Aotearoa / New Zealand

Omg. It usually takes 5-7 days to really kick in, so look after yourself and don't overdo it. Hope it's mild!

Glad you're not doing too badly, hopefully it's a mild strain and things won't get too miserable!

I got it for the first time on Friday; first two days were horrible, aching joints and kidneys, only a bit snuffly and coughing. Then Saturday & Sunday were awful just in a different way, with wild temperature fluctuations, feel fine one minute then next sweating bullets. Saturday was a bit scary where all of a sudden my temperature dropped and started shivering like mad, had to get under the duvet and blankets and warm back up.

Mostly just snuffly head now, keeping on top of pain meds, cycling paracetamol & ibuprofen has kept the worst of it at bay I think. I don't get sick often so not a lot to compare to, but definitely worse than any flu i've had recently enough to remember.

Nice kale patch.

We grow quite a lot of it also

I'm in my late 30s - I'm putting 8% into Kiwisaver (I know traditional advice is to not do extra here, but I like that it comes out of my pay before I even see it), and putting money into Investnow funds (mix of ETFs, some managed funds, and some term deposits) - though that has slowed down a bit while we concentrate on putting the usual savings money into overdue house maintenance.

I have a small amount of personal money in Sharesies, but I treat that more like gambling (luckily, cos it's way down at the moment). I wouldn't put any serious investing there.

My retirement plan would just get me referrals to Lifeline tbh.

But back when I was healthy I was quite interested in financial planning and asset allocation and all that, and I have a small kiwisaver. My philosophy was that boring one involving passive index funds, real estate trusts etc.

But I also used to own legal minimum holdings of one or two shares for fun, just so I could know how it all worked and analyse financial statements and stuff.

I have super in three different countries from 20 years of living abroad, so working on consolidating that. Beyond that, putting in some extra to KiwiSaver here and simultaneously working to build a self sufficient lifestyle to keep costs down - and us fit with any kind of luck! Very aware that that only works so long as we're fit and well, so much of what we're putting is designed to be as hands off as possible.

So, plan A is working and living off our land as long as we're able, plan B is then hitting the Super, with Plan C being selling the land and downsizing.

Ooh, this is a good question. Keen to see other replies.

For me at this stage, it's just Kiwisaver and my savings account. I'm thinking of buying some shares as well, but not too sure I want to bank on it as a source of retirement funds. In saying that, I've been looking at Sharesies and it's easy enough to chuck some spare cash at it that I don't care too much about. Like, I've been having thoughts such as "instead of caving in and buying this pizza, I could buy some shares instead". Just a bit concerned that if I start doing that, I might turn it into a habit. Maybe I need some proper financial advice on how much money I should set apart from my income for this, and draw a firm line somewhere.

I have a plan but timeframes and priorities have changed over the years. For quite a while we have been squirreling away into managed funds and built up quite a bit (for us, which is very relative), the idea being to use the 4% rule to decide when to retire.

We are likely to move into a bigger place in the near future because of a family shakeup, and we are going to have to dig into retirement savings to do it. However, I think paying off the mortgage will happen within 5-10 years depending on what interest rates do from here. At current levels I think it's a priority over almost anything else.

My plan is basically still to use the 4% rule to determine when we retire. But mortgage first, so that's going to be further away than I had hoped.