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Browsing tag: money

  • February 18, 2011

    Eschewing the urge to wallow

    I’ve always been an extremely self conscious person. I would lie in bed at night when I was younger, replaying the day’s events in my mind. Berate myself for lost opportunities, for failing to come up with witty retorts, for a particularly embarrassing trip’n’fall, and so on. I had a kind of list going on. Points for having the guts to speak up in class. Points deducted for getting tongue tied in front of my crush. Basically, a tally of maturity, as judged by me.

    When we got the news about this latest car repair, I wanted to throw myself on the ground and launch into a tantrum. Why’d you have to make such a big deal about one tiny thing? Couldn’t the first two mechanics’ clean diagnoses have sufficed?

    I went for a long, sweaty run. Then I decided there was no point in sulking. I could let it ruin my afternoon, my day, my week. I could wallow, gloriously – if wallowing was a sport, I would be a Olympic athlete. I decided that heck, I can’t do anything about it. Shit happens; we couldn’t have done anything differently. You never know with a used car how it was treated before.

    Or I could chin up, change my attitude and move on. Basically, act like a damn adult. Whining might make me feel better, temporarily, but accomplishes nothing. (I started bashing out a furious post, that went something along the lines of:

    WHY do we always have the ridiculous problems? Why does nobody else we know have to deal with such insanely fucking expensive issues? Yeah, T drives a lot, but he doesn’t drive stupidly. Surely we’ve paid our dues with learning about regular maintenance, and paid our dues with his insistence on buying a stupid boyracey car and now opting for something sensible (insert LIFE’S NOT FAIR rant)

    If I had double my cash savings right now, I would be seriously thinking about financing a brand new vehicle right now – 3% over 3 years, 30% down.)

    before realising what a self-pitying douche I sounded like.)

    And in the long run, whining only serves to make feel you worse. Instead, I would do what I do second best: deal with it. I’ve been meaning to get around to working out a new realistic number to direct into our irregulars account, which I’ve been putting off. As for ponying up the cash, it just means a blow to progress on the travel fund.

    As always, car costs are the sticking point. We haven’t had any of our cars for more than two years, so judging reasonable ongoing repairs isn’t easy. Last year, the first year I tracked, we spent about $1000 on our piece-of-crap beater. So far we’re on track to spend double this year for our current 10-year-old one, between the new tyres and the new transmission (it was cheaper to replace the whole gearbox than the one specific part that conked out). I don’t anticipate much more for the rest of the year, and we shouldn’t need to get any work done to pass its warrant, but you just never know, do you?

    Maybe aiming for $1200, the same figure as our motor insurance bill, is a good starting point. I figure this is actually not that crazy, because between his commute, visiting friends and family, and trips, we put a lot of kilometres on our one car. Where tyres might last 2-3 years for some people, it’s more likely to be closer to 18 months for us. So that’s already nearly $500 there. Add to that maybe $100-200 on fluids and filters for regular servicing, plus room for other nasty surprises.

    So, do you love wallowing? Or are you a chin-up-and-get-on-with-it type? And how much do you spend on maintaining your car each year?

  • February 16, 2011

    Grocery challenge, week two

    (For non kiwis: We have a supermarket duopoly [So what else is new? It’s just like every other industry here]. Foodstuffs owns Pak n Save and New World, their super budget, no frills chain and their deluxe chain respectively. Progressive owns Countdown and Foodtown; the former is their cheaper chain, but it’s still more expensive than PnS.)

    Since we moved to this area, we’ve only ever shopped at Pak n Save. It’s close, and of course, it’s cheaper. They also don’t advertise, so you never know what their deals are until you get there…but that’s fine by me, because I’m not the kind of person who sticks rigidly to a list anyway.

    At our old place, we lived closer to Countdown, and would randomly split our trips between CD and PnS depending on, well, how we felt that week.

    But the expensive Mt Eden Foodtown nearby has now been converted into a Countdown, its cheaper sibling. And I’m kind of tempted to see how well we might fare there. There’s more variety, and it will almost GUARANTEED be better stocked. Also, PnS produce is generally crap, and we don’t always have time to get to a separate fruit n veg shop. Also, the Progressive chain actually sends out flyers, so with a bit of forward thinking maybe it wouldn’t increase our bill by too much. Although…is more choice really a good thing here?

    Anyway, chance – okay, traffic – led us to Greenlane Countdown this week. I have to say, I don’t really like visiting new supermarkets. I’m entrenched in routine and I like knowing where aisles are and where to find everything. And this particular supermarket is pretty big (although the aisles could be wider…are you listening?). Basically, the whole experience was nicer. Pak n Save = grey and concrete. Countdown = bright, light, tons of choice. I’ve been to tons of other branches before, but never noticed it quite as starkly. There were some good specials this week – part of the reason we spent nearly $10 on drinks. I’m a water drinker, but T is the opposite. Sadly, produce was not particularly cheap, and we refused to pay their meat prices fullstop.

    Of course, the main question is how much did we spend?!

    Sorry about the ugly/confusing docket. Countdown prints the original price and then a deduction for the discount. I do like how they show the unit price for produce, though.

    Add to that $33 something for meat from the Aussie butcher and we clock in at $135 this week. Pretty average. And two weeks into February, we’re at $254 of our $500 goal. Can we do it? I remember, vaguely, a time when we could occasionally pull off a $100 weekly shop. Now I’ll be happy with $125.

    So, do you shop at the same supermarket every time? And do you go to independent butchers/produce shops for fresh food?

  • February 15, 2011

    Maybe it’s a fool’s game, but it’s my game

    Credit cards

    Image via Wikipedia

    ** Huzzah! I’m in this week’s Carnival of Personal Finance. Thanks to Well Heeled for hosting. **

    Spending $25,000 on a credit card over two years is unlikely to earn you even $180 on reward schemes, a survey has revealed.

    I consider myself a savvy credit card user, and stories like these annoy the hell out of me.

    Unless you spend heaps on your card…and fully pay off your card at the end of each month, most of these schemes won’t be worth it.

    Well, no shit, Sherlock. That’s the credit card game, isn’t it? Don’t spend more than you can repay, and you win. Plus you get points or cashback. There’s nothing good about the alternative.

    Sadly, unless you manage to be completely self sufficient – work for yourself, grow your own food, generate your own power and so forth – you need to spend money.

    I will admit, I’m not making oodles of money from CC rewards. In fact, I would need to spend $27k to earn $180 in rewards. But I certainly am making something for nothing. If I must be ripped off by supermarkets, petrol stations and the like on a regular basis, I’m going to claw back every cent I can.

    Let’s say $150 a week goes on the Visa (a ridiculously low number. That’s full groceries plus bus topup, or perhaps petrol plus a supermarket shop minus meat and veggies.) That earns $1. That’s $52 in rewards for $7800 spent in a year for doing nothing but LIVE LIFE. Or perhaps a more realistic $200 a week, earns $67.60 a year. That does not include the countless other expenses which crop up over those 12 months. Insurance. Clothing. Mystery shops. Concerts. Other dining out. Presents. Travel. Car registration and repairs. Purchases made for people we know who don’t have their own credit cards. Oh, and I can now pay Sky TV by Visa for no extra charge.

    In fact, I put everything I possibly can on my credit card, and only regret I can’t do the same for rent. At a guess that might double or triple what we put on the card, and thus earn rewards for. One has to feed, dress and transport oneself, and this one would rather get something out of it. In the meantime, my money earns a little bit more interest in my account, which is calculated on a daily basis.

    Quite frankly, I would find it near impossible to live without a credit card. I buy stuff online semi-regularly, from contact lenses to guitar strings to daily deal coupons to event tickets to hotel bookings. (Well, some of those are more regular than others.) My other options would be to, uh, ASK someone with a credit card to do it for me, or get one of those Visa Debitplus cards. In which case, I may as well get a real Visa, with a rewards programme. I don’t doubt Visa Debitplus is a fabulous option for many people, but it offers me absolutely nothing. The idea is you use your own money, but you do get charged a fee for it. I’d rather use the bank’s money for a month and earn wayyyy more than enough rewards dollars to cover the higher fee. And I won’t even get into the other benefits that some credit cards also offer.

    I get it. It sounds like too much trouble for some people, especially given our relatively crappy rate of return. Especially for those who have fallen into the debt trap using credit cards. But others, like me and my mother and many more, can handle ourselves. And who else would book tickets online for our friends and family with shot credit and who don’t have a Debitplus for whatever reason? If you can handle money responsibly, there’s a bit of free money in there for you.

    Please. Trust us. We’re grownups and we know how to play the game. Maybe the majority of Kiwis don’t, but there’s no need to treat us all like imbeciles. Or is there?

  • February 12, 2011

    Dealing with a partner’s debt

    Dealing with a partner who's in debt

    Hands up those with a partner saddled with debt. Do you ever resent him/her for it? Do you feel like it’s holding you back?

    It’s okay. Our feelings are ours and they are legitimate. And sometimes you just need to let them out and acknowledge them.

    Sometimes I wish I were the indebted person. I make more. I could pay off more, faster. What’s more, I’m not naturally a spender. (Maybe you snort at that having followed my blog for awhile. But my personal spending tends to fall along the lines of concerts, travel and eating good food. I don’t have a latte factor. I agonise over purchases. I don’t have or need a personal allowance. I would rather save my money than fritter it away on milkshakes and burgers or CDs or shoes.) In short, I would throw everything I had at debt until it was gone. But T is not like that.

    Don’t get me wrong. The debt is not massive, it’s only in the four figures. And about half of it is to me. The rest isn’t even incurring interest. Not from ongoing living costs when I supported him (I chose to do that myself) but the other things – money lent after a long-ago car accident, car repairs, car insurance. Okay, mostly car related things. And a few other bits and pieces.

    You know how I like to browse real estate listings for fun/self-torture? He likes to browse listings for motorbikes. That’s the next thing he wants to buy. The big thing. And of course he’s always finding amazing deals that if only he had the money he would buy right now. To which I can only say, you just spent hundreds of dollars on car audio! Obviously having doof doof sounds on your commute was more important than anything else to you, so you’ll just have to wait. The right bike will come along when you’re ready.

    Of course, he could save for it faster if we directed all his spare into savings and none toward repaying me. And that’s a decision he leaves to me. That’s kind of a crap choice. Basically, it’s a battle of selfless vs selfish.

    Sometimes I think maybe I should just write it off and we can start with a clean slate. But that’s not fair to me. That’s money I’ve worked hard for. Money that I chose to lend knowing it would be returned eventually. (And yes, money I could afford to give in the worst instance.) Maybe I should forget my random notion of insisting he maintain a $2k EF, because realistically, I would not drain it. As a first step, I would front the money, because dipping below that number is such a psychological blow. (I KNOW. IT’S NOT EVEN MY MONEY. WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?)

    Even if it’s not yours, debt sucks. It hinders individual goals and joint goals. For him, it means no bike – for now. And for me, it means travel can’t happen as soon as I’d like.

    I veer between wondering WHY AREN’T WE FURTHER ALONG YET??!! – after all, he’s been out of school for five years (didn’t go to uni) and sometimes it feels he has nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, I often feel similarly. But I have to remember I’ve only been working FT for a year, and I just paid for a car in cash. He’s sustained stints of unemployment, and yes, paid off other debts in that time. (The most frustrating thing is that very, very little of it was actually incurred by him. But let’s not get into that.) It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Yeah, I veer between that and trying to reassure myself that we have years and years ahead of us. But do we? In 10 years I would like to have bought a house and started a family and done my two big trips: the US and Europe. Blarrrrrgh.

    I don’t want it to sound like we are clashing financially. In fact, it’s all going pretty swimmingly, albeit slower than I’d like. Joint pots with a separate allowance for him is working great and while initially that made me nervous, he’s been really good about communicating on money matters. But every so often, when progress feels nonexistent, you need to have a verbal retch. Ya know what I mean?

  • February 4, 2011

    January roundup

    Wooop! Wellington lodge is BOOKED. I have many weaknesses; great ethnic food, all things dessert, and the beach spring to mind. Luxury hotels are another. This is not five-star accommodation (although at $150 a night you’d think it should be), but it will have a spa bath. 😀

    It also means I probably won’t save much this month, as that alone is just over $450 for three nights.

    And now, the cold hard numbers. Percentages, as always, are of total spending, not of income, so they’d be slightly lower in that context.

    If you’re curious, here’s an explanation of how I track and categorise our expenses


    • NOTES

    Clothes/grooming: Haircut for him, new bra for me ($5 out of pocket !)

    Dining and bars – $106? You must be joking! I think that’s a record low, and a WIN for keeping this to $160 and below. (To be fair, another $30 cash was spent on beer at Big Day Out. Clearly, I will be the one in charge of cash at Homegrown, and if he wants to drink he can sort his own money out. Also, we went to the annual Seafood Festival and spent $40 in cash, but I reckon that’s more of an event or entertainment :P)

    Entertainment: We hit up the museum, arcade and the salt pools at Parnell Baths.

    Groceries: Yikes, I knew it was a bad one, but sheesh. It was a five week month thought, right? We’ll see how close to $500 we can get this month (yay short months.) But I’m not sorry!

    Holidays: Remainder of holiday/late New Year spending.

    Insurance: Contents cover for a quarter.

    Mystery shopping: Goodies from Lush. One of which turned out to be a skin saviour, and even though I didn’t score another survey this month, I went back with my 10% coupon to buy Dream Cream out of my own pocket. It’s clear I have chronic eczema, and I refuse to rely on steroid creams all my life.

    T fun: More money on car sounds, mostly. The last of it. We now have embarrassingly loud bass, the kind that benefits nobody, that’s how much power it has. Although the amp came in a neat little engraved blondwood case…classy!

    Vehicle: $460 on new tyres and alignment. (This was so out, it’s literally almost halved our fuel consumption. And with petrol at $2 a litre, we need all the efficiency we can get. Who knows, maybe we can drag a tank out to two weeks now?) There’s one more niggly issue we’re getting looked at (probably a wheel bearing), and hopefully that’ll be it for major costs for some time.

    As for saving, actual total savings was 43.75% of my income this month. It was only 29.4% of my regular income though, so if it wasn’t for freelance I wouldn’t have hit the magic mark. T didn’t bring in much; he hadn’t accumulated any paid leave for the holidays, and worked some short days.

  • January 14, 2011

    Imagine.

    House in Lipsk.

    Image via Wikipedia

    What would you do if you no longer had rent or a mortgage to pay???

    My parents own their house and are mortgage free. They have been ever since we came to NZ. It’s pretty amazing…I was just thinking the other day how low their bills must be. No mortgage. I don’t think they have very much insurance (not even sure if they have car or contents insurance. Blergh) Neither works full-time.

    From an NZ-centric point of view, paying off the mortgage ASAP is a no-brainer. Mortgage rates here are quite high and we don’t have 30-year fixed terms. As far as I know, the longest you can lock in is 5 years.

    Housing is usually the single largest expense for any household, and if you can eliminate that…well, I can’t even imagine the possibilities! It varies, but rent is up to 40 per cent of our total spending, or up to about 20 per cent of our income. With an extra $1000 a month, we could eat like royalty, take a trip every month, or shave years off saving for a down payment.

    But that just ain’t gonna happen, so I’m not going to think too much about it. I’m one of those people who hates being asked “What would you do if you won Lotto?” I like to fantasise about things that are REMOTELY within my reach, thankyouverymuch.

  • January 10, 2011

    What we spent in 2010

    **  I often get questions about how I do my monthly roundups and track transactions, so I compiled a sticky post that hopefully sums it all up.**


    I have never done an annual wrap. It’s quite an eye opener, isn’t it?

    Some thoughts:

    – I wish I’d kept track of every item of clothing bought. (Realistically though, I’m far too lazy.) I do know this included at least two skirts, two tops, two pairs casual shoes, runners, sandals, jacket, handbag, dress, boots. T bought new shoes, pants, shorts, some shirts and a jacket (plus possibly a couple other items on his own dime.) This category is actually clothes AND grooming, so also included things like haircuts, skincare, etc.

    – Our eating out is basically staying within range, but as always, it could be lower. Y’all know I say this with reluctance, because while some people like to spend on clothes or shoes or gadgets or adventure pursuits, WE LOVE FOOD. I know if this included all his food spending, the total would be horrendous. This year I’d like to see if we can manage on $160 a month, even in milestone months (we go out to dinner, that’s how we celebrate).

    Which brings us to entertainment. I calculate at least a third (roughly $850) was spent on concerts (7 tickets. 2 of them we haven’t been to yet!). There was another $300 or so on two more Metallica tickets too, which I onsold. Then BF’s Xbox, and a new cell phone, which brings us up to about the $1700 mark. The rest was little things like trips to Video Ezy, monthly Fatso DVD  subscription, a trip to the cinema every few months, visiting the driving range…and that’s probably the extent of it.

    Fees and interest…well, you can see at what point I just decided to pay off the CC and get T to repay me directly.

    We have some good weeks and some bad weeks with groceries. That much is obvious. Even in a lean month, it seems $500 would be the absolute lowest we can get by on. We could cut that to some extent if I was prepared to start buying dried beans and lentils and the like, but I’m not. Yet.

    Almost half of “gifts and donations” was my dSLR alone. Yep.

    Holidays included a fishing trip and road trip (him), some weekends away (us); events included birthdays and anniversaries. Did we get nearly $2000 worth out of those? I’m not sure. I guess it’s hard to gauge over several small, spread out trips. Generally, I don’t think these include gas for trips but do include things like food.

    Obviously the big home expenses were moving costs and bond, and replacing our stolen computer and TV. (We did get insurance to pay a large portion via cheque.)

    So much for cheap car insurance! We replaced our beater (which I didn’t include in here at all, actually), and shouldered the cost of full insurance. Contents insurance went up this year, too – boo.

    Medical costs add up fast, do they not? Most of this was optical (lenses, eye exams, solution) with a few prescriptions and other meds thrown in.

    Utilities registered a big blip when we moved. I still rage a little remembering why.

    And our transport costs. About $1200 of that is me and my bus fares. Another $1000 or so on maintenance, at least. Perhaps $300 for annual registration. And PETROL. Let’s just say that at practically $2 a litre, $80 for a tank every week does not make a happy financial controller (that would be me.)

    I had guessed around $500 for car repairs and maintenance, but we spent more like double that. Hopefully the ongoing costs of our current car will be lower, and even with increased insurance, the peace of mind that accompanies better reliability has so been worth it to date. T puts a lot of ks on the car, so tyres (EXPENSIVE) may not last as long as they otherwise would. What I really need to do is sit down and reassess what we put away each week for irregulars and calculate a new amount for 2011.

    Side Income

    Earlier in 2010 I set a reach goal of making an extra $4000, outside of my day job.

    The total came to $5533, thanks mainly to freelancing, tutoring/editing, as well as focus groups,  gifts and mystery shops.

    Which is actually a pretty big number. Where did it go?

    I didn’t track exact dollar amounts but about $4000 was saved – I’m talking general savings, my travel fund and a little into our irregulars account. Maybe a little more. The rest was spent on “extras”, like clothes and shoes, contact lenses, the odd gift, an external hard drive.

    In terms of mystery shops, I netted $687 in addition to $756 roughly of free stuff (clothes, beauty, food, lotto tickets.) Whee!

    PFers, are you doing annual recaps? What on earth possessed me to spend the better part of a day crunching numbers?

  • January 9, 2011

    Tracking expenses – the lowdown on how I do it

    I always seem to be getting questions about how I manage/track money, so here’s my attempt to answer everything in one sticky post:

    The basics

    Two words: Internet banking. It’s one of the reasons I’ve been with ASB so long…their internet banking and expense tracking is awesome (although I think BNZ and Kiwibank are starting to catch up.) Here’s a screenshot of what this looks like:

    I usually check in a couple of times a week and categorise new transactions. Come the end of the month, I look over all transfers and payments and make sure everything is correctly identified. Generally, I remember any unusual expenditures (eg car expenses, concert tickets, etc.), and I’ll make a note of that. Switch over to the Dashboard view, and there are the colourful graphs that I pinch and post every month:

    Oh, and I virtually never touch cash at all, which helps with the tracking.

    Of course, it’s not infallible. You can’t “split” transactions – ie, once in a while T gets a box of beers while we’re grocery shopping, but it’s all lumped into one payment – so it’s not an exact science. But a) those are the exception, not the norm and b) I’m far too lazy to put any more time into money management than I currently do. If you’re more diligent than I, there are PLENTY of other programmes that will do a very thorough job for you.

    The nitty gritty

    Monthly roundups (for now) include all my expenses and our joint expenses. They usually include his allowance, fun money or whatever else you want to call it. Except in November, when I undertook to track all of our money and live on $2500. Debt repayments refer to a non-interest-accruing debt of his.

    They don’t include (the full amount of) savings. That’s because I handle cashflow in what T calls a ridiculously complicated way. To which I say, hey, it’s worked for me for years!

    Basically, I work on the premise that many self-employed people use (even though I have a regular job). I “pay” myself from my savings account every week. When I get paid, the whole amount goes straight into savings. To be honest, I don’t recall exactly when or why I adopted the method – maybe when I started getting paid fortnightly but still paid rent weekly? Regardless, this means that what I save doesn’t show up in a neat little transfer of its own – because it’s already in my savings account, minus the amount taken out for living costs.

    I’m a fan of the zero-based budget, and psychologically like having very little in checking – it definitely cuts off the possibility of the desire to spend it.

    Finally, the percentages are of total spending, not of income, since as explained savings don’t show up as a true line item.

    Net worth

    You won’t find net worth updates here. 1) I don’t place a whole lot of importance on it at this stage. 2) I’m far too lazy to do that every month. Got money with Rabo? You’ll understand why! 3) The whole semi-anon thing; I’d happily talk to you IRL about how we spend and even save; I’m not sure if I’d tell you how much I’m “worth”.

    Got any questions? Shoot, and I’ll try to answer.

  • December 31, 2010

    December roundup

    I am so embarrassed (hides) – I’m pretty sure this is the spendiest month ever. Also, beyond the $495 in savings already noted here, I have no idea how much either of us actually saved in total (due to the way I handle cashflow). Nonetheless, it was probably more than wiped out by the various large purchases you will soon be reading about.

    Clothes – New Dickies shorts for him. Woot pre-Christmas discounts.

    Dining – I bought some lunches this month, had dinner with the girls, and as a couple we ate out a fair bit. It was a busy month. Still came in under $200.

    Entertainment – Homegrown tickets $200, BDO tickets $240 (through a friend, otherwise would have been $320). Library fines, Fatso subscription. Box of beer brought to a friend’s birthday.

    Groceries – We splurged on a fair bit of seafood. Also, it may have been a five week month? This also included some of those biscuit samplers which we bought for Christmas presents to give away, and beer to the tune of $40 which T paid back.

    Gifts – we spent about about $200 on each other for Christmas. I got the headphones I’d been wanting, he got the collector’s edition of the new Star Wars game. And I bought myself a dSLR. Eeep.

    Holidays – Our post-Christmas weekend away (might post a few pics later on), our anniversary, a little miscellaneous Christmas spending that wasn’t on gifts.

    Insurance – I don’t know what the hell is going on. I thought our cover was to renew on the 29th (we have mail to that effect), and I asked T to call up to pay for the year ahead. They told him we were already paid up for a quarter and charged us for cover up until June instead. YEAHIHAVENOFREAKINGCLUE. Unfortunately, he’s the primary driver and the holder of the policy, so he generally deals with them. We’re going to have to up contributions into our irregulars account to pay for the increased cover; in the meantime I’ve paid for it from general savings.

    Medical – Contact solution, eye drops, hayfever meds. $15 for 10 freaking pills!! Unfortunately, my allergies have been worse than ever, so I don’t have much choice but to fork out.

    T lunch/fun – Still have this category from when all our spending was done from one account. I guess it’s a good thing, cause he a) occasionally accidentally pulls out the wrong card to use b) does it on purpose because he’s close to the line and then pays it back.

    Utilities – a little higher than usual due to cellphone wastage and adding movies to our TV package. Which reminds me, I must get around to cancelling our Fatso subscription. I also noticed they added an HD charge to our bill and asked them to remove it (they charge in advance) so hopefully a refund will appear on our next statement.

    Vehicle – $213 for our GPS, about $40 for new oil and a filter, and lots of gas.

    The dSLR was on my “one day” list, but a friend happened to be selling off his to raise some cash, and I scored a Canon 1000D with bag and two lenses for $750. It retails for over $1000, and that’s with a lens with less of a range. Meanwhile, I’d been keeping half an eye on GPS bargains, and given that I/we hope to be doing more trips, it’s going to come in handy. We used it last weekend and if we go down to the Coromandel tomorrow, you can bet we’ll bust it out. I’m also programming in places that we want to go to at some point, like the Auckland Fish Market, certain restaurants and the like.

    In terms of STUFF… we now have pretty much everything we could possibly want. One day – ie when we live in a bigger place with a lounge, say, and a proper kitchen – we’ll get a food mixer and maybe decent cookware, but for now I think we’re set.

  • December 20, 2010

    In the week before Christmas…

    A Danish Christmas tree illuminated with burni...

    Image via Wikipedia

    One. I happened to be watching the TV news the other night. One of the stories focused one of the newly redundant Pike River miners. He’ll be lucky to get a week’s holiday pay (the rescue operation is costing something like millions a day and the company can’t sustain that kind of drain) and he was auctioning off a rock from the mine. He called it a “charity rock” and hoped to make maybe $30-40 to help pay the utility bills. Bidders had already pushed the price up to $1000 though, and I hope it goes even higher.

    Two. T works with a bunch of people who mostly hail from a relatively low socio-economic area. Some of them have been there for years upon years, and are known to often take their big holiday paycheck, spend it all on gifts and food for Christmas day, and be left with nothing. Apparently they’ve even been known to complain abut not having enough gas money to get back to work. They’re damn lucky to have such a good boss, who is arranging for some of them to get food vouchers instead – and if he could organise for MTA vouchers to take to the petrol station too, he would.

    In the week before Christmas, I am thankful that T is getting a back paid raise, that I am getting a full 8 days’ leave (nothing planned except reading, baking, blogging, running, and other leisurely activities as I see fit; he unfortunately won’t get any time off), that we have never EVER been down to the bone and actually worried about putting food on the table or keeping the lights on.

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