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Browsing category: Uncategorized

  • May 28, 2010

    Five on Friday

    • I attended my first networking event this week. What’s more, I went by myself. This was a proud moment: I am an anxious socialiser, to put it mildly. And when the event was booked out, thereby causing a friend to miss out, I nearly decided to skip it. And did I mention the atrocious weather? But it was great – went better than I could have expected. I got there and it was packed, but just as I started to panic after scanning the room, someone in another department at work came over and we got chatting. Then I saw a friend from school, and then another old classmate, and it was all on from there.
    • On Monday, T and I attended a research session. It was by far the weirdest market research I’ve ever done, but apparently it may become more common. Basically, we watched TV for an hour, wearing a hatful of electrodes which monitored our brain’s reactions to the programmes. But hey, we got $85 each out of it and a really delicious pastry.
    • That was followed by the worst meal ever – a waste of nearly $30. We wandered all over town trying to decide what to have for lunch (it was well after 2 by this time). Finally, we ended up at the Thai place in the Atrium on Elliot foodcourt. I’ve had good food from there before, but their “seafood tom yum” contained just two prawns and some sad fish balls, and bore no resemblance to the hot and sour flavours of tom yum. Suffice to say it was watery yellow, with no red or orange tinge. As for the deepfried sweet and sour fish, I don’t know how it ever left the kitchen. They presented me with a plate containing a small, sad,  dried out snapper, accompanied by a tiny saucer of, well, seasoned vinegar.   The Gourmet Thai, my ass. I wasn’t expecting miracles, but I was hoping for something edible.
    • We blew out our internet usage this month, basically doubling what our package allows.  Telecom used to just slow us down to dialup, which was good: Orcon lets you keep going, charging $2 per additional GB. Ouch. Hopefully with a careful eye on our account we can keep it within the limits – which used to be 6G, but is now 7G thanks to the company increasing everyone’s limits for FREE – but if this becomes a regular thing I think we’ll be upgrading to a bigger package. We can double our cap for a pretty reasonable price, and change at any time.
    • I’m not the healthiest of eaters, as you may or may not have surmised. I wanted to make one of my monthly challenges to be eating better. But life, or more accurately, work and related pursuits have just kept me so busy, and since T is currently playing stay-home spouse, he’s been totally in charge of all things grocery related. Seriously, I have had some AMAZING meals since he’s been out of work. And I have eaten SO many veggies – I don’t think we’ve had a dinner in a looong time that didn’t involve a significant portion of them. From totally homemade pizza stuffed with peppers, onions, steak and cheese to roasted kumara, carrot and meat, not to mention amazing stirfries and other dishes, I am brimming with vitamins! It feels good.

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  • May 27, 2010

    Who can say no to a good bargain?

    For some reason, NZ is home to a shedload of “one day deal” websites. Some are better than others, obviously.

    But my new favourite is Dailydo: it sells experiences and other deals that I would actually use, rather than things like cheap clocks and lawnmowers and whatnot. There’s a new offer everyday: if you choose to purchase it, they then email the coupon to you. For example, I got a “buy one, get one free meal, along with two free house drinks” voucher for a local pub/bar for just $1. I also bought a fishing charter boat trip for less than half price – that can either be T’s birthday present, or he can take some of his guy friends out on a weekend and make the money back easily.

    A lot of their sales would also be ideal for gifts. I’m actually kicking myself for not scooping up a really great discount on a facial at a spa – that would be a great birthday present for a girlfriend and save me pounding the pavements/shoving through crowds at the mall. I’m also hoping to find a great, EXTREMELY belated birthday present for a friend who’s currently overseas; with a few months left, I’m sure something will come up.

    Now, I know you guys in the US have restaurant.com and all sorts of other crazy bargains. What are your favourite sites for snapping them up? Do share.

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  • May 26, 2010

    Just who should be paying the bill?

    This story from the weekend was about a girl who had her phone go missing. The person who had it said they would arrange to return it to her. Between then and her realising that the person had been lying, the thief racked up more than $2000 on her account. Now she has to repay Vodafone directly, while the thief pays her back in small weekly installments.

    Most people say it’s her fault for not alerting the company to the fact that her phone was stolen earlier. And fair enough. But the thing is, she truly believed that person was honest and intended to return it to her.

    I’m a pretty trusting person, even though T has had the exact same thing happen to him (on Christmas Day, nonetheless) yet never ended up getting his phone back. And if it had been me, I would have probably taken that person’s word too, and gotten slammed with that massive bill.

    And that is just another reason to be glad that I use prepay. It may not be a very ‘adult’ thing to do, but it’s cheap and keeps me safe.

    * * *

    Head over to Money Relationship to check out this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance; Adam kindly included my post on how I essentially scored myself a payrise.

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  • May 25, 2010

    Metallica, here I come!

    There are two bands I want to see before I (or they, more likely) die.

    Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

    And the former are winging over to NZ this October!

    *squee*

    Had I not been 14, unemployed and under a parental thumb, I would have seen both at the best Big Day Out lineup ever. (There was also the Darkness, the Strokes and dozens of other mint bands that year, as I recall). Unfortunately, I still have never been to a real concert, barring pub gigs and the one Big Day Out I worked at which let me hear some acts from a distance.

    Guys, I don’t think I can convey how excited I am. I first got introduced to Metallica in my first year of high school. We were in music class, learning the intro to Nothing Else Matters on little acoustic guitars.

    “This isn’t so bad,” I thought.

    I started downloading more and more Metallica, and discovered the world of metal. It was nowhere near as heavy as I thought. I actually enjoyed it. I started playing guitar.I spent hours spent learning the various solos to Fade to Black and being so thrilled when I could hammer out something resembling them.

    Apparently, though – and I’m not so psyched about this – Fear Factory are opening the gig. Now, I’m not a total metalhead. I draw the line at Slipknot/Children of Bodom and other such acts. (I still count Michelle Branch and Whitney Houston among some of my favourite artists…not to mention NSYNC and the other pop artists of my childhood. S Club 7’s Don’t Stop Moving came on the radio this morning and I mouthed every single lyric along with it. That song still sounds fresh as the day it came out, IMO :P) So sitting through FF is not going to be enjoyable at all; hopefully I can time it in order to arrive just before Metallica take the stage.

    So T and I will be sitting in the upper bowl come October 13. Seriously, could I have asked for a better band to take my concert virginity? It’s a bit of a bummer that we have allocated seats – I couldn’t get general admission tickets, and doubt I’ll find any at a reasonable price on TradeMe now that both shows are sold out. Trust me: I tried. I barely managed to buy these two during the media presale…the second presale did not include GA tix, and the general sale? Well, despite having been online for half an hour ahead of time to prep, I still didn’t manage to get GA passes. Hell, there weren’t ANY tickets at all by the time my computer finally got through the line.

    But maybe it’s for the best. Being trampled to death in a moshpit by sweaty bogans is not how I pictured leaving this world.

    Anyway, I’m impatiently waiting for my tickets to arrive in the mail. So much for sending them out within a week: according to Ticketmaster, they’re still being printed and I should contact them if the passes don’t arrive two days before the event.

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  • May 24, 2010

    Rear-ended

    Ugh. I think the title says it all.

    The car is still drivable but is sporting a mighty dent and the boot isn’t opening and closing quite as it should.

    The bad news is it’s only worth a couple thousand so we’re only protected if we hit someone else. So it’s up to us to chase her and her insurance company to get some money out of them for repairs. Our insurance won’t give a damn, and certainly won’t help with the claim.

    The good news is she’s a realtor in the $2m club, and got on to her insurance on the same day. So once we get quotes, it should be a quick job and our car will be back to normal.

    The funny thing is, I almost feel bad for her. Yeah, I know it was her fault. But it’s not major damage, and I almost feel guilty for what it’s going to cost her. If it had just been a surface scrape, it wouldn’t have been worth getting fixed.

    If the situation had been reversed, though, I’m sure she wouldn’t be hesitating to chase us for it. So that’s what I’m focusing on. That, and the fact that the back of our car (we replaced the entire hatchback door a while ago) was basically immaculate before the accident. And I intend to keep it that way if we can!

  • May 21, 2010

    My experience with Specsavers

    I basically stopped wearing contacts over a year ago. The grittiness, dryness and discomfort eventually got too much for me, and with a 20-hour class schedule, plus work, and 8am shorthand classes, I happily exchanged the hassle of lenses for glasses. Bonus: I could let my hair do whatever I wanted! (Glasses fill up my face. Contacts don’t. And unless my hair is nicely cut and/or styled, next to all that vast, pale, skin, I start to resemble the walking dead.)

    But glasses are a pain, too. In the summer, when you can’t wear sunglasses. In the winter, when you’re caught in the rain. And when a new Specsavers opened around the corner from work, and I was handed two free eye exam vouchers, I thought maybe it was time to revisit my plan.

    Specsavers brags that it’s friendly, cheap and of course was backed by Gok Wan when it first launched. In terms of pricing, eye tests and the like are on par with OPSM and other optometrists (costing about $60). But if you’re looking for new frames, they do some great deals, especially on multiple purchases.

    However, when it comes to service? Hmmm. I’m a little iffy on that.

    Everything started off well. They booked me in and gave me some trial lenses to wear in on the day (and didn’t charge me upfront for them). But when I arrived, things went downhill. There was a big kerfuffle about the lenses I’d been given, and I was told I should have had my eye test first, before being given a test pair – the COMPLETE opposite of what I was originally told, which was wear a pair of contacts when you come in.

    I sat and waited while the consultants debated in hushed voices for, I don’t know, ten minutes? I seriously thought they were going to ask me to reschedule the appointment. But after a lot of back and forth-ing, they finally ushered me into the test room. I couldn’t read a damn thing on that letterboard, either.

    Then I was ushered back out, asked to sit and wait for about five minutes, then led into another room. They made me peer down one of those binocular-like machines at a picture of a balloon at the end of a long road, and then asked me to (you guessed it) sit and wait. And while I waited, the optician brought out my bag to me and proceeded to consult with a walk-in customer. Er, WHAT?

    Thankfully, that only lasted about five minutes, because I was thisclose to simply walking out. Eventually, I got to sit my freaking eye examination, and found out that the reason I couldn’t see with my contacts was that I now have astigmatism. Oh, joy. And apparently I had a superficial scratch on one eye, which explained why I was already feeling the grit.

    I really didn’t feel like the optometrist was listening to me; she seemed distracted and barely looked at me.  She warned me to throw out the contacts when I got home, and asked me TWICE whether I had a pair of glasses with me. I also asked her what might have caused the scratch (possibly the lenses?) to which she merely said it was fairly shallow and would heal.

    After that, the optician seemed to warm up to me. She booked me in for a consult for toric lenses, told me they’d have to be specially ordered in, and instructed me to come back immediately if my eye got worse. I appreciated her concern, but for me it was a case of too little too late. In future, with all things equal, I’ll stick with other tried and true chains for my eye exams. If for the same price, I can get a more professional service, the choice is obvious.

    As for the astigmatism, a quick sweep of the internet suggests I’ll be paying at least double for toric lenses. *chokes.* Stay tuned. More blog fodder, I suspect…

  • May 19, 2010

    Giving myself a payrise

    T is currently between jobs. The last couple of weeks have been ridiculously tight – it’s the first time he hasn’t had any income at all, whether it’s from working, or (as for much of last year) from unemployment. I’ve pulled a little bit from his EF to help pad the budget, but I do not want it to fall below $1000, and that’s just where it’s sitting at right now.

    One thing I’ve been looking at is moving onto the collective contract at work. Basically, a lot of employees – mainly those who don’t work regular 9-5 kind of hours – are a member of a union and are bound by its employment agreement. Without going into all the details, it was greatly beneficial for me to transfer over to this, rather than stay on my individual contract.

    Now that I work weekends, I qualify for the weekend allowances, which effectively doubles my rate. And when you consider I work 32 weekend hours every fortnight, that’s a big difference! It’s something like a 30% raise (Yeah yeah, I call myself a personal finance blogger and can’t even be bothered crunching the numbers. Whatever.)

    Anyway, I’ve finally worked it all out, spoken to the appropriate people (easier said than done, given our HR manager is on parental leave. I went through four separate people to get this straightened out!) and am now getting extra compensation for working weird hours.

    Realistically, I should have done this weeks ago. Why didn’t I? Well,

    a) we weren’t a single income household, and there wasn’t that pressure
    b) I wanted to wait until my three-year anniversary at work, so I could take advantage of a slight base rate increase
    c) I’m a natural procrastinator – lazy, if you must.

    And it wasn’t just the stress of not being able to make ends meet. I was spurred on even more after Her Every Cent Counts wrote a great post on maximising income when you’re still young (Haven’t read the post? Go! Now!)

    So if you have the opportunity to increase your income – do it! You have no excuse. Take it from me.

  • May 18, 2010

    Well, that’s one less headache…

    So after a lot of time spent trying to wrap my head around the intricacies of our tax system, I’ve decided not to go ahead with GST registration.

    Basically – and this was confirmed by an acquaintance who’s a tax consultant – it’s just not worth my time. My turnover is low and I don’t have enough expenses to claim. In fact, apart from the odd phone call, I’m really not sure what I could deduct.

    I don’t have a space set aside primarily as a home office. I use my computer for some business, but only a few hours a week – and how do you even go about proving what percentage of time that is? And as for “depreciation”…I don’t even want to go there. Unless I go fully freelance (which I dont’ anticipate doing for at least, oh, a decade or so) or make over $60k a year (when I’d be required to register) I’m sticking with having my taxes paid for me.

    What I DID learn, was:

    • “If you’re registered, you need to file GST returns regularly. You add up the GST you’ve received, then deduct the GST you’ve paid from this total. If you’ve collected more GST than you’ve paid, the difference is payable to us. If you’ve paid out more in GST than you’ve charged, we’ll refund the difference.”
    • You can account for GST in three ways: the payments basis, the invoice basis or a hybrid method. In the payments method you account for GST in the taxable period in which you make or receive payment. On the invoice basis you generally account for GST in the earlier taxable period in which you: issue or receive an invoice, or– receive or make any payment.
    • You can file tax returns every one, two or six months.
    • A tax invoice isn’t needed for supplies of $50 or less.
    • If you set aside an area of your house principally for business use you may be able to claim GST on part of the costs of running your home.

    For anyone who’s interested though, I’d recommend reading the IRD booklets IR365 and IR375.

    And before I forget, head over to Canadian Finance to check out the latest Carnival of Personal Finance! My post on paying bills online was included this week 🙂

  • May 16, 2010

    Betting on the bank

    Alas, Greer’s Bank Idol series is over, almost before it even started! I was so looking forward to an honest comparison of offerings.  But fair enough – personally, just thinking about paying personal visits to each and every bank out there is enough to drive me to drink.

    I must admit I’m a little sad that she didn’t find ASB worthwhile. I love my bank and the only complaint I’ve ever had is that they charged me $20 for an unarranged overdraft (which I know I could have got waived if I had fought it, because others in the same trap did!) Honestly, I thought I had one set up – why else would I have signed up for a tertiary student account? But no, apparently you have to specify that you want one, and all that kind of thing. It was a painful lesson.

    But the main reason I stick with ASB is their impressive internet banking. In the past, I have used National, ANZ and BNZ online banking. I’ve also seen Kiwibank’s in action. Granted, that was years ago and could have changed, but I still think ASB’s is pretty awesome. I track my transactions every month with their online tool, which although not perfect, is pretty nifty.

    Funnily enough, the reason Greer is leaning towards Kiwibank is their online banking, too – they’ve set up some kind of proactive software to help you manage your money. I’m pretty sure BNZ are also launching, or have launched, one as well. (It’s interesting to note, though, that those are all somewhat, if not completely, separate from their plain-jane internet banking functions.) And I think those are great…for other people. People who swear by Mint and similar personal finance software, who get alerts sent to their phone and proactively manage their accounts.

    But me? I’m pretty laissez faire with my finances. That’s why clever tools like Budgetpulse and the like don’t do it for me – they’re just too much work! I set out a rough spending plan, then tally up the damage at the end of each month. I’m not sure obsessing over every transaction would be beneficial…or healthy.

    How important is internet banking to you?

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  • May 15, 2010

    Living without a lounge

    As you guys know, we live in a tiny little basement apartment. It’s nice, new, clean and well located, not to mention cheap for the area ($250) but it’s no mansion. If you were so inclined, you could swing a cat around in our main room, but certainly not in our bathroom or kitchen.

    Heck, we don’t even have a lounge. Our TV/computer/desk are all in our big bedroom, although we do have a little covered deck outside with a picnic table.

    But you know what? We don’t need one. The only other place we lived in alone – a second floor apartment – had a lounge, which we hardly ever spent time in. It held a two-seater couch, my desk and computer, and a shitload of junk.

    The only downside we can’t really entertain at home. For that you kind of need a living room- a dining room, even? I’d really like to host my birthday here, but there just isn’t the space. If it was summer, we could have a barbecue on the deck/backyard and maybe even wander over to the park. Unfortunately, my birthday is smack bang in the middle of July – it pretty much always rains on the day. (One day, I’m going to celebrate a birthday in the northern hemisphere. One day…)

    Our old house would have been ideal for a birthday party. Thing is, I ended up being reluctant to have people over there (not to mention the place before that one) – that’s how disgusting our flatmates were and the kind of condition the house was in all the time.

    But for now, I love our little pad, and don’t mind the lack of a living room. We don’t often play host – two of our best friends are on the other side of the world and our other friends don’t live in our neighbourhood. And it sure isn’t anywhere near as cramped as this pod!

    Have you ever lived in a studio? How’d you find it?

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