Well, I really picked the worst time to have a good Christmas vacation. Maybe I shouldn’t have had such “it’s not like I’m going overseas anytime soon, so might as well buy a new washing machine”, binge November and answer the Tourism NZ’s call “do something new, New Zealand”, the domestic travel campaign also didn’t turn out to be a super good idea. I really should have stayed home, drank alcohol. tap water and snacking on cardboard.

Because even though I single-handedly supported the hospitality and tourism industry (and where are my thanks?), if you want to borrow money from a bank right now, for example to buy an apartment right in the middle between you and the one you love – Omarama, place of light – thus reducing your travel time to one hour and a little each instead of three hours and a pee, they will go through three months of bank statements, and the mine are like the contact tracing of a patient zero hedonist whose places of interest make you wonder what you’re doing with your life.

We’re in the age of the monastic mortgage – where securing funds, even if you have plenty of equity and a good salary – means no going out for pints at Kai, no mini weekend breaks , no gas expenses to drive to see your long distance lover… That means a lot of no, no and no.

I really chose the worst time to stop my antidepressants.

But rather than sullen, I am angry. It’s my money and I work hard for it. I’ll waste it on cocaine and prostitutes if I want. It’s not the bank’s job to be the moral police about my spending habits, especially because I religiously pay my bills on time and keep control of my credit card (although my doctor may have something to say about mixing prostitutes and cocaine with Setrona).

Designed to protect borrowers from loan sharks and other unscrupulous lenders, mortgage approvals in Otago fell 6.5% after changes to the CCCFA in December last year and the number of monthly approvals from home loans fell 23% nationally. Mortgage brokers say they have never seen such strict borrowing criteria.

When people get turned down for mortgages because of things like eyebrow waxing and being pregnant, it makes me cringe at the amount of money I spend on my ambassador hedge. While there’s no escaping the irony that I’m spending money on nice things, it’s because I have enough discretionary funds to repay a loan. Any responsible banker should be thinking, “If this woman has enough for three pints of a Friday mist, she’s got enough to pay off a loan, per Jingo.”

Now that I see red, on the traffic light system, I double the bet. Faced with two weeks at home if I got sick and months of obstacles to normality, I don’t regret for a second the money I spent to have a good time. It reminds me of the parable of the grasshopper and the ant: the industrious ant, who was a total snorer, spent the whole summer collecting seeds while the grasshopper played in the sun, only to perish at the first snowfall of the winter because she was financially reckless…OK, so that’s not such a great example…but just like no one will stand up at your funeral and say you had a good meeting (unless unless you’re really desperate for the contents of the eulogy), you also won’t be fondly remembered for being tighter than a fish’s butt and reusing your tea bags. As an angry sidebar, do the rich have their bank statements clawed back? Do they need petting and scratching? Or is it just us normals who get our spending checked? Do not hesitate to answer, it is obvious.

Most of us are just trying to find something nice to distract ourselves from the overwhelming stress of pandemic life. The average peasant, working from his hovel during the plague, trying to homeschool the children with a few turnips was not supposed to be economically prudent. Because life is too short and too beautiful to count its coffees to go.

There’s only one thing to say, and that’s: get tied.