Dilbert says it all really.
There is just so much of this going round at the moment. IBM have just stopped paying for home internet for its staff, as well as refusing free tea and coffee. Of course they still expect you to work all the hours known to man and be available 24 hours a day when they need you. I also hear on the grapevine that as ever managers expenses get paid without any hassle whatsoever. It doesn’t help my mood on the subject to know that it is Australian “managers” who are deciding this stuff.
It has always bugged me that companies whine about staff stealing pens from the stationary cupboard, or “stealing” time by surfing the net at work – and yet those same compnaies will steal time from thier workers by demaning they work overtime and not pay them for it.
Did you know that in New Zealand it can legally be written into your job contract that you have to work as many hours as the job demands, and that this will be included in your salary – ie. no overtime will be paid. A lawyer once told us that this really has to be kept to civil levels of about 10% over your “contracted” hours – but you would have to argue that with your boss.
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Watching the exchange rates like a hawk.
This is one of the many banes of the Migrant life: when to move your hard earned cash over to your new country. The exchange rate has a huge impact on your ability to start your new life comfortably – especially if you plan to buy a house. The difference between $2.50 and $3 per £1 is significant, and gets more so when you are looking at bringing the proceeds from a UK house sale over.
When we bought our house, the rate was sitting at 2.5 – 2.6 which had the effect of meaning we had to take out about $30,000 more on our mortgage that we would need to if the rate had been nearer $3.
We have recently sold some shares: some in £UK which are sitting in our UK bank account, and some in $US which we have as a cheque. Unfortunately, the rates for both currencies are in the floor again. On the plus side, we don’t have a deadline of a house purchase that we need the money for, so having cashed in the investments, we can afford to sit and wait a while and track the exchange rates.
I’ve learned over the past few years that it does no good to look back at your currency exchanges with a view to “if only I had waited a few more days I could have got more.” I think it is much more useful to track the rate on a daily basis when you have money to move, and work out before hand what rate you would be happy with. When the rate gets to that point – move the money and then STOP LOOKING AT THE RATES. It just does your head in otherwise.
I still use HiFX to do all my tracking and currency exchange as you just get more $$$ at the end of the day. Do remember though – you need to set up your account before you need it. It takes time to set up because they have to get ID confirmations, so don’t leave it till the last minute.
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Just one more reason to emigrate to New Zealand.
So the UK budget is now out, and for the 2 people in the UK that earn over £150,000 a year and actually pay taxes, they will now have to stump up a whopping 50% rate. The reason for this seems to be in order to help offset the truly frightening sums of money that the UK government is set to borrow over the next four years to get them out of the smelly stuff. I think they should perhaps subscribe to Moneysavingexpert.com which clearly explains that borrowing more money in order to solve your debts is a BAD IDEA. Borrowing £606 billion over 4 years doesn’t sound too good to me. The rest of have to make savings – why don’t governments. Oh yes – they just get us to pay for it !
New Zealand’s top tax rate is a fluffy 38% with a 1.7% ACC levy on top. Now that is payable on any earnings over $70,000, but bear in mind that whereas the UK taxes just went up, ours went down for the second time. Our governments response to the recession is that we may not get the next two round of tax cuts we are supposed to be getting over the next two years.
Now in theory, it might not sound like a bad idea to most people to have anyone earning over £150,000 paying a higher rate of tax. (That’s about $375k – $$450k) Especially right now where a lot of people want to dearly understand how so many finance and bank managers got such high salaries while screwing over the entire world. But it is worth bearing in mind that people earning that kind of money rarely have to pay tax on it, as they have the nouse to work the tax system or the ability to pay good accountants to do it for them.
It is the same here in New Zealand. We have a tax system that allows people to legally reduce the amount of tax they pay. It is unfortunately not quite as simple as many people believe, and if you intend to use it to your advantage you absolutely must get some proper tax advice before trying it. If you get it wrong – the New Zealand Inland Revenue will not take “I didn’t know” as an excuse, and will hammer you with fines and interest for underpaid tax.
For a laugh – you can see the reply the leader of the opposition made to the budget. It is rather scathing, but does show quite clearly the enormity of the issue facing UK taxpayers. On the positive side – New Zealand still has need for skilled migrants and the doors are still open.
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Apparently property investing is still considered safe.
Filed under: Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ, Property & General Investing, Retirement, Pensions and Kiwisaver
There was news in the Dom Post this weekend about how “wealthy investors” still keep their money in property. Cool. There is so much fear and uncertainty right now – it can be hard for many people not to run for the hills and panic that they may have made a ginormous mistake in investing in anything other than a sturdy mattress with a hidden compartment.
Kiwis are known for their love of property as an investment, fuelled partly by the fact that you can take advantage of some nice tax breaks here by investing through what is called an LAQC (Loss Attributing Qualifying Company). There are frequent calls for this to be removed, but I for one am making the most of it while it is still there. Also, I think, it is a lot easier to understand houses and renting than to understand buying shares sensibly.
Property is still seen as a “conservative” investment, and not as volatile or risky as the stockmarket. Personally I think any investing is risky if you don’t understand what you are doing – and it is well worth learning about it before parting with your hard earned cash.
The article is a nightmare to read – so I’m not even going to link to it. I really wish New Zealand journalists would learn to write coherent articles. What I did pull out of the article was that “wealthy investor” means US$100,000 – about $170,000 – $200,000 NZD. Wehey! Nice to know.
And also 63% of Kiwi investors in that bracket own property as investments.
I’m not sure that is really new news.
We have recently decided to sell most of our share investments. We still had an Endowment policy in the UK, and some IBM shares. We have decided that now is the time to sell them and use the funds to pay a chunk off the mortgage and cut our interest payments. I’m all for paying as little money to the banks right now, and the investments aren’t growing as much as the interest we are being charged.
It will also make life a bit easier in that we don’t have to keep sending money back to the UK to pay for the endowment policy – which I have to say is getting a bit irritating.
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Something you need to read if you are worried about redundancy.
Filed under: General Budgeting, Jobs & Work, Retirement, Pensions and Kiwisaver
I’m not the only one who thinks it is a good idea to be smart and savvy with your finances now – and to take some control in case the threat of redundancy turns out to be real. Money Saving Expert has a step-by-step guide on how to get things in order in case the worst happens. It is not hugely dissimilar to things I have said in the past.
Money Saving Expert is one of my favourite Personal Finance sites, and although it can be a bit cluttered – it is jam packed full of useful information.
Step By Step Guide To Redundancy
Now this report is obviously geared towards the UK, so some of the legal information about rights and entitlements will not be relevant to people in New Zealand, but the bits about handling your finances refer to everyone.
If you are in the least bit concerned – act now. Even if you are not concerned – act now anyway.
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Mary Holm speaks out on attitudes to Immigrants.
I don’t usually have much time for Mary Holm, mostly because she hates property investing and thinks you must have a screw loose if you don’t sell a kidney in order to set up a Kiwisaver account. But I’ve just read an interesting article from her about why it may not be such a smart idea for New Zealand to ban immigrants on the basis that it could cost Kiwis their jobs.
There has recently been some agro in the papers over migrants keeping jobs when Kiwis are being made redundant – and in the cases that I’ve heard of there does seem to be some legitimate complaints (work visas are very specific, and companies cant just decide to alter the work a migrant is doing).
Mary’s main point is that by bringing Migrants into New Zealand you create demand for extra jobs because those migrants now have money to spend, and need services to be provided. She also makes the point that having got here, many migrants will go onto to create new businesses and thus create more employment opportunities.
I think it goes to show if nothing else that immigration issues are not always as straightforward as they may appear. I’m also figuring that this applies equally to immigration into the UK.
The article can be read here.
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Masterton airport
Filed under: Getting to New Zealand, Hubby's Views, Life in New Zealand
We took a side trip to Masterton airport the other day. With Avalon’s parents arriving soon, and taking a local flight down from Auckland, we thought it worth checking out where it was, what was there etc.
It was a short trip.
Here is the airport terminal;
And here is the departure lounge;
The keen eyed amoung you will spot that it’s the same one room building. 
Now we’ve got all the modern conveniences, like parking for 20 cars, seating inside for 20-ish people, a toilet, and err, a ‘things to do notice board’. It’s great!
No coffee bar though, so we may have to drive into town to grab a take away while we’re waiting. And no Koru lounge 
There’s also no security scanners, no hassles over parking, no parking charges, no drop off or pick up only points with traffic wardens, no shopping to fritter away money while you’re waiting for the plane and probably no queue’s.
The terminal is open one hour before the inbound flight arrives of a morning, to pick up the Wairarapa folks heading up to Auckland. And then again for an hour of an evening before the return flight arrives, to then take the Aucklanders who’ve been down here for the day, back home.
By my reckoning it’s smaller than our garage. But then, I don’t have a runway capable of taking a Harrier jump jet next to us (yet). Although as the local road goes nowhere else, and is a 1km straight run I reckon the local council could be bribed, sorry, given a contribution to reserves, to upgrade the road for me.
Autumn colours
We took a trip to riversdale today – here are some of the amazing colours we saw:
Autum trees on the way to the beach
Sunset on the way home
Sunset a minute later
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A cool response to an officious council worker.
It seems a couple in Invercargil (right down at the bottom end of New Zealand) got a bit fed up with the amount of litter in their area. So they phoned the council to try and get them to do something about it and clean up the mess. A lot of the problems seems to be with the fact that the wheelie bins provided are too small, which means rubbish falls out quite easily.
The waste manager at the council responded by saying that the bins were indeed big enough, and that the couple should clear up the rubbish themselves. “In the interests of being good citizens … I would have thought you would wish to keep your environs in a tidy condition,” Hmmm, in the interests of being a good council worker one would think the manager could be a damn sight less condescending and arrogant.
The couple appear to have thought the same thing, and promptly bagged up the offending litter, took it down the council offices and plonked it on the manager’s desk.
Classic!
Apparently I’m not the only one who is slightly cynical about plastic bag charges.
Filed under: Cost of living, General Budgeting, Life in New Zealand
Foodstuffs, half of the supermarket cartel that runs New Zealand’s supermarkets has come out and said that from August 3rd 2009 it will charge 5c for all carrier bags. They own New World, Four Square and Pak’n’Save, and Pak ‘n’ save already charges for its bags in the North Island. Quite why it is acceptable for North Island shoppers to be charged and not South Island ones is yet to be explained.
At 5c a bag, the 250,000,000 bags they “sell” will bring in an extra $12.5m in revenue. Now lets be clear about this – they already buy these bags (apparently for less than 5c), so they wont be paying any extra – just pulling in an extra $12.5m.
So, what do foodstuff claim is going to happen to the 5c? According to the Dom Post: Foodstuffs managing director Tony Carter said profits would be used to pay for an environmental initiative that has yet to be announced.” Clearly any benefits we get as an organisation we’ll pass on to consumers in other ways.” I would like to see how charging an extra 5c is going to benefit the customer.
But then: A Foodstuffs spokeswoman said “a significant proportion” of funds raised by the levy would go toward environmental projects, the details of which were still being worked out.
So which is it? Is the 5c going to the “environment” or is a “significant proportion” of it going to the environment?
Something else that worries me about this: I once got charged up front for a carrier bag I didn’t even want or need. This was in Ireland – we happened to visit the week they started charging for bags. The guy behind the counter took my card to pay for the goods, charged it and then put my stuff in a bag. I said I didn’t need a bag – at which point I found I had been charged for it already. Not so much as a “would you like a bag for that Madam?” I made him refund the cost of the bag.
I sincerely hope that the New Zealand supermarkets learn that you can fit more than 3 items in a bag and have the nouse to ask the customer first if they would like a bag or not.
Not everyone thinks it’s a con mind you. A 15 yr old is quoted as saying she would accept a levy of up to 20c. “I’m all for the environment.” Fine – if you care about the environment – buy a reusable shopping bag and stop using plastic bags in the first place. Paying 20c does not mean you care about the environment – It means you can’t be bothered to care and just want to pay a tax instead to salve your conscience. All the supermarkets sell reusable bags for a few dollars, and we found a really good supplier of large bags, which sit inside your supermarket trolley:
One thing I have noticed while checking some websites for this blog: all the websites I checked sell to retailers for promotional use. So I think they should smarten up and sell to the public. Again – no point in trying to come across with impeccable “environmental credentials” if you don’t make it easy for people to access your product. Should you happen to find a Trolley Bag somewhere for sale in New Zealand – I would recommend them. We bought our at the Levin “Medieval” Fair.
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