fbpx

Browsing tag: money

  • November 2, 2009

    Major WTF

    Huge, massive WTF, in fact.

    T’s been coaching for two months now. He was paid once, middle of last month. Then the franchise was taken over by new people. A payment showed up this week in his account with no reference details, but it was about the right amount for what he was owed from them.

    He called today to give notice (all their coaches are employed as contractors) as he and our other flatmate have some work lined up for the summer. Even if it’s not full time, it beats the three hours a week of coaching. And apparently the new owners were pretty upset and have had a few other coaches quit on them.

    Then that money disappeared from his account. No trace, no record of a deposit or withdrawal/retraction. Really, really odd. (So basically, no proof except for my memory of seeing the deposit earlier this week). I don’t know if the  angry bosses recalled that payment (Can they do that?) Or was it just a bank glitch that has been resolved? (In which case he’s still owed for a couple of weeks’ work…)

  • October 26, 2009

    Spending report

    Another expensive week! We had to get some work done on the car so it could pass a warrant, I bought a ticket to our end of year celebration/meet the editors bash, and then food and gas for our weekend away. PA250533

    I also bought a beautiful new bag earlier this week – I’d been lusting after it for months and waiting for it to go on sale, but finally gave in. Plus, I wanted it for my interview on Thursday…the one that I had to cancel, yeah. But I’m really glad I finally bought it (not to mention that my old one was falling apart); half of that I had already set aside from my birthday money, and the rest came from all the overtime I was finally paid out.

    Party ticket: $30 (I had to get out $40; stupid ATMs and not giving out tenners. If I remember rightly, we spent that ten dollars on food after I got home late and exhausted on Wednesday night :S)

    Almost $120 on gas (that’s two  full tanks. We used about 1.5 to get there and back, plus a fair bit of driving around while up north. The rest will last us the rest of the week. It’s unbelievable how economical the first half of the tank is – we went SO much further than we did on the second half! Must start filling the car up rather than leaving it as long as possible.

    $70 to hire scooters for an afternoon up north (seriously, hooning around on scooters is a GREAT way to sightsee.) They were $35 each; we rented one for the both of us, and paid for another for a friend, who’ll pay us back later this week.

    $290 for work on the car plus a warrant (check) – included fixing up the rust in the boot, two new tyres, and fixing up the loose windscreen seal and the broken driver’s door lock (done when the car was broken into in Kelston….)

    $30 for engine oil and a new oil filter

    $60 for food over the weekend (around $15 of which, again, we paid for our friend and are expecting back). Included disappointing food at the ‘best fish and chip shop in NZ’  in Mangonui

    $4 to go through the new Northern Toll Road (both ways)

    And we still have to buy groceries for the rest of the week!

    I’m still not sure how we’ll deal with the extra car and gas expenses – the trip was pretty spur of the moment. T is doing a few days’ worth of one-off work, and is due to be paid again for his coaching work (we’re still not sure how their pay cycle works. He was paid once, halfway through LAST month and not again since. He started there at the beginning of September, but had three weeks off due to school holidays, plus one rain day and today being a public holiday).

  • October 20, 2009

    Money and relationships – when it all goes pear shaped

    One of my flatmates and his GF have broken up.

    I’m quite sad – she was lovely and sweet. She had a fondness for bourbon and pornos, but was surprisingly intelligent and unskanky for a westie type (if you’ll pardon the stereotyping, but they exist for a reason…and I consider myself one as well, to a degree) and incredibly giving. To a fault, actually. Her generosity extended to going halves with him on a car (I think to the tune of $500), and advancing him $800 for the bond on our new place, despite the fact she didn’t even live here. She did it to help him out, that’s all.

    Now he’s found himself some hobaggy little blonde and ditched her.

    I have no idea what’s going to happen with all the money he owes her; BF says she gave him literally everything she had, and wiped out her savings. I don’t imagine the breakup would have been pretty 🙁 in fact, he had been seeing the blonde possibly even before dumping her… we just suddenly stopped seeing the GF around the house and saw the new chick hanging around.

    Poor taste, I say.

    NB: Tomorrow’s post will be protected – I’m talking about work related stuff and don’t want it to be all out in the open. You can email me at eemusings(at)gmail.com for the password

  • October 20, 2009

    Despite the massive mountain of assignments I had to work on, this weekend shaped up pretty well!

    I did a quick mystery shop on Sunday, did a spot of baking (using a recipe I’d been wanting to try out for ages), and caught up on laundry (I was all out of clean undies – no joke).

    We also went grocery shopping – last week we spent $20 less than the budget, and this week we came in right on target. For our $120, we got tons of veggies, meat, as well as a couple of treats. Strawberries are back in season – woohoo! We also bought a couple of herbs – chives and basil – which I want to put out in the garden.

    And lastly, we went up Mt Albert and went for a walk around the top. Now I’ve been up Mt Roskill, Mt Eden, Mt Atkinson… but never Mt Albert. The entrance is tucked up some leafy side streets; you’d never know how to get up there! The hillside is obviously a pretty wealth area. The houses are old and palatial and I wouldn’t even want to guess at how much they go for. Anyway, it was all very quaint – we went for a bit of a jaunt around the peak, looked for four-leaf clovers (unsuccessfully) and T picked a few flowers for me. Very Enid Blyton.

    Spending

    I finally got paid for all my overtime back during Fashion Week! Most of this went towards cancelling out the overdraft we racked up over the moving period.

    $50 in Vodafone topups for both me and T
    $22 at the butcher
    $25 on gas
    $80 at the supermarket
    $22 at Fruit World
    $21 pn misc. food and drink

  • October 12, 2009

    Spending report

    Ouch, is all I can say. We spent quite a bit on food and fun – on Saturday our pantry was bare, so we bought lunch, then we headed over to the Diwali festival downtown at night, indulged in some scrummy Indian food, then onto a bar for a 21st. The bus lockout is also wreaking havoc on my budget and probably will continue to do so all week.

    $20 for gas
    $20 for the bus (thanks to the lockout)
    $15 that BF spent on lunches during the week and technically wasn’t supposed to…
    $9.30 for dinner on Thursday and $5 for my lunch on Friday (again, with the running out of food! This week though, I drew up a meal plan. AND we spent less on groceries than normal)
    $4.50 for an emergency run to the shop for toilet paper
    $8.20 for lunch on Saturday
    $20 cash withdrawn, of which we spent $18 on various dishes from the stalls at Diwali. So worth it!!
    $8 for two drinks at the bar
    $3 for BF’s contribution to a barbecue today.

    I also need to pay back one of my friends for a joint birthday gift from last week – I THINK it was about $24; I asked her to send me the details again, but she hasn’t replied…

  • October 11, 2009

    The grocery game

    Personally, though I’ve done virtually no travelling – and certainly not on my own dollar – I think food in Auckland is somewhat overpriced.800px-Apples_supermarket

    Let’s do a comparison, shall we? Worldwide readers, feel free to chime in!

    (I’m aiming for budget brands/lowest sale prices here; bread, for example, can run up to almost $5 a loaf, and chicken up to over $20 a kilo)

    2 litres of milk – $3.20
    Cheapest loaf of bread – $1.40
    Boneless chicken breast (with skin on) – $9.99 kg, at the lowest
    Cucumber – 99c in summer, 3.99 in winter
    Kelloggs cornflakes – $2.99 for 500g, on sale
    Tomatoes – around $1.99 kg in summer, up to double or more in winter
    Potatoes – $1.99 kg, although we sometimes buy in bulk which is slightly cheaper
    Cabbage – $1.49
    Bananas – $1.79 a kg at the lowest when in season
    Beef mince – $5.99 kg, at the lowest – up to a ridiculous $13.99 sometimes at the supermarket for the premium stuff
    Cheese – between $8 and 10 a kg, at the moment?
    Muesli bars – varies by brand, between $2.50 and $3.50 at the lowest for a 6pack
    2 litres of ice cream – $3.50, at the lowest
    1.5kg flour – $2.50
    1 kg sugar – $2
    Eggs – we usually get a 20 tray for $5
    Pasta 500g – $1.10
    Pasta sauce – $2.99 for 700g (cheap stuff) or $3.50 for 500g (better stuff, on special)

  • October 8, 2009

    Nice surprise!

    I tweeted last month about my power company switching up their billing cycle and moving their due date forward. In the upheaval of moving, I went to pay my bill on the usual date and was mighty annoyed to be charged an extra $60!

    (Basically, we get a 20 per cent discount if we pay in full by the due day. It’s a pretty substantial discount – no other electricity provider does more than 10 per cent off as far as I know).

    Anyway, last week I took a final reading at the old place and got my final bill today. I was super confused, because the “amount due” was less than the charges. I called up Energy Online to find out just what the hell was going on.

    Apparently, even though I missed the deadline last month, they were kind enough to give me the discount, and credited the extra $60 odd back to my account. Woohoo!

    I wonder if this is a tactic to get more people to cough up on time? I wouldn’t be surprised if many customers are falling behind at the moment…

  • October 7, 2009

    Donating to charity

    Oy, guys, I made my first real donation to charity!

    I’m not counting things like dropping change into collection buckets, or doing the 40-hour famine as a kid.

    I mean a proper “grownup” kind of charitable donation.

    Granted, I did it with reward points I accumulated, so it’s not coming out of my own (holey) pocket. And after the conversion to real dollars, it only comes out to $5.  But that doesn’t make it any less valid – right?

    I picked Ronald McDonald house as my charity. I’ve been wanting to show my appreciation and do something to give back ever since T’s nephew was hospitalised earlier this year. Ronald McDonald house provided a place for his parents to stay nearby and cellphones so they could keep in touch with doctors and nurses.

    They inspired me to want to help out, because they were so awesome at helping this family in their hour (or week) of need. It’s not something I’ve blogged about, because the circumstances around the whole thing were pretty touchy, so I won’t go there. Let’s just say the baby is doing unbelievably well. He’s recovering well and is getting back on track, and should be just fine.

  • October 6, 2009

    Weekend spending

    Our kettle started leaking a while ago, and I finally got around to returning it this weekend. T’s sister had a spare one which she gave us, so we got a straight refund instead of simply exchanging it for a new one!

    So, in: $29.99 back to us.

    Out: $120 for groceries

    $3 for six months worth of the pill

    $12.99 for Saturday lunch (Indian food. So good)

    $5 for a cocktail at my friend’s party (gotta love subsidised drinks)

    $12 for a mini screwdriver set T needed to do one little job. Still considering whether to take it back – I guess it’s a little unethical though, plus he wants to keep it!

    2. In many tests, offenders who receive restorative justice
    commit fewer repeat crimes than offenders who do not.
    3. In no large-sample test has RJ increased repeat offending
    compared with CJ.
  • October 3, 2009

    Money down the drain

    Like Carrie‘s partner Lloyd, my boyfriend has a love affair with shiny, expensive flat screen TVs. I’m of the opinion that as long as it picks up more than two channels and doesn’t crackle excessively, I’ll have it! Luckily, we do have a flatscreen (keeps him happy) and we got it for free (keeps me happy). 42-inch-lg-42pc1d-plasma-tv

    How, you might ask? Comes with having a handyman around – and a sneaky one, at that. Someone he knew had the TV sitting around, with the display not working. He had a quick look, determined that a fuse (?) was to blame, and offered to take it off their hands for $15. Which they never ended up asking for.

    A bit underhanded? I don’t think so. If it had been a friend, yes, but this wasn’t a friend by any means. I’d chalk it down to business, pure and simple.

    Of course, that’s never the end of it. I refused to get pay TV at the old place. One, because it’s a waste of money IMO. I would have been paying for him to have it, essentially, and I wouldn’t have got any benefit from it. And two, I wasn’t going to be signing up for a 12 month contract! (Incidentally, the heinous flatmate eventually got Sky in his room, and they all congregated in there every Sunday to watch wrestling, and on the odd Monday for pay-per-views.)

    Now we have cable at our new place  and I never watch it). Now that he has a job T pays his share out of his own money, but now they want to get MySky (a little bit like Tivo I think). I’m like, seriously? What a friggin waste of money! It’s installation PLUS a monthly fee, and for what? Recording two thinigs at once? Pausing programmes?

    Honestly, I’m the only one in the house who has a fulltime schedule; everyone else spends most of the week sitting at home on their asses. And they all like the same things, so tend to watch the same shows – ones about cars, cops, and wrestling. They have no need for something like MySky. But they’re all super keen to fritter away their cash on crap like that just because there’s a “discounted” installation, or because  T’s sister (a stay at home mum) gushes on about how much they use MySky now and how great it is. Yet she was perfectly happy before MySky came along. It’s one of those things companies convince you that you need and rip you off for. – things you “never knew you needed”.

    I guess if they do end up getting MySky, and it’s only a few extra dollars a week/month, I’ll bite my tongue. But I’ll still resent it…

    • Previous
    Next