January Financial Challenge – the results.
Hmmm.
Well, I count this as a pretty epic fail.
11 out of 31 days not spending unnecessarily. Leaving 20 days when we spent money that we really didn’t have to.
I am thinking we could do better, so we are going to try again this month, but making a real effort, and see if it makes a difference.
Maybe she should have read some blogs ;)
Lisa Welbourne from Britian is a recent immigrant to New Zealand who is (like many of us) shocked at the price of food.
The problem is that while most sources of information like forums don’t actually hammer on about this (and crap over the people that try and talk about it), there are indeed places that do warn people of the cost of living. This blog is not the only place.
Gobsmacked at the price of basic foods, she has visited a lot of Auckland supermarkets and greengrocers in pursuit of lower prices, in pursuit of food she can afford. She finds it cheaper to buy at smaller fruit and vegetable shops – but that means more fuel costs.
Her friends back home can’t believe it when she tells them the price of food in New Zealand.
“Nice bread is four times the price,” she says. “I told them a loaf of bread was £1 [$1.90] and they said, ‘You’re joking’ … They can’t understand. When I see the average wage in New Zealand I wonder how some people are surviving.”
Lisa and her husband Max moved here with their 2-year-old son just six months ago and they were immediately scandalised by the prices.
“I always compare prices online and you can get things for half the price or a third of the price overseas that you get here.”
Yep, more and money of the money we spend (especially as the exchange rate is in our favour), is being spent abroad via the Internet. Interestingly – last month, Anchor butter was on offer at the supermarket and was the cheapest available. It is the first time in 7 years I have bought the stuff, compared to in the UK where I would never buy anything but Anchor.
But it does depress me that many people are still moving here expecting the costs of the basics to be cheap.
Amazon now charging postage to New Zealand. Boo Hiss.
Argghhhhhhhhhhhh.
The “trial” that they were doing which gave us free postage to New Zealand if we spent over £25 has ended. With bugger all notice. Which is really stupid, because I would have put a bloody great big order if they had given me some notice.
Now though, they will have to wait till I can afford to buy a load of books and the postage.
Or we de-camp to Book Depository, which a lot of people already use because they always have free postage to New Zealand, and similar prices to Amazon.
Funnily enough in the weekend Dom Post there is an article about “The Battle of the High Street”. (Not online I’m afraid). In it the owner of Unity Books in Wellington notes that
customers who buy books from Internet giant Amazon are often only saving the equivalent of a cup of coffee.
To which I can only say that this is utter hogwash. We regularly save half the cost of what it would have if we bought in a shop if not more. When I can buy a Novel for $12 at amazon, or pay $25 in an NZ shop, how exactly does that saving equate to a cup of coffee? Even with the increase in coffee prices.
And the more expensive the book, the bigger the savings. Hubby received a copy of Dilbert 2.0 for Christmas last year. It cost £50 from Amazon (just over $100). It costs over $300 here. That’s a lot of damn coffees.
A recent and topical example would be the Art Of The Hobbit.
- $70 in most New Zealand bookshops.
- $60 if you go to the Bargain Basement Whitcoulls Shop on Featheston St (ooh – let me get me coat!)
- $45 (£23.33 with shipping) at Amazon.
- $37.97 at Book Depository with free shipping (they price in NZD)
- $37.83 at Fishpond (a NZ company, but shipped in from the UK).
The difference between the cheapest and most expensive:
- $32.17.
That’s about 8 coffees worth saved by skipping the high st and buying online.
Either way – even with the postage – it was always cheaper to buy from Amazon than from a New Zealand company. It still is. But we will give Book Depository a go and see how that works out. I still will not pay New Zealand prices for books.
Why does it cost so much to buy tickets to a LOCAL event?
My family were trying to buy tickets to a Local event – the 2012 Wairarapa Wines Harvest Festival. This is an event held in March to allow wineries outside of Martinborough to try and get some of the kudos (and $$$?) of Toast Martinborough which they are not allowed to be part of. Martinborough Wineries are however represented at the Harvest Festival.
It’s been running for a few years now, and is actually quite good. Instead of Toast where you visit several wineries an buses – at the Harvest festival the Wineries come to you – at a site not far from where we live. Set in a beautiful little park near the Ruamahanga River – it does make quite a lovely day.
Now tickets are only $40 – compared t the $70 of toast – but bear in mind you still need to buy your wine (at not exactly cheap prices) and food on site. In fact over the years the staff running the event have got stupidly draconian about not letting you on the bus from the car park to the site until they have checked your bags for water or food.
I don’t bother going now as I refuse to let someone poke their nose in my bag for no good reason!
Now last year – we bought tickets at the Wairarapa Wines shop in Greytown (again an answer it seems to the Martinborough Wine Center), and is run as a collective of the wineries. but this year you can only buy tickets through Ticketec.
Which means added fees.
You either have to pay $11.75 or $13.75 depending on where you want the tickets “couriered” to. The extra is for rural delivery – which in our case means it comes via the normal postman anyway. And of course 2%-2.6% for the “credit card fee”.
Plus of course Ticketec will also be taking a commission from Wairarapa Wines for the privilege of having their tickets sold for them.
So on three tickets costing $120, we would have to pay $16.50 in order to buy them. That’s 13.45% of the price of the tickets.
Which is a bloody rip off – when postage actually costs 60c and would be free if we were allowed to buy them form the outlet bloody well organising the damn thing.
When asked about this – the Wairarapa Wines Center in Greytown basically couldn’t give a stuff on the basis that they will sell the tickets. So why should they care? Only this is local event. Why wouldn’t you allow locals to buy tickets locally? Why would you force them to pay over the odds for the tickets – especially when Ticketec is taking a cut from them as well as from us?
Then they got really snotty and proceeded to tell my mum all about how expensive it is to run a stand at the event. This did not go down well – on account of my parents having run stands at several large UK events a year – with fees that would make the eyes of the wineries here water.
They have a snotty attitude – and for the first time – my family is not going to the Harvest Festival.
Instead, they will take the $120, buy some nice wine (which may or may not be Waiararapa Wine, and enjoy it in the garden, where they wont be overcharged for the wine or the food (and wont have to use portaloos). And can rest easy that they arent subsidising some very snooty people. All they will miss really is the entertainment.
Wow! The internet works
Filed under: Cost of living, Hubby's Views, Only in New Zealand
It’s been an interesting experience dealing with different internet service providers here in Wellington. Capital city, you’d think you could get a decent internet connection. We’ll skip the whole two pieces of wet string connecting NZ to the rest of the world, and Ultra Fast Broadband that the Govt is pumping Billions of Dollars into – ultra fast to where? Jeez, I’d go for an internet connection that doesn’t need resetting multiple times a day.
So it was with some trepidation that we decided to watch X-Men: First Class through iSky. This is the Sky thingy that allows you to watch movies and other box office stuff, through your internet connection. In this enlightened age, our ISP wont even charge us for the data downloaded, it’s gratis!!
Now, normally if we try watching a few minutes of something on YouTube (not breaching any copyright there naturally), we have to let the video stream down and then watch it. Rather than watch it there and then. It’s an inconvenience, but ho hum. You can hear the cogs whirring.
Two hours of a movie via the internet?? It seemed to be asking a bit much. Hamsters can’t run that fast!
So it was with some incredulity and surprise that we watched the whole thing, with some pauses for a coffee break, without a hitch. No pausing, no buffering, no glitches, no having to refresh the browser etc. While the download clearly didn’t like fast on screen action, with the picture jumping around a bit, it still worked.
Which got me thinking. Clearly it’s possible to provide a decent internet service capable of delivering 2Gb+ of data within two hours. So why did it take me over eight hours the other week to upload 3Gb of data? Why can’t the internet service be this reliable the rest of the time? We’re already paying for the internet connection, why is it we have to pay for extra content before we get a decent service?
Or perhaps it’s that the internet is being swamped by so many people watching (paid for and copyright respected) content, that the rest of us plebs have to make do with the left over bit of wet string.
And oh the irony. We finished watching the movie, went to check email, and the connection died.
Time for another reset. Should have kept the movie streaming…
Finance Challenge not going so well.
“Could do better” I think
A financial challenge
As I am gearing up to tidy up my end of year budgets and accounts, I thought it would be kinda interesting to set ourselves a little challenge.
I want to see on how many days of the month we don’t spend money. And I want to see if tracking that actually means we spend less money.
I’m thinking that a bit like forcing yourself to work with cash only makes you more aware of how easily you fritter away money, this would do the same thing. I’ll let you know if it works!
So here is what I am going to do:
I have downloaded a blank calendar from CalendarLabs and printed it out. On a day that we send money that is unnecessary, we mark the day with a red pen.
As you can see – it’s not going so well to start with – we even managed to buy coffee on New Years Day!
Now – this only looks at certain types of spending. It’s not everything – because often its the small amounts you don’t think about that make the difference. For me – coffee, lunches, a paper now and then. So we are not going to count the following:
- Bills such as electricity, phones, rent.
- Groceries (but if we grab some “extra” outside of a big shop – we will count that – we need to be more organised and popping out for a bottle of milk always seems to end up with more than a bottle of milk have you noticed?
- Sanity Spending. The point of which is you don’t have to justify it.
- Normal business expenses. Which does not include buying lunch because you couldn’t be arsed to make your own!
Anything else we will track and see what it tells us.
Edited:
Hubby has insisted that not only should we mark the days we do spend money with a big red cross, but we should also get a big green tick if we don’t spend money.
The 47 Rules of money
Filed under: Avalon's Money Thread, Banks, Cost of living, General Budgeting, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
This appeared in the Herald on New Years Eve, written by Diana Clement. I really like her articles about personal finance, and shes well worth a read. Unlike Mary Holm, she writes about general finance and makes an awful lot of sense, rather than just bleating on about how wonderful Kiwisaver is and how bad eveything that isn’t Kiwisaver is.
She has written her 47 rules of money, apparently in line with 47 years of life. I have to agree with just about all of them – and actually practice many of them. So here they are – with an occasional comment!
General:
1 Track your spending. You can’t budget if you don’t know what you’re spending.
- Probably the single most important thing you can do with your money.
2 Needs and wants are often confused. This is perhaps the biggest financial mistake that people make.
3 Talk money with those linked to you financially. Whether it’s parents, partners, children, employers, or business associates, get financial discussions out in the open.
4 People are too quick to judge others’ financial decisions, me included. But that needs to be balanced against my next rule, number 5.
5 People will justify their bad financial decisions to the end of the earth. “I did all the right research,” one finance company investor told me as my eyebrows went through my hairline.
6 Monkey see monkey do. Children learn about finances by watching their parents, not listening to hypocritical lectures.
7 You can earn a good salary and still be poor. Budget advice services sometimes see people with six-figure salaries who still can’t make ends meet.
- This is one of the biggest fallacies many people believe about money – people who earn more cannot be poor. It just doesn work like that.
8 People can and do lose all their money. A couple of times a generation a collapse such as Black Monday arrives with disastrous effects for thousands of people. Others fall for tricksters such as the off-the-plan apartment salespeople or Ponzi scheme promoters.
9 Entrepreneurship is good. Grounded but entrepreneurial people do well financially. They may not succeed in making their fortune first time around, but often do if they persevere.
10 You can be a capitalist and still have a social conscience. I admire philanthropists.
11 You don’t have to have a high-paying job to get wealthy. I once interviewed a successful property investor who worked by day on the shop floor at Noel Leeming and made his real money after 5pm.
12 Don’t blame your parents, your children, your partner or your education. Responsibility is good when it comes to finances.
13 Even beneficiaries can save. Some people live within their means no matter how little they earn. Saving money is a choice.
14 Some people want to be poor. They think they’re poor and that they’ll always be poor and sabotage their financial future.
15 Pay your taxes on time. The IRD has a big stick.
- And endless funds (paid for by you) to chase you with!
Spending:
16 I regret frittering money on coffees and unnecessary eating out. It would be better to direct that money towards savings.
- Um, Ok – can’t agree with that one clearly!
17 Spending money on experiences is good spending. I am eternally grateful that I sold all but one of my shares at age 22 (by coincidence in August 1987) and went backpacking through Latin America. It’s good spending if the experience enriches life.
18 Braking wastes fuel. This was one of those wonderful chestnuts that it takes a few seconds to get your head around. If you drive too fast and brake regularly, you’re using petrol on wasted momentum. Driving well can save 10 per cent of your fuel bill.
19 It’s moronic to incur fines. Like the maniac driver in a big red American-style pickup truck who overtook me on State Highway 2 on December 17, just to be pulled over and fined.
20 You can get rich one dollar at a time. Every dollar is precious. Think before you spend it.
Debt:
21 Save before you buy. A bit of a radical concept in 2011, but it can change people’s financial future.
22 Interest-free hire purchase deals are for suckers. You still pay an establishment fee and the majority of people fail to clear the debt on time and pay interest anyway.
23 Credit cards make you look rich. Anyone can live well for a few years, but the debt catches up.
- I would add to this that often when you see people splashing the cash around, and you feel sorry for yourself because you can’t do the same – you might want to spend some time wondering if that’s really their money – or a credit card they can’t afford to pay off. They may not be as rich as they look.
24 The only “good debt” is mortgage debt. Provided you don’t over-leverage yourself.
25 Interest payments on personal loans, credit cards and HP are “idiot tax”. Why throw money away unnecessarily?
26 Having a credit card debt need not be the norm. A credit card limit is a safety net, not personal money to spend.
Investments and financial products:
27 Beware of investments discussed at barbecues. When the whole world is piling into an investment such as property, gold, tech shares and so on, you’ve almost certainly missed the boat.
28 Buy property young, preferably in your 20s. Move heaven and earth to get the deposit. Rent is wasted money.
29 Any offer that comes over the telephone isn’t worth having. Just ask the people who were cold called by Blue Chip, timeshare schemes, or horse betting scams.
30 Having life insurance is a good idea. Paying that monthly premium feels like dead money (excuse the pun). The payout when you die can give your beneficiaries choices at a difficult time in life.
31 An entire class of investment can crash and burn. Who remembers: Equiticorp, Chase Corporation, Renouf Corp, Judge Corp and more that collapsed like a pack of cards after the 1987 crash? Then there were tech stocks, mortgage-backed securities and finance company debentures.
32 Shares can be “safer” in the long term than bank deposits. The argument, which I first read on the Motley Fool website, is that over 10 or 20 years good share investments will keep pace with inflation, while bank deposits will be eroded.
33 KiwiSaver is good. This is a red rag to many readers. Government-led retirement programmes get people saving for their future.
- Ok – one point out of 47 – at least it’s in balance!
34 Insurance policies are full of gotchas. For goodness sake READ EVERY WORD of your policy.
35 Property investment isn’t always as safe as bricks and mortar. It can turn to custard. Mortgagee sales happen all the time – especially with investment properties.
- A lesson many people are learning the hard way – you still need to watch your money, be sensible, and understand the basics. It is NOT easy money, it is NOT guaranteed, and it is NOT always a fast road to riches. (You will also meet a lot of arseholes willing to screw you over (Mr Agile Property management AKA Eric Voice) among some of the friends you will make.
36 Markets overshoot and undershoot. If a market’s fundamentals (such as the yield on investment property) are out of historic kilter the market is probably brewing a bubble.
37 The best time to buy is just after a crash. Buy fundamentally good investments when everyone else is bailing out of the market.
- I so wish I was flush with cash right now. One of the painful side effects of buying property at the hight of the market is not having cash to buy in the crash!
38 Beware of investing just to save tax. Is the investment actually any good or is someone desperate to sell it to you?
Financial advice and salespeople:
39 Take your advice from people who have been through several cycles. Johnny-come-latelies going through their first financial cycle underestimate the risks.
40 Your money is your responsibility. Yes, employ a financial adviser, mortgage broker, accountant and other professionals, but make sure you understand what they tell you and double-check that your money is adequately spread.
- Abso-fragging-loutely. NO ONE will care as much about your money as you do. Unless they are looking to take it off you.
41 Seminar presenters aren’t always financial experts. They probably make their money from seminars, not from the actual investment they’re preaching about.
42 Credit rating agencies don’t always get it right. Some companies deceive the agencies, others are part of an industry that may not be well understood by the ratings agencies.
43 Don’t believe the get-rich-quick conmen. You should aim to get richer slowly, but steadily.
44 Government subsidies are a magnet for spruikers. Sharks swarm around government money. Just look at the people selling insulation, heating, and ventilation or those who have been caught selling KiwiSaver door-to-door.
Others:
45 Passive cash-flow rules. Finding ways to make money that don’t need your hourly input makes sense.
46 Telling the truth infuriates some readers. Suggesting that people can change their financial ways brings in a flurry of outraged emails.
47 You can learn more about money. The easiest and cheapest way to improve your knowledge is to get a book out of the library.
- Or – ahem – buy mine!
And I’m adding one of my own:
48. Have a Sanity Allowance. Pocket money is not just for kids, and it will save you a whole heap of money and arguments. Along with tracking our money and actively managing the money – this would be the most useful thing I ever learned about dealing with finances.
Buying Soho
Back in September I blogged about the possibility of buying SoHo, a new pay tv channel from Sky.
Well, we did. At and extra $10 a month on our Sky Subscription.
Now to be perfectly honest – if funds are tight, then pay TV is one of the first things that I would generally consider getting rid of. But we seem to have got through the worst of our financial tightness, and on the balance of all spending figured $10 a month was actually not a bad price.
Why?
Well, it got the 1st December, when the channel kicked over from the free trial to being chargeable, and we couldn’t access the programs we had saved on our MySky box. We figured the $10 was worth paying when we realised that out of the 75% of the hard drive used, 70% was made up entirely of programs saved from the SoHo channel.
I guess that says if we are going to pay for any channels, then that’s the one we should pay for.
Besides – no adverts! Yep – no having to muck about with the remote trying to miss the adverts, and a 45minute program actually takes up 45 minutes of space on the hard drive.
The funny side of catching up on several seasons of Mad Men without ad breaks just makes it more worthwhile.
So good on Sky TV – you managed to upsell me. Not an easy task.
Would you spend $30 to avoid losing $16.
Filed under: Cost of living, Exchannge Rate & Currency Transfers, General Budgeting
I hope not.
But that’s what the people at ThinkGeek were expecting me to do, and as I am sure you can imagine I was a bit peeved.
So whats the deal?
Well, Think Geek is one of my favorite online stores. They sell Lightsabers. And a myriad of other geeky good things: the coolest T-Shirts, Gadgets, toys and gizmos – and at prices that often work out nearly half what we would have to pay in New Zealand (if we could get the stuff here).
We placed our usual Christmas order. The only downside to buying from ThinkGeek is the shipping costs. I have no idea how its worked out, but shipping is via UPS or DHL and will often double the cost of the order at least. Prices in New Zealand are so high that usually that still saves a small fortune – which is highly depressing – but some things do become prohibitively expensive to buy from there.
Anyhow – for the first time, we had damaged goods – a mug. While the overall package was packed securely – no one thought to stick a bit of extra packing inside the mug box – and it arrived in pieces.
Normally ThinkGeek need you to send damaged goods back for replacement but they said given the cost we didn’t have to – and gave us a Gift Certificate for the cost of the mug ($16 USD).
The problem is that shipping costs start at about $30 USD. So to use the $16 (that I have already spent) – its going to cost $30 more. So I emailed the monkeys at ThinkGeek to ask if they would cancel the gift certificate and refund the card instead. The response was that they couldn’t cancel the certificate, but they gave me a code to take another $5 off the order of I placed an order for $40, and $10 off if I placed an order for $40.
So it would only cost $25 USD to avoid losing $16.
Not happy.
So I emailed back expressing my dissatisfaction – and that this would stop me buying from them in future. I really love ThinkGeek – but I will not shop with a company where I stand a chance of losing money like that.
I had an email straight back saying they had refunded the card – not only for the Mug, but for the shipping for the entire order. Now that impresses me. As a “save” of a customer dissatisfaction issue its one of the best Ive seen.
But it does go to show that you may need to stick to your guns. I can see what ThinkGeek were trying to do, but with the shipping costs being so high – giving Gift Certificates instead of refunds just doesnt work.
Of course – we also had the option of going to VISA and getting them to reverse the charges. We actually paid for the order on our UK card – which is a lot easier to get a refund on than the NZ card. But it is good that they did the right thing in the end – and it means I can one day buy my next Lightsaber from them.
Thanks ThinkGeek.
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