fbpx

Browsing tag: money

  • May 24, 2009

    Saturday spending

    7.27 at Foodtown for eggs, milk and a lightbulb.

    3.00 at Unichem to pick up my pill prescription

    19.90 for a stick on silicone bra – this one really annoyed me! They used to be $10. I know I had one, but must have lost it in the move last year. Now I need one for upcoming parties, and was planning to pick one up on TradeMe, but only if I could get it for less than $10. I didn’t try hard enough, and went to buy one at the mall, only to find their price had doubled. Oh well.

    10.50 for a book (via TradeMe) for friend’s birthday present next week.

    Total: 40.67. Crikey.

  • May 20, 2009

    Stocktake

    I opened up my Excel sheet this week and saw that had everything gone to plan, BF would have paid off the Visa by now.

    Sigh.

    Life happens.

    I’ve more or less been paying on his car, because we combine everything, and he’s bringing in next to nothing on umemployment. Which I don’t mind, because it benefits me. Cars make life so much easier in Auckland. So if the car is not gonna be worth fixing, I don’t even want to consider that… But paying down the Visa is not something I want to do, have been doing or can afford to do. I get nothing out of that, in the sense that that was excesses from his accidents and related car repairs. That’s not something I want to be paying for. I guess that’s what comes with combining everything. You share the good and the bad.

  • May 9, 2009

    I need to take a chill pill

    Or at least that’s the conclusion I’ve reached.

    What’s that saying: God give me the grace to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to do both?

    Last night BF and I had a major clash. Well, I don’t know what to call it. It wasn’t a fight. I can’t fight. I don’t do fights. Well, I do in the sense that I sometimes get snippy and short, like last night, and snap at him. But that was just the beginning.

    I’ve been under heaps of stress, mainly financial, plus all the house issues – no hot water, getting the windows fixed (THREE TIMES now glaziers have been meant to come and it hasn’t happened! Apparently the guy today came but left because he thought no one was home – he’s returning on Monday. Neither BF or I are home, so we have to rely on our flatmates for this), the car, and now our toilet flush is broken. I swear. When does it end???

    Then it all kind of blew up.

    I know I’ve been neglecting BF, and just trying to keep us fed, clothed, paying our bills and ticking along. I realise that the last few months haven’t been easy on BF either, but I haven’t really tried to get him to talk about it or anything.

    I’ve been unable to really see past myself and all our immediate practical problems. I knew I was being selfish, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

    I think I’m much more “male” in that sense. I can’t voice my feelings, I get confused about what they are, I don’t like talking about them.

    He really made me realise how absorbed I’ve become with personal finance and money, and not in a good way. Although I’m not quite in agreement with his sentiment (“Even if I knew we’d be living out of a car when we’re 60, I wouldn’t care as long as we’re together”) I think he’s right. I need to back off.

    Maybe if we’re more on track by the end of year, we can still go on a short holiday. If we could manage to pay for say 80% in cash and knew we could pay the rest off quickly, maybe that wouldn’t be the end of the world.

    Every cell in my body is screaming NOOOO! But it’s true, I need more balance. BF pointed out I never spend anything on myself.  No, it would not be the end of the world if I went into a little debt this year because it’s my last year as a student. And it may yet happen whether I like it or not. And, as a student with good credit, I can get interest free overdrafts.It’s not that I am opposed to debt; I’m opposed to bad, stupid debt. But it’s about finding balance, and if debt is necessary, ensuring it is at a serviceable level. That’s what I need to get into his head, especially given the economy.

  • May 2, 2009

    I love the Warehouse’s return policy.

    I don’t know so much about their 10c plastic bag charge, but that’s why when I bought a new kettle yesterday I decided to spend 99c on a pretty red reusable canvas bag.

    Then I got home and found our flatmate’s GF already got us another one.

    Luckily the Warehouse lets you return anything within 12 months as long as it’s in a resaleable condition with a receipt.

    They didn’t used to require a receipt at all, but apparently too many people were abusing the system. It’s still way more generous than most retailers though!

    So, no poorer than when I started (minus the red bag). I wonder if I still get to keep my rewards points from the purchase, or do they retract them along with the refund?

  • May 2, 2009

    It’s never enough

    I don’t mean to sound ungrateful in any way, especially after how hard BF’s had to fight to get a fair shot with WINZ. I’m really thankful he’s finally been approved and is able to draw unemployment. As little as it is, it is more than I expected him to end up being eligible for, what with all their crazy criteria.

    But together we’re making just under one full-time wage, and the longer this goes on the harder it gets. For one, rent goes out on a Thursday. I get my student allowance on Tuesday night, and rent from one of the flatmates at the same time. But I get paid from work on a Friday, and BF now gets paid on a Thursday into his account, so there’s no way that can make it over to me in time. Cue juggling around of money around every Wednesday evening. God forbid I ever forget.

    Wouldn’t it be easier to keep a big buffer in the account? Yes, but that’s not something I want to do. I work a zero based budget. When I first started out on my own I was used to having a cushion of a couple hundred in my daily account. Then I moved and started paying rent fortnightly, and I ended up not having any cushion – and I actually quite liked it that way. Now I’ve adopted the zero based budget, and it works for me. I know how easy it is to inadvertently spend, and I don’t want to wonder where the hell hundreds of dollars went so fast. I already kind of did that this week, transferring over $300 in anticipation of the glazier coming to fix our two broken windows. Bastard still hasn’t shown up since quoting us.

    Grrr, NOT feeling on top of it at the moment.

    Throw in the fact that I am more or less supporting BF for the foreseeable future, especially once he starts uni, and it’s pretty depressing. I don’t want to be doing that for three years, so let’s hope he can get himself a decent part time job over that time. And something for the rest of this year. I haven’t done the maths, but even 20 hours a week at minimum would be more than what he’s making now.

  • April 30, 2009

    How do you know what you can really afford?

    Apparently we in NZ are the third most indebted country in the OECD. That’s scary. No wonder we don’t get 0% financing here, or ridiculously low mortgage rates or car loan rates. I guess that’s why the default rate for a regular Visa or Mastercard is 19.95%.

    It’s sort of reinforced to me how important it is to save. Single Ma had a really interesting post recently- she wanted to go to the Food and Wine festival, but decided she couldn’t afford it.

    Even though she has money in the bank and a fully funded EF.

    So a commenter wondered, why would she say that? She can obviously afford. Surely at least she could pull a little from her savings.

    But that’s dangerous. Where do you draw the line? A concert ticket here, a road trip there, a shopping spree….keep withdrawing little amounts “just this once” and you could easily have nothing left, FAST.

    An EF is for emergencies. Fun things like shopping, holidays and festivals should be budgeted for. They should have their own savings account, not be taken from your long term account. And how do you know if you can afford it? I thought about this for a little while before coming to the conclusion: If it doesn’t work into your day to day budget, you can’t afford it.

    Like that commenter said, it’s the kind of thinking “but I have enough in the bank to cover it! I deserve it!” that keeps you living the paycheck to paycheck cycle.

    I think that’s where BF is still at, and I hope to teach him otherwise.

  • April 22, 2009

    I’ve had around $35 sitting on my rewards card for awhile, and haven’t been sure what to do with it. The smart thing would be to prepay my Visa fee for the next six months, but that’s so…boring. By the time that fee is due I should have accumulated enough dollars again to pay for that.

    Anyway, last night BF wanted to go to a movie, and I figured, why not put some of those dollars to good use? So he got a good night out for free, and found out that he also has a free movie on his movie club member card for next time.

    There’s still $22 on it which I think I’ll use towards groceries (Countdown accepts the card) given how tight things are.

    We’re still waiting to hear back from Work and Income. I’ll be grateful with whatever measly amount they qualify him for. As for helping with the job hunt – ha! Unlikely. They are so disorganised; the times he’s been in and gone through the database, the staff null and void most of the jobs as they’ve already been filled. Well, hello, take them OFF the list then! Apparently it’s not that particular lady’s job. RIGHT. Whatever, SOMEONE should be doing it, cause it’s a waste of time for jobhunters, as well as the case managers who have to go through and turn them down because nobody bothered to keep the database up to date. He’s also been advised to go to another branch office as their job hunting facilities are better, but I really don’t see how that can be.

    Also, we sold that car service voucher (the $40 one we got for $20) to a friend, for $30. And with any luck he’ll let us use anything on it he doesn’t.

  • April 18, 2009

    Finally got around to going to DTR to claim my $60 refund.

    Wonder how long before it gets processed? I plan to use it to get another three months’ of contact lenses.

    Now hopefully I’ll never have to set foot in there again!

    I feel like I haven’t had any control of our money the last few weeks. I’ve been staving off the flu and some sort of stomach issue, and taking various medications has simply left me doped up and still unwell, and with BF not bringing any money in, it’s all very disorganised.

    We got a letter form WINZ informing us that as he did not “respond to a request for information, your application has been declined”.

    The letter was dated April 9. Over a week ago. And just three days after he actually went in for his first appointment.

    And, I might add, we never received any “request for information”.

    So now it’s over to calling the 0800 line and trying to get through to a human operator to find out what the HELL is going on.

    BF hates waiting on phone lines, especially when he’s 15th in line or whatever. Social services are just so overloaded at the moment and they seriously are not coping at all.

    I’m just trying to make his EF last as long as possible, because it’s not looking healthy.

    And now we have to deal with having no hot water. Turns out it was the cylinder, and not anything to do with the LL’s family staying. Now they’re gone, nothing’s changed – it’s just a coincidence our water went around the time they arrived. Hopefully that also explains why our electricity bills are so high! It’s summer for chrissake, and we’re using double what we did a year ago.

    Hope his insurance get it sorted super fast. He’s been made redundant too. And the weather’s getting colder, and my cold isn’t going away…cold showers don’t help any. Up until last week I was managing to squeeze in roughly room temperature showers – ie, the water was MARGINALLY warmer than my body – but those golden times are OVER!

    I just finished washing my hair for the first time in three days. I was forced to wash it in the basin (something I find damn near impossible, hidesouly uncomfortable, and messy), and this required me to boil two jugs of water.

    Primitive, no?

  • April 12, 2009

    Price book

    I’m seriously considering giving up keeping a price book.

    The original idea was to get an idea of what things cost, and what rock bottom prices are, and the sale cycles.

    Unfortunately, I haven’t noticed much of a pattern. Maybe it’s a New Zealand thing. Maybe our sales are more sporadic and based on supply and demand. Sometimes items stay on sale for weeks at a time…and it’s rare to see a significant discount on anything.

    I should probably sit down one day and rearrange all the products so they line up with each other. At the mo they are entered as shown in order on the receipt. I’ve tried to get around this by colour coding some of our most frequently purchased items, but it’s a headache.

    What have I learned from my price book? Not much, except that cheese and milk are getting cheaper, slowly. And that Countdown still hasn’t lowered its dairy prices at all. The difficulty of keeping a price book’s been compounded by the fact that

    a) we split our shopping between two supermarkets. One is generally a little cheaper but has less variety.

    b) the receipting systems are different. One shows if things are on special, and how much has been saved (ie, the original sticker price, and the amount discounted). Makes it a pain to work out what we actually paid, but shows how much we saved as well. Also, sometimes items don’t scan with a very detailed name and it’s hard to remember what they actually were.

    c) meat and veges are hard to account for. They don’t scan with the price per kilo (obviously it’s printed on the packs). But on the receipts, you only see the total price paid. I can remember these off the top of my head sometimes, but not always. And, we often shop for meat and product separately (at the veg shop and the butcher). Keeping track of those, well, is hopeless.

    Any thoughts?

  • April 11, 2009

    Shopping adventures

    Finally got around to visiting Dress Smart today! The cute blue woollen top that caught my eye in Portmans (the city branch) a wee while back is now mine. I went back to buy it a couple of weeks ago, only to find them all gone. I spoke to the sales girl, who told me they had JUST literally shipped the remaining tops over to their outlet store.

    Anyway, I went to the Dress Smart store today. It was marked down another $10 to $20, and when they scanned the label it was another 20 per cent off! So just over $15 for a top that was originally $60. Go me! I must NEVER EVER shop anywhere else but Dress Smart.

    SO, very happy and feeling pretty pleased with myself…

    Then onto grocery shopping. We splashed out on some chai tea, two cute mugs (red and yellow, drinking receptacles NEVER last in this house, they all get broken. Our bowls and plates have all pretty much also mysteriously disappeared. I hate it here), got some flour and sugar (I anticipate some baking) and some Worcestershire sauce along with the usual suspects. I’m trying to get more greens into our diet, so there’s going to be a lot of salads this week for dinner.

    Our checkout girl today wasn’t very onto it. She forgot to process one of our mugs, and I had to pay for it separately (luckily I had a lot of change and paid in cash, it would have really annoyed me to have to swipe my card again). I did my best to check the items as they went through the checkout, but they whizzed through so fast I missed one of the 2 for $5 specials. It cost us about 6.60 instead. I did catch that on the receipt as we left, but figured a dollar something wasn’t worth going back for. It did annoy me, though.

    • Previous
    Next