. I can live with less and I don't have to pay for insurance and then I don't have to get a free insurance from an employer. So I'm just gonna work 30 to 35 hours a week. Right, so you're not forced to work that full-time 40 hours to get that benefit. So I would say like a lot of people at our work specifically are working like 30 hours. They're coming in and maybe doing like six, seven hour days, which is something we hope to do in the future. Yeah, because one hour off every day, that's another hour you get with family and it's another hour in the sun during the summer. It's another hour you can take a kid to the beach or the botch. Yeah, so that's definitely something to look forward to knowing that you know as long as we can afford it, which we will be able to find. Knowing that we don't have to stay that full 40 hours, which will definitely help that work-life balance a little bit more. Definitely a goal for us is to not work 40-hour weeks. Absolutely, so another thing which is kind of cool and you can talk about your story when you were getting your haircut about the barber reinventing himself. But here, so like retirement in the United States like for teachers you had like peers retirement or whatever your state did. It's your own personal retirement organization. Right, and then like for my mom for instance, she was working for so long and was kind of burnt out and wanted to move to another job but couldn't because all of her money in retirement was through the system that her work offered for instance. Whereas here, there's the Kiwi saver, which is a universal retirement thing. So it doesn't matter necessarily where you work. That is always gonna follow along. So if you're in a career and you're like, oh shit this is not for me anymore, like you're not stuck to that job just so you don't lose that percentage of contribution that you put in. But tell the hair store or the hair stylist I had here in New Zealand was telling me about how for 20 years he was styling hair and cutting hair and then decided I'm gonna go into realty and sell houses and do property management. So just up and did it for five or six years got a bunch of money but made their own investments in it and then decided, uh, I think I'm done doing this. I'm gonna take a couple of years off and then did and then now he wanted to be a barber. So he went back to school did that and then he's like, I he's like, I reinvent myself every five or six years to keep life fresh and I do different odd jobs and stuff like that because it's fun and you don't have to stay in the same job for 30 years just to get the same money in the same retirement. I've had so many teachers back in the USA that were at 25, 26 years. You have to stay to finish. And they have to stay till they're 30. I mean, they don't have to but they have to to get the best benefit from their retirement system in order to live very well. Comfortably after retirement. So there were teachers who were after COVID especially tapped out, done. They didn't want to do it anymore and they're at like year 27 or year 28 of teaching and they could have but it would if they stopped then instead of going two or three more years and that's just miserable. Right and so being miserable in your career and feeling stuck in something like you're more than welcome to go like figure out what your interests and your desires are. I love that here. Yeah, and I feel like that's something like talking to my mom and sometimes older generations when you talk about like leaving a job and going somewhere else. My mom's always like, well, aren't you supposed to stay in a job for like your whole life? And I mean like honestly like back in the old days like you did like you would start a job and you would kind of be expected to stay there and retire there but like honestly after being in one place for so long like most people are miserable and I'm the type of person and I feel like you are too like our interests are like changing so much like depending on like where we're at in life or whatever so it's nice to just be able to feel like hey. You can explore those interests. Right like if I wake up one day and I'm like hey I want to be a real estate agent like whatever I'm not going to lose my retirement from getting out of education to go be in reality. We don't have to worry oh my goodness we're 15-20 years in if we can make it five more years we'll get some more money. I wouldn't worry about that here. KiwiSaver is awesome. Yeah, that is something so we aren't able to take part of KiwiSaver right now just because we're not residents. It is something that you can't do until you have your residency but we should have ours in the next several months but basically if you put a certain percentage in don't hold me to it I think it's either three or four percent your employer has to match that every single month. Yeah, up to a certain amount. Your employer will only do a certain amount. Some employers I think can do more some don't. Just depending on how big the company is. It depends on who you work for but you can actually put however much money you want into it like if I had $30,000 sitting in my savings I could just throw it right into my KiwiSaver. Right and it gets interest a lot faster than if it's in your regular bank account. Yeah, there's different plans like ones like hey you put it in here and if you don't touch it for a year it gets this much interest. And you can take it out whenever you want like it's not like a 401k or whatever in the United States where you get penalized for taking something out too fast and of course we have way more to learn about that once we are actually able to get it. But another thing about work-life balance like everyone here is so like focused on like family and your health like whether that's your physical health or your mental health like for instance Daniel mentioned like he was out for four days this week and I feel like in the States like if you're like I'm sick I'm out for four days like it's stressful on you because you know you're missing so much at work and also like your employer isn't of course as happy with you as possible and I'm sure it differs from place to place but like mad props to where we work and like the work-life balance just like they're so focused on us and making sure like we're okay and with our daughter being sick so much like they're just they're great and I think that's kind of a New Zealand Kiwi thing all around like they just want to make sure that like you and your family are doing okay and once you are and once you're taken care of you're able to be at work. We've worked at a lot of different jobs through our life in the U.S. and I don't think we've ever had as close-knit or as awesome of a group of people or supportive especially with the support that we've ever had than we've had here I mean this like they're our friends yeah we're friends and family with all like they're family to us and they would do anything to help us at any minute and I feel like that support I feel like it's everyone like every Kiwi like if you see one a cute one you see Kiwis like on the side of the road or anywhere like everyone's just poor girl everyone's just so supportive and that definitely follows. Not that Kiwis are always on the side of the road but they are out a lot because they're biking they're running the weather is getting nicer oh this is great. But yeah and of course like as you are watching this like you're probably like oh well it's not the same for me and my career here in New Zealand which of course like we've only worked one place here in New Zealand so work-life balance may differ from place to place but I do think like from talking to people we work with and just random Kiwis on the side of the road I'm just kidding that like it seems like the general consensus consensus that work-life balance here is amazing and much better than the United States. Oh yeah all right guys thanks for watching sorry we've been absent hopefully we'll be a little more consistent when we start feeling better Charlotte's still kind of dealing with it but we've taken taken the snooze in the back yeah we figured while she was napping in the back after our Kmart trip as you can see the boxes in the back we would get a video in but as always like we appreciate you guys and your comments some of your comments make us laugh so much yeah um but yeah if there's any ever any questions or anything you guys have or anything you want to see let us know we hope to get out next week and there's a long weekend because we have off the 26th for the holiday so we'll be going to Rotorua or something um doing some more exploring but thank you guys don't forget to like and subscribe! Bye!