Coffee Art
Courtesy of Mojo Origins on Lambton Quay.
The trouble with Half-Caf.
Although I am somewhat know for my love of my coffee, and in general people think I must be addicted to the stuff, I actually almost always drink Decaf, so don’t actually suffer withdrawals and the “need” for caffeine.
However sometimes I really do want a hit of the real stuff. In fact one of the benefits of drinking decaf all the time is that your body isn’t used to a constant stream of “wake up” juice, so when you really need to wake up (say when driving and getting a bit tired) a shot of caffeine actually has a marked effect. I get very talkative. Well, more talkative, and then generally have a headache the next day.
If I have caffeine and sugar – well – you would need to be stopping me bouncing off the walls.
So sometimes what is nice is to get a Half Caf. Wakes me up without making me jumpy, and without the headache the next day!
One shot Caf, one shot decaf. Or more easily – just fill have the coffee holder with one type of coffee and fill it with the other. Like magic – the juice that comes out the other end is Half Caf.
It’s actually quite hard to explain this concept in New Zealand I have noticed. Getting Decaf isn’t an issue (though there are one or two places left that will serve you instant crap). But so far the only places I have found that understand Half Caf are Bambinos in Carterton (now Tarragon- and thank you Jen!) Starbucks, and Cafe Neo on Willis St in Welly.
But if this is what you really want – stick with it. Most people have their “favorite” cafes that they basically live or work in, so there’s no harm in getting them acquainted with what you like. Most cafes will learn your order off by heart within a few trips there anyway.
A humourous interlude at the bank :)
Much needed after the past few blogs. ASB advertise that they will change foreign currency notes commission free. Having just recently returned from Fiji with a small bit of cash left, I thought I would try it.
So I toddled off to ASB on Lambton Quay clutching $6 FJD (three $2 notes) in my mitts and asked if they could change them an account of it may just get me enough money to buy a cup of coffee.
Bless the girl behind the counter – we had a laugh about it – and lo – my $6 FJD turned into a whole $3.80 NZD.
Which we agreed, that with some shopping around – I may actually be able to buy a cup of coffee.
Where to save some money.
Filed under: Avalon's Money Thread, Cost of living, General Budgeting
2 things have happened in the last month which have actually changed the way I need to handle our money – after 6 years of doing the same thing:
- We have a small issue this month with a new contract which pays on a different day to normal – so our income projections and bank balances are skewed – which means we can’t pay ourselves at the end of the month as usual.
- I have actually swapped the last of our personal mortgage onto the business (which means the interest is now a business expense) so instead of making sure as much money as possible stays in our personal account to reduce interest – I now need to keep the money in the business accounts as long as possible.
I have to admit – its all taking a bit of thinking about and planning.
But ho hum – needs must when the devil calls round for tea!
Because of this, and the fact that I really do want to get some more emergency funds behind us, I have decided it’s time to refresh the budgets and look at some cost savings:
1/ Changing the power bills.
I’m a huge fan of saving money without cutting back on things – and items like electricity bills are a perfect example. I wont actually be using less electricity (though that helps obviously) I’m just intending to pay less for it.
Now, there’s a newish website out called What’s My Number. Its being advertised on TV with people looking a tad daft with post-its stuck to their foreheads – showing how much they could save by changing electricity suppliers. I tried that and got:
Well, that’s not a bad start. The thing is the fine print relies on you being on the cheapest plan for your supplier. And you can do a better calculation by clicking through to the parent website: Powerswitch. Now it helps to have a current bill, but according to that I discovered that a/ I am not actually on Meridian’s cheapest plan, and b/ Powershop could be cheaper, by about $109 a year.
So I have used the switching service provided, clicked and signed up for Powershop. Now they are slightly different from normal power retailers in that you can buy electricity up front, and buy cheaper electricity in the summer. I am kinda looking forward to seeing how that works in practice. I quite like the thought of being in control of electricity supply – rather then getting a bill at the end of the month – and from what I understand this could be a good plan for people like me who are happy to spend time actively managing money.
2/ Printer Cartridges.
Jeeze are these the world’s biggest extortion or what? For anyone utterly frustrated by the sheer gob-stopping magnitude of the cost of printer cartridges (and the printers refusal to let you actually empty the damn things) have a look at The Oatmeal: Why I believe printers were sent fom hell to make us miserable.
Now I have had to do a lot of printing lately – and have a number of (not) empty cartridges that lasted all of 5 minutes. I decided in the interest of environmental concern (and tightfistedness) to get them refilled at Cartridge World. Where I rapidly stormed out of in disgust at the whole $4 per cartridge saving on something that costs nearly $30 brand new. This to me is not a suitable discount for refilled cartridges.
So I looked at both Inkpost and NZ Consumables. Now we actually have 2 different printers (Just. Don’t. Ask) both of them are brothers but – you guessed it – use different cartridges. One uses LC57′s which retail at $27.99. Cartridge world want to charge $24.99 to refill them, NZ consu,bales charge $6.84 for a compatible generic. Kachingg!
(I am at this point totally ignoring the dire warning that printers now display about the terrible and deadly (and expensive) consequences of not using proper branded cartridges as being as pointless and absurd (not to say expensive) as Kiwi pharmacists trying to insist using unbranded Ibuprofen will fail to cure my headache. Utter bullcrap!)
Now NZ consumables don’t sell generics for our other cartridges, but I found in that case that InkPost came out cheaper by refilling my old ones or buying their own brand. The new own brands came in at $15.39 instead of a $22.69 for the branded version. Or if I sent in 3 colours I could get them all refilled for $38.39. Considerable cheaper than the snotty lady at Cartridge Wold insisted was a fair price.
So while I have spent a fair amount on new cartridges – it is WAY less than I would have spent in Warehouse Stationary – or at Cartridge World. I’m rather a happy bunny.
3/ Coffee.
Ok – don’t all faint – but I have actually drastically cut down what I spend on coffee.
Now this isn’t a conscious choice to spend less on coffee. I still have a budget for it, and we can actually still afford to cover that. Instead – I just refuse to pay the current cost of buying a coffee in a cafe. A few weeks ago I actually ended up paying $5 for a cup. Now given that I drink Americano’s (with cream – and usually decaf) there is no steaming of milk to do, and its actually pretty straightforward. But now places are usually charging 50c for decaf and I am now getting charged for the cream more often.
Even the cheaper places are at $4 or $4.50 – and I actually don’t think it’s worth that.
So I now tend to save having a coffee out for when I am with friends – rather than because I just want one – and I make my own and chill with a book.
This month – I have so far spent $27.70 on coffee, out of a budget of $100.
And I am kinda having fun doing all this!
How to make your coffee.
from the amazing yet really geeky Graphjam:
see more Funny Graphs
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Giving up coffee for a week.
No, the world has not come to an end. I’m just in Sydney. And the coffee is just awful.
Now, to be fair, I’m sure there is somewhere in this rather large city that understands that a Flat Whit should not be steamed milk that has had a coffee bean gently wafted in it’s general direction – but so far – 3 tries – 3 unbelievably weak and awful coffee’s.
So I have decided that for 1 week – I am just giving up on the whole coffee thing.
On the plus side – my bacon and eggs this morning, courtesy of City Extra at Circular Quay was SALTY! Not sweet – it actually tasted like proper honest bacon. Actually, I also had a coffee there this morning – a decaff long black, which is my usual tipple. It was pretty good. Sad though it might sound for all the fancy places to eat in Sydney – this is probably my favorite. Basically cos its a 24 hour diner, and you can get a fry up for all of those 24 hours. Not that I have done that – but it’s the thought that counts. I could get bacon and eggs at 1.30am. And like it. If I needed it.
View from the ferry – from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay (and Breakfast)
Sydney Opera House from the Ferry.
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$5 for a coffee???
This morning started off really well. Last night I finally crashed my Evony (Free forever – don’t you believe it!) account which has been hugely addictive and disruptive. So for the first time in over 4 months this morning, I didn’t have to check on the game and the Alliance I was helping to run, (ANZACS) and could get on with the day with a fresh start.
So I had a lie in. With a cup of coffee. And that’s when the day went to custard.
At about 9.30 there was a loud banging on the door. Now we’ve had this before, and you can’t always tell if it’s our apartment or next door. SO I left it. Next think i know, the door is opening, and I can hear 2 men entering the apartment!
I yell out to them that I’m in Bed and could they please leave (or words to that effect), and had to yell 3 times. The request got less polite each time. They finally left, and I got up and threw some clothes on. Then stormed out and yelled at them – with a bit more confidence than is actually possible when you are hiding in bed with no clothes on hoping desperately that they won’t come in.
Seems they “Have Authority” to enter to do fire inspection, and they left notices in our boxes 3 days ago. Like I give a damn? This is a city pad – we don’t get post here, so we don’t check. Does this in anyway make it OK to scare the crap out of me and barge into my apartment without permission???
Hubby popped home (in less than 3 mins) and got them in to do the Inspection while I refused to deal with the twats. While neither of us wanted them to do it all – at least this way they won’t be able to scare the crap out of me again like that.
So that excitement being over – I decided “sod this – I’m going out for Breakfast”. I decided to pop to Brooklyn Bakery which is actually our closest cafe. Via Moore Wilsons to get some Sugar Free chocolate – because lets face it – you need Chocolate when 2 men have just tried to barge in while you’re in bed! Brooklyn have a sign outside saying Bacon and Eggs with coffee $9.50. So thats what I ordered. Except when it went through the Credit card machine- I was charged $17! Which obviously I queried. “That’s only till 10am” I’m told. The fact that the board is still outside and its 10.30 is lost on them – but I refuse to pay it and leave in disgust.
So now I’m left thinking – I have chocolate, I’m miffed, I’ve not had breakfast – and I need coffee. Moore Wilsons sell coffee, but they don’t have Decaff, and I’m already wound up enough without having a shot of caffeine. So I head to the Coffee Cart outside the Telecom office, which is opposite our apartment. Can’t go wrong I thought. It’s also an informal outside office for Telecom from the number of suited blokes hanging round the cart.
I ordered a large Decaff Americano – which is what I normally get. $5! Five Dollars!!! For a shot of espresso with water. There no milk used, so the increase in Price of dairy doesn’t affect it. I mean – it was a nice coffee – but not $5 nice when Starbucks charge $3.80 the the same amount of coffee.
So all in all, not a great morning, but I did get my coffee, ate some breakfast, and ate some chocolate as “pudding”. And next time – I need an emergency coffee – I’m walking the extra 3 minutes to Starbucks and saving $1.20!
I’m now calm.
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How much did we save on our mortgage exactly?
Filed under: Banks, General Budgeting, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
On the 8th February, we paid of one of our personal mortgages. It’s taken me this long to be able to blog about it because ASB wouldn’t send me the closing statements, and as soon as it was paid off (as in about 2 seconds later) the whole shebang disappeared off my internet banking. So I had no way of working out the numbers, or indeed proving that I had done it.
I was a bit peeved.
Well now I finally have the whole statement, from day one to the last day, with all the numbers. It makes good reading.
Now this was part of our original $265,000 mortgage that we took out to buy the family home. We split that into 2 bits – $100,000 was kept as a Variable rate Revolving Credit Mortgage, and the rest was kept as a Fixed Rate Mortgage for $165,000 – that’s the one we paid off.
- It started on 9th September 2005 with a rate of 7.42%
- The starting balance was $165,000
- The lowest interest rate we had was 5.42%
- The highest interest rate we had was 9.15%
- The average interest rate was 7.39%
- We took out a 20year term on it, but paid it in 56 months.
- Based on that – we should have paid $151,356 in interest if we had paid it at the normal 20year term.
- We actually paid $43,607 in interest
- We saved $107,749 in interest.
That’s seriously mind blowing!!!!
We still have $55,000 left to pay on the revolving credit part of the mortgage, but most months we don’t actually pay much interest on it because our savings sit in there and it doesn’t often go into a negative balance. It is at the moment while we have to adjust to Hubby’s self employed income, but its rare to have to pay interest on it.
Which is kinda cool.
You know – this was not easy to do, but it really wasn’t that hard either. And it was certainly worth the effort when you look at how much we avoid paying the bank from here on in. You know – having worked out that saving I think I need a cup of coffee and a sit down – because its one thing to know that that’s gonna happen. It’s a whole other ball game to know you actually did it.
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I think I may have bought the worlds most expensive cup of coffee.
(Written in situ from my iPhone – see – I’m in the 21st century of blogging now!)
This possibly beats the previous shock of the overpriced cappuccino in Venice where we paid am extra €5 to sip the tiny drink in St Marks Square. And even beats the scary coffee I once bought at Robert Harris in Lower Hutt at almost $6 – but that was for a large takeway which looked something like a Starbucks Venti (or bathtub of coffee).
But this mornings coffee that I am currently waiting for (with baited breath to see how many gold plated sprinkles it comes with) has just cost me $4.60 (AUD) Thats about $5.75NZD, so up there with the bucket of decaff from Robert Harris. I am waiting for a decaf flat white. Cup not mug. What the hell would the mug have cost me? My soul??
It had better be bloody good.
The signage is a good start: espresso and gourmet. Hmm.
So the coffee has just arrived.
No gold sprinkles.
Its not a bucket of coffee.
And theres not even any Coffee Art.
And it looks weak (the foam should be showing distinct signs of strong coffee. Its not.
So far nothing to account for the price tag then.
Maybe it’s gonna taste better than it looks.
Nope – definitely not the superb taste I’m paying for!
Blimey – what i wouldn’t give right now for a decent Wellington Flat White. That actually tastes of coffee rather than warm milk. I can only guess I am being charged for the view of a lake (not even the beach) and the comfy chair. I actually really wanted the coffee.
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Todays Coffee Art.
From Sierra Cafe in Wellington.
I have no idea how they did that, but I can say it tasted as good as it looked.
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