fbpx

Browsing tag: money

  • July 15, 2009

    Kiwisaver

    Got a letter today from IRD, a rather unexpected one.

    Seems BF was automatically enrolled in Kiwisaver for the job he was at briefly, earlier in the year.

    I assume it’s too late by now to opt out, and honestly the horror stories I’ve heard make it seem not worth the hassle of even trying.

    Longterm, it was in the plan for him to join Kiwisaver anyway. And seeing as he’s not earning, it doesn’t make much difference, and at least he’ll get the $1000 kickstart. Hopefully that alone will encourage him and show him it really is worth it! You can’t complain about free money.

    Only thing I’m worried about is whether he’ll have to contribute from his unemployment. It’ll be only be about $4 per week, so I guess that’s a moot point anyway. More importantly, I’m looking through the booklet we were sent; he’s in one of the default schemes with AMP and I don’t like the look of their charges. If he’s not going to be working and therefore not putting money in, I don’t want fees eating away at his account! I’m going to get out that Mary Holm book on Kiwisaver, but in the meantime if anyone can recommend a scheme that doesn’t charge big fees and doesn’t have large minimum contribution requirements, please chime in!

  • July 5, 2009

    A little bit of a PF rant

    Not everyone is smart about money. I get that.

    BF comes from a financially illiterate family. Draw from that conclusions what you will. I find it frustrating to hear him say “Oh, ______ got a flash new TV!” But of course, that flash new TV is on hire purchase at an exorbitant rate. Saving up for things is unheard of, even scorned, for the most part.

    I’m trying to teach him differently. I doubt he’ll ever be able to handle credit responsibly, at least not for a long time. He’s a cash-only kind of person. I’ve also managed to scrape together a small EF for him, which I’m willing to bet is more than anyone in his family could say the same of.

    I would never, ever dream of deliberately having a child and going on welfare. If I was going to have a child, I would have a plan in place. And yes, I know accidents happen. If an accident happened when I was more established in life, I suppose that might be work-round-able. But right now? No way. No possible way. I would condemn anyone who brought a baby into the world, barely able to make ends meet themselves, with no established career or fallback, and I certainly wouldn’t do it myself.

    BF says things that I really don’t like sometimes. I know he doesn’t actually mean them, especially when we’re both on the downers, but still. For example, we were discussing the above situation; he said something along the lines of “oh, that would be okay, I’d just get a crap job, you’d get money for the kid, etc”.

    That’s just unfathomable to me. A life of always struggling, always worrying, never having enough, always being at the bottom of the ladder. I hate that he can even say something like that – I know he wants much, much better for us in our lives. So it frustrates me when he comes out with lines like that.

    The middle brother of his family has just moved out on his own, with the one car the family had. Originally he had a scooter, but he ended up taking the car and driving to and from work every day. Now the car is with him, the scooter left behind with the family, who now have to rely on others to help get them around.

    That totally bewilders me. I mean, I don’t have kids. I don’t know what it’s like. But to send off a kid, working full time with a pretty decent income, with the car, putting yourself in a really difficult situation? And the kid, to take it? It’s not like he can’t afford to buy his own.

    I said that to BF. I pointed out that obviously Brother is capable of saving; he went to Aussie for Christmas after a few months of socking money away. BF gently said that he knew him much better than me, and that he would have only saved exactly as much as his mum told him to, and not a cent more (and then blew a whole lot more $ while over there).

    Gah. People frustrate me. I hope I can impart better to my kids. I don’t know how yet, but at least I have plenty of time to figure that out.

  • July 4, 2009

    Wheel of fortune

    20/20 last night featured a segment on past Lotto winners (presumably in wake of the record $36m jackpot last week). Seriously, the first guy they interviewed must have been the biggest douche they could find. He was unemployed, and his brother bought the winning ticket  in lieu of paying him back the $10 he lent him for a pizza. He must have won more than a million, considering he bought a nice looking house in Auckland (probably around 500k), a handful of cars, motorbikes, and furnished his entire house with expensive stuff – including 6k on tropical fish. And a “meditation seat” from which to enjoy coffee and cigarettes. And he reckoned he was living a Buddhist lifestyle! He reckons he’s gifted about 100k to friends and family and dropped “100-200” many times on helping out people with “overdue bills”, because what’s the good of having money “if you can’t help people”? thing is, once you start handing out money to people, they’ll just keep asking, or expecting you to bail them out.

    The next piece gave me a huge shock, because I recognised the couple’s house instantly. It’s a house right around the corner from my parents, and also around the corner from one of my friends (whose place we happened to be at, at the time!). One of those beige/terracotta, cookie cutter post-2000 mcmansions. Every time we went past we’d take notice of the (somewhat ugly) yellow Porsche parked in their driveway. I mean, it’s a fairly nice suburb, and there are a lot of wealthy people living there, but none so ostentatious; think more middle to upper class, rather than Remuera rich. Anyway they seemed like a nice enough couple. Down to earth, sensible, pretty blonde kids – one of whom I’m sure I recognised from school. They sat on the money for a while, and didn’t even tell anyone for a few months.

    That’s the way to go IMO – in fact, if at all possible, I don’t think I’d even tell anyone! But I suppose something as huge as winning the lottery is impossible to keep to yourself forever. This family went travelling to heaps of different countries, doing some shopping, and obviously buying a nice house and cars, and by the sounds of it presumably still have a tidy sum left. Maybe they should hold classes for Lotto winners on how best to conduct themselves. The Lotteries Commission has a book they give to Lotto winners – tips, advice, etc – but I’m willing to bet no one never actually reads it.

  • July 2, 2009

    Getting back up

    Like a lot of other bloggers, I’ve been feeling really discouraged lately. It seems like BF will never be debt free at this rate, not while he’s not working and can’t put anything towards paying down the car/Visa.

    There’s no wiggle room in the budget at all, which is so disheartening. I mean, we need to buy:

    BF a coat/jacket (he has one jumper. ONE).
    TV aerial (we’ve been using a coathanger)
    Steering wheel cover (ours is really slippery)

    These are all such small things, which makes it all the more frustrating when we can’t even afford them.

    Things like wanting to go out for a burger becomes a HUGE deal, with either me resenting him for asking, or him feeling bad for nagging.

    (And I paid almost $700 of bills this week (water and power) from savings, because neither of our flatmates came up with a cent on time.I can’t wait to be out of here. Almost anything has to be better than this. I actually really dislike being at home.)

    Fridays and Saturdays are sometimes the hardest – a lot of the time we just hang out at home, but every so often you need to get out. Finding something inexpensive to do at nights  can be really hard. If money was no object, I’d probably go out to eat at different places a lot, and I’d like to go to the theatre and musicals and gigs.

    I’m also finding it hard just to BE social and to want to go out. It’s been a tough year so far, and it’s not going to get easier anytime soon. I’ve always thought of myself as a strong person, but I don’t feel that way anymore. The first few months were okay…we just soldiered on as best as we could, but now it’s really getting on top of me. Most of the time I’m feeling pretty fragile, and on the edge. A couple of weeks ago I was at a friend’s house for drinks, and just didn’t have it in me to be bright and sparkly and sociable. And a well-meant comment sent me stumbling out to the deck in tears, while everyone kept drinking and being merry inside while I just cried for a while, feeling utterly alone. And I ditched end-of-exam drinks early today – just wasn’t in the mood

    Ugh. I’m not feeling it, and I can’t fake it.

  • June 29, 2009

    Making small change, with online survey sites

    Here in NZ we don’t have half as many online moneymaking sites as they do in the States, by the looks of it. There just aren’t as many people to sustain online survey sites and focus groups.

    There are three main sites I use. I visit Smilecity everyday – there are “daily web clicks” (you just click through to a link, wait ten secs and get your 2 points) and “quick survey” poll questions. At least once a week you also get “reward mails” – click through the link to get points. And every so often, you’ll get sent survey opportunities which can give you anywhere from 20 points through to the hundreds! Smilecity also partners up with a bunch of retailers, so if you buy anything from one of their partners you’ll also get Smilecity points. It’s a pretty comprehensive scheme now that I think about it…

    You can use points to buy things in auctions, or just cash out. I simply take the cheque option. Once you reach 3300 points you can get a personal cheque for $30 sent to you (used to be 3200 points). Make your balance grow faster by putting them in the “ebank”, where they’ll compound with interest. I’ve been using the site for a few years now and usually cash out once or twice a year, depending on how it goes. It only takes a few seconds every day, plus the odd survey, which adds up over time!

    I’m also signed up to Valued Opinions and Your Voice. They’re both really similar. Even the sites look like! I have trouble telling them apart to be honest, especially since I realised their rewards are almost identical. Every so often you’ll be emailed links for surveys and if you qualify for it you’ll earn reward dollars for every one you complete. It’s worth the time – sign up on a rainy afternoon, fill out your basic profile and wait for the survey invites to roll in! You can donate to charity or get vouchers from the movies, Farmers, Rebel Sports and similar stores.

    I’ve also recently joined Buzz The People – I’m currently just shy of the 2000 points needed to redeem a reward, so can’t really gauge how good it is. But I must say, I only joined earlier this year and have hardly noticed the time it took to earn these points. I thought I’d surely still only be in the few hundred points range! So it’s been relatively quick and painless – most of the surveys are fairly short, interesting and straightforward. A lot of them give you entries into prize draws (I can’t remember if that’s in ADDITION to, or INSTEAD of, points). I might donate my points to charity, or get out a supermarket of petrol voucher. Still undecided!

    Don’t get me wrong. None of these are big moneymakers by any stroke of the pen. But they’re relatively painless ways to make a little extra or to earn free vouchers. And, if you care about that sort of thing, you’ll often get to give your opinion on products/services/advertisements while you’re at it.

  • June 28, 2009

    Lunches at work – to bring, or to buy?

    Always the Planner and Broke Grad Student recently posted about bringing your own lunch vs buying it.

    I bring my lunch every single day. Occasionally I allocate myself $10 for one lunch out (while I worked fulltime over the summer I did that once every couple of weeks, and I usually went to Revive and used one of their vouchers which they send out in their weekly e-newsletter). I usually have something like pasta, sandwiches, salad, leftovers, fried rice or soup, along with fruit, a muesli bar and crackers/cookies/my own baking. Yeah, it gets repetitive, but for as long as I can remember I’ve never really had exciting lunches. For most of primary school I had tuna sandwiches (I don’t know how I did it) and after I first moved out and was living on a shoestring, I ate jam sandwiches for months on end (can’t stand the stuff now!) So as long as I rotate the main component every so often, it works for me.

    It doesn’t take me that long to make my lunch – just a few minutes the previous night most of the time. Eating out takes time. You have to leave the building, decide what you want, walk there, order and wait for your food. THEN you get to eat it. Places like Subway and restaurants with ready made food, that’s not an issue, but if you go to a food court or something you could be waiting for a good 15 minutes. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of time! I only have a half hour for lunch, although nobody is too strict about that. By the time I get my food and walk back to the office, my lunch break’s pretty much over. And sometimes work is just too busy to take any time to go out. What then?

    Luckily, most of my coworkers bring their lunch. A few gather everyday at noon in the lunchroom, without fail. Others eat at their desks. (I’m a desk eater!) Like ATP, most people at work  socialise in passing – in the hallways, in the lift, while making tea or by the water cooler. So I don’t feel ostracised for bringing in food.

    I’m also a person who gets kind of paralysed by choice. I’ve gotten even worse of late, because eating out used to be a big treat when I was little. We rarely ever ate Wendys, Subway, BK, KFC, or imitation butter chicken/chow mein, etc. It’s not that I’ve overloaded on any of those things – they’re still expensive, after all! – but now I’ve eaten all of them enough to no longer be impressed. Very little appeals to me anymore; in fact when BF and I are looking for a quick dinner, it inevitably turns into a marathon quest because nothing looks or sounds especially good to us. It’s the same with lunches in town – they’re incredibly overpriced, and too often don’t even taste good.

  • June 27, 2009

    Tracking purchases

    When I first got my credit card in my first semester of uni, I used it for online purchases, or really large purchases. So honestly, I hardly ever used it, and tracking purchases wasn’t even an issue.

    Then I started to realise that A) I could be making rewards points by using it for things like groceries, gas, etc every week – easily a couple of hundred dollars and B) I could be cutting down on my bank statements. Seriously, they were running to about 5 pages a month, once you factored in all our payments, purchases, and flatmates depositing rent and bill money. Instead, I ended up wih longer Visa statements (the print is tiny, though) and it means when I graduate and no longer have unlimited free transactions, I won’t be stung with nasty EFTPOS fees.

    I used to meticulously make notes in my phone every time I purchased anything on my Visa. You know, $20 for gas, $10 for lunch, $120 for food, whatever. Then I’d get home and transfer over the full amount (usually, before the purchases even showed up on my transaction history).

    But I’ve been SLACKING lately. No more keeping track of purchases. Nope, I have been lazy and caught up in the craziness that’s been 2009. I’ve just been waiting for everything to show up as a transaction, then transferring over money to the Visa. I don’t like it. It’s sloppy and it would be far too easy to overlook one or two purchases.

    Can’t moan about it to BF though – he just goes “Oh, so you’re finally using it like normal people use their?”

    ARGH!

    I…will….breed….this train of thinking out of him.

  • June 26, 2009

    When is cheaping out okay?

    Dog and Kristy posted about the things they refuse to cheap out on. I always like to read these kinds of posts; everyone has different priorities and no two people are ever going to have the exact same list.

    I definitely agree with Dog on going for the better neighbourhood. After living here, I’m determined to only go up the suburban ladder, not down. This story about a family who’ve been burgled seven times (why haven’t they moved by now??) elicited floods of responses, with people wanting to share their stories of being robbed. Anecdotally, Auckland’s burglary rate seems ridiculously high. If you haven’t been affected, no doubt you know somehow who has. The common theme was just how powerless and helpless you feel after being hit by thieves, and how little (if anything) police can do. Even with proof. There’s only so many times you can claim insurance before your premiums hike, and if you’re a homeowner, moving may not be as easy a solution as it sounds.

    And kitchenware for sure, if you can afford it. Especially knives. Nothing worse than hacking away at a cut of meat with a blunt knife, or trying to slice through a stubborn tomato (and probably nicking yourself while you’re at it!).

    We also try to make better food choices when we eat out. Less greasy, fast food crap; we try to pay a little more for maybe Thai or something, instead of nasty food court sweet and sour pork or Maccas.

    Work clothes are also something you need to invest more in, methinks. That’s really going to hit me once I graduate; I’m going to need to build a proper work wardrobe, and seeing as I don’t have truckloads of cash at my disposal, I’m going to have to go with fewer, but better quality pieces.

    For me, I also need good skincare and foundation. I have difficult skin – super touchy, super sensitive, yet super oily. I think I also have mild rosacea, so I need gentle products that aren’t extra moisturising because they’ll turn me into a grease slick. So many products are designed with sensitive, DRY skin in mind (which granted is more common than my kind), so it’s a struggle sometimes.

    And sheets! I can’t stand cheap sheets. They get scratchy and lumpy in no time at all, and I twitch in revulsion at the though of having to lie on them (even with a layer of pyjamas in between). Nope, gotta be good sheets that last awhile.

    Batteries and electronics. I mean this in the sense that I’d always go for a name brand – generic batteries tend to have very little power in them, and when I’m buying a phone/tv/computer, I want to know that I can trust the manufacturer.

    Then there are the things I’d prefer not to cheap out on (bras, shoes, appliances) but usually do. Thoughts?

  • June 24, 2009

    Irregular expenditures

    I finally got my A into G and calculated what we need to be putting away weekly for our main irregular expenses.

  • Insurance (car) – $10 approx
  • Insurance (contents) – $5
  • Water – $15
  • Car reg – $5
  • Car fund (for Warrants, oil, repairs and maintenance) approx $10-15                             = TOTAL $50

    • And I currently put aside $35 weekly for power and phone bills, which needs to go up to $45. I’d also like to consolidate all these in one Irregulars account, instead of lumping them in with my main savings account. I might also have a separate one for the car stuff (which we have been shunting into BF’s BNZ checking account) …and one day I’d like to have a Holiday account as well!

    Whether we can put this into action? Doubtful. But we’ll see how things go next semester with BF starting his course and with any luck picking up some regular part time work. For now, there is literally nothing left after paying rent, bills and buying groceries. Irregulars are coming out of savings and not really being replenished, apart from the odd extra income in months when I do mystery shopping. But now I have a better picture of where we need to be at.

  • June 23, 2009

    Open letter to Work and Income

    I’ve had it up to here.

    I simply don’t understand WHY it is you continue to make life so damn complicated for us. Yet, you seem perfectly content to keep doling out money to people (including members of BF’s family) who, frankly, do nothing productive with their lives, apart from occasionally pop out another child.

    From the beginning to now, dealing with you has been nothing but a headache. First you refused to even see BF. You fobbed him off with excuses, like how backlogged you were and how long it would be before there were any free appointments.

    There was a whole brouhaha about the fact that I study and work, and should therefore be able to support the both of us singlehandedly.

    Then came the letter stating that we had failed to comply with their request for further information and his claim was denied. Only, you had never even SENT a request for any information. That was just a lie, an attempt to deny him any help he might have been entitled to. And of course, it took another couple of weeks to straighten that one out too, because you can’t just call up to make an appoitment to sort out misunderstandings. It always takes about a week before you can get in to see a case worker.

    Then it finally all seemed to come together. You gave a little, we gave a little, you were impressed with his ethic, and wanted to help him as much as possible because he wasn’t like the other lazy bludgers on your books.

    And then came a letter saying that BF had failed to attend an appointment for LSV (whatever that might be) on Monday the 22nd, and a letter had been sent to inform him about this appointment on Monday the 8th.

    Again, lies. No such letter was ever received. Nothing of the kind was even mentioned to him at his appointment on Thursday the 11th of June, when he went in to discuss his enrolment in the New Start programme at Auckland Uni.

    Now you say a “work test” has been issued for him and his entitlement will be compromised if he does not contact his case manager with a “fair and sufficient” reason for not attending.

    A reason, like…. No such appointment was ever relayed to me?

    And anyone who’s ever dealt with WINZ knows they shunt you around case managers; he’s never seen the same person more than once. Who knows who his supposed case manager is at this point.

    I can only assume they will now take it upon themselves to suspend his payments, and add to my stress.

    Work and Income, it’s time to start playing fair.

    • Previous
    Next