Upgrades to Avalon’s Blog done :)
Filed under: The Book and Website, The Family Sponsorship Saga
Hubby has reminded me just how much he loathes coding – and was only calmed down my copious amounts of Tea, Chocolate and Top Gear yesterday while he battled to do the things I wanted him to do to the blog.
Mostly it was a case of de-cluttering and tidying things up. It’s amazing how this thing has evolved, and as it does so, widgets get added, things move, I join more blog directories, and before you know it – theres no room for me to write anything anymore!
The main changes are:
- The Family Sponsorship Saga posts have all moved up to the top menu, so they aren’t taking up room on the side.
- I’ve created one picture of the Book with both Book and E-Book prices on to create more room and we have a smaller Buy Now button.
- Ive moved the Really Useful Immigration Links into the Links page, rather than having them sitting with the BlogRolls.
- Ive tidied up and shorted the list of Categories, to make it easier to find posts.
But the main alteration is that the Amazon Store is now up and running, and can be found on the top Menu. This is something I always wanted to do, because I spend so much of my own time devouring books, and this is a great way to have a list of all the books that helped me on my journey – both to emigrate and to become a budgeting freak. Ill be adding books from time to time, but theres a pretty good starting list there: both books about New Zealand and books about personal finance. And yes, I will get paid if you click through from the Amazon Store page and you buy anything during that session. It takes you through to Amazon, and you will be buying through Amazon, not through me.
I get about 5% on any purchases you make, so please feel free to make use of the store and help me cover the cost of running this website.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Grabbed One.
Filed under: Avalon's Money Thread, Cost of living, General Budgeting
Theres a new (ish if you are in Auckland) money saving website thats come to New Zealand, and so far – looks good. Its called Grab One, and I found it via Facebook (fount of all things time wasting) via some friends.
So what’s the deal?
Well, you sign up to Grab One, and then when they have a deal – you can choose to accept the deal if its something you like the look of. Now usually, theres going to be a minimum number of people required to sign up for the deal before it becomes “live”, but if you are one of those first people, you will need to give credit card details, and if the deal goes live, you will have bought the deal. After that, if there are still some places left on the deal, you can buy or not as suits you.
Is it worth it?
Well, today was the first day that Grab One had a deal in Wellington, so its the first time i got to try it out.
As we are intending to go to the cinema at least every other week, and as the Embassy Cinema is 5 minutes (slow) walk away – I though this was well worth a try. I mean $3 for a cinema ticket??? Even on Cheap Tuesdays its $10! The downside is that you can only buy one deal per person, but this did allow me to buy a second ticket as a gift – which I thought I had better send to hubby. So that’s 2 tickets to the Embassy for $6, saving us at least $14.
Now there are some conditions: you can’t use it Friday or Saturday evenings, you cant get Platinum seats at the embassy ( those are the bigger leather couch like seats) and you cant use them for deluxe seats at the Lower Hut Cinema (which have reclining backs). But all those conditions were clearly laid out – in normal sized print, and were really easy to understand – so top marks for not trying to hide anything.
So I guess if you can get money off something you were going to buy anyway – this looks absolutely brilliant. But as with all “money saving deals” it only actually saves you money of you were going to buy it anyway. If you start buying things just because they are on offer – then its actually not saving you money – its making you spend it.
How do you find out about the deals?
There are two ways: sign up for email alerts when there’s a deal in your area, or join the Facebook group and get the alerts as posts on your Facebook newsfeed.
This is currently running in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Waikato Region, and looks like they are expanding across New Zealand.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
How Evony isn’t “free forever” – not by a long shot.
You have probably seen the adverts all over the Internet. The “Free” bit caught my budgeting eye when i needed a new game to play. Ive always played computer games – ever since we have had computers. Which in our house means basically as long as computers have been around. My first experience of a computer game was Colossal Caves – the first Adventure Game.
YOU ARE STANDING AT THE END OF A ROAD BEFORE A SMALL BRICK BUILDING.
AROUND YOU IS A FOREST. A SMALL STREAM FLOWS OUT OF THE BUILDING AND
DOWN A GULLY.
I was about 6.
Then about 19 months ago – when I had those sleepless nights dealing with stupid Immigration idiots in London, I started playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. It was quite stress relieving to take out “hits” on rival mafia, rip off the system, and generally have a blast killing things. It would only have been better if one of the jobs was “Take out the entire New Zealand Immigration Department”. But ho hum. I stopped playing that eventually, because all the “upgrades” made it unplayable. But it was free, it was entertaining and it helped.
I then moved on to Farmville. I didn’t last long on that to be honest. Sowing crops really isn’t what you need when you are dealing with Bureaucrats and blithering idiots. You need something a bit more “bloody” i think. I tried Treasure Mania, which again was free, but in the end i just got bored of it. And that was when I decided to give Evony a go.
It’s not exactly Farmville. For a start, while on FB games you do have “Allies”, in Evony you actually play the game in real time with other people. You talk to each other, you join alliances, you fight together against other alliances, and generally have a blast. And spend most of your life doing that as the addictiveness of the game kicks in.
And thats where the whole “free forever” falls down. Like all FB games you can play for free, but clearly you will get further faster if you spend money to buy “In Game Coins” to spend on items which make you stronger, help you build faster, or help you fight. Where it becomes more important in Evony is that you can basically be beaten to a pulp by other players if they are stronger than you. If you want to be one of the strongest players – you need to play a LOT in order to be able to build up without spending money.
So how do they suck you in?
Impressively I have to say. Heres me: always price checking, looking for a bargain, won’t pay more for something than I think it’s worth – and I’m whipping out the credit card – even when its close to its limit. Give Evony credit – they know how to make you spend! It starts off with a good catch – the 250 cents for $5 offer, which even gets you a Quest and Prestige points for buying it. Spend $5 (US$ so be aware – thats about $7.50 NZD) and you get 50 game coins, plus a bonus pack of items for the game worth 200 game coins. Fiendishly simple. So we did that, and then you get a buzz from being able to actually get more items to play with.
Then you get into a huge war with someone and need to move your cities – but don’t have the items to do that with – Give up and be slaughtered, or buy some coins???? Or you run out of Speed-ups to build your cities faster and just cant bear to wait 96 hours to build your Town Hall up to level 10. So you decide to buy some coins. You can’t use the pack – you need 90 coins to get an Advanced Teleport, and besides, you can only buy the special offer once. So now you have to spend $30 UD$ which is the lowest multiple you can spend. Thats about $45 NZD. And when you do that – you also send all your allies a “Free Evony Chest” which they can open with a key. How do they get the key? They have to spend $30 to get it in the “bonus pack” that comes with the 300 game coins.
You’re a gonna at this point.
How much exactly did this cost us?
Can I get the “in our defense” bit in first? We started playing just after this last Christmas, and came off the game yesterday, so this is about 7 months of gaming. And for just over the last 4 months, I was Vice Host of the ANZACS alliance on one of the servers. (Every server seems to have an ANZACS alliance fighting for Kiwi and Aussie Pride – and we really don’t give up!) Some days it was like having a full time job, and I felt an enormous responsibility towards the other guys in the alliance. Hubby also played, and we both spent a lot of our “free time” on running the game, and didn’t get as much chance to run our own cities – so game coins helped.
In total we spent $881 NZD.
That’s a helluva lot for a game that was supposed to be free.
Was it worth it?
Mostly yes. Oddly enough – it’s not the monetary cost of the game that made me give it up – it was the cost to my health and sanity having to deal with the odd exceptionally unpleasant player in the game. While $881 sounds a lot of money, that works out at about half our Sanity Allowance that was available over that time. That’s where the Budget comes from for games and entertainment. I imagine if I was brave enough to work out an hourly rate, given the late nights and early mornings I was on there, particularly in the last 2 weeks, it would be a scarily small amount per hour of gameplay.
I started playing to help deal with stress. When the game became the stress, and there was no way of stopping people being morons and crapping all over me – it was time to leave. I don’t begrudge the money – it was fun while it lasted, but when there are arseholes who prevent the game being fun, then I’m not going to waste my money on it anymore.
Do I recommend the game.
Yes and no. As long as you know what your are getting into, and can afford it – no problems. But please don’t play expecting not to spend any money. I did know people who haven’t spent money on the game, but it’s rare. By the time I left, I had over 250 “Evony Chests” waiting to be opened. Which means, above the ones I’d already opened with a key I bought, my alliance had spent $7500 USD on the game. And while we made it nearly to the top of the Alliances, before the constant wingeing of a few players started to break us apart, I’m imagining some alliances spent more than that.
It’s a great game. This is a new version of the game, and relies a lot more on being smart and intelligent rather than brute force and ignorance- something a lot of players just haven’t grasped. So if you are more than a “brute force and ignorance” kind of wargamer – it’s worth a look.
I just wish I had managed to get my prestige to 3,000,000. I was 7000 off that, but in the end the abuse from the few people who have no concept of decent behavior was intolerable. It’s a shame, they are ruining a magnificent Alliance, and a magnificent game. Tossers.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
$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.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Me and the MX5: The Finale
Filed under: Cost of living, General Budgeting, Life in New Zealand
Well, let’s just say at this point that Motors: Mazda: MX5 has been listed as a favorite on my Trade Me account as long as I have had a Trade Me account. This is basically becuase when I first started getting into Property Investing, I happened to pass by the Mazda garage in Wellington (as you do – honestly its on the route to Moore Wilsons). And I thought I would pop in to look at what they had in the showroom – so that I could build a “Vision Board” of where I wanted the investing to take us.
And lo: they had this really swanky new Dark Purple (so dark its almost black), shiny MX5 that was just screaming at me to buy it.
I was in Wuv.
Slight sticking point – it was $50,000.
And it was brand new – which means as soon as you drive it out the dealership its worth a lot less than you paid for it. Not great odds for anyone planning on making squillions in the property game. Besides – didn’t have $50,000 sitting around burning a hole in my pocket. But dammit – thats the car I wanted, so it went on the dream board, and I have been keeping an eye out on Trade me for 2nd hand ones. One came up a while back, but still with a price tag of $35,000 which is still too much for me.
Ho Hum. Of course now that I need to buy a new car, the swanky purple one isn’t available – at any price, but I have been watching and planning. I was hoping to be able to spend about $20,000 but in the end the pennies just weren’t there. So I decided to buy a cheaper version – and I can always spray it when I have some more money.
2nd hand MX5′s can be had for between $3,000 and $45,000 – so I thought I’d better be at the lower end. I test drove a few in the 8-10k range, but in the end decided I wanted an Automatic. Basically because most cars over here are automatics, all ours were, and I’ve just got used to them. Besides – my original 2 MX5′s were as well.
On Friday last week, I called a guy in Levin who was selling an 1999 MX5, automatic, British racing green (no pop up headlights). Asking price $7995. A quick price check said that was very reasonable – I looked at one a year older for $11K, and one a year younger at $14k. We drove over to take it for a spin, and I loved it! It was in good nick (needs a good clean inside), but the roof is sound, it drove well and everything worked. Experience says theres not likely to be a huge amount that needs fixing – they are not cars that are run by complicated computers so they tend not to be expensive to fix. And the big expense which was a new Cam Belt had already been done and there was a service bill to show it.
All it took was a call to the bank manager, who had been warned this might be coming, and she put the payment through straight away. The guy was comfortable enough from talking to me to let me take the car straight away, and within 10 minutes I finally had my long sought after dream: an MX5.
We then drove a little north to Foxton Beach, grabbed fish and chips from Mr Grumpy’s and coffee from the Simply Balmy Cafe and had a late lunch at the beach sitting in my new car with the hood down. I couldn’t stop grinning.
In fact – I still haven’t stopped grinning every time i get in the car.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Briscoes: You’ll never buy better?
Filed under: Avalon's Money Thread, Cost of living, General Budgeting
It’s a really annoying jingle and an even more annoying tagline – more so becuase it’s highly dishonest. Briscoes is a chain of homeware stores across New Zealand known for its permanent sales (advertised as “get in quick – 2 days sale”).
The thing with Briscoes is that from what I have seen – the sale price actually brings it in line with the retail price in most stores. We found this when I bought a coffee machine. They had it “on sale” for $499 down from a supposed RRP of $899. Except when i was doing my price checks, I couldnt find any other store that sold it for for more than $499. We ended up buying it at Moore Wilsons.
We have done the same price checks today, and out of 10 separate items, only one of them came out cheaper at Briscoes – a Tefal frying pan which would normally have been the same price as in Moore Wilsons, but had 40% off in Brisoces, and this time Briscoes weren’t exaggerating the price before discounting.
Just be aware of this kind of thing. I have found time and again that “sales” “bulk buys” and “special prices” of all descriptions are a con over here. Why the commerce commission allows it I have no idea – but it really will pay you to check your prices before buying.
Today we saved about $50 on three items where there was a cost difference, and will save another $150 on a few items that I know are cheaper in Wellington stores. Its a start.
Unfortunately I cant actually spend that on coffee!
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Arghhh – having to pay interest on the credit card!
Filed under: Avalon's Money Thread, Cost of living, Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ
Well, for the first time in five and half years – I cannot pay off the whole balance on our credit cards, and we will be paying interest.
This is quite depressing.
I guess I should be happy that its only likely to be a few months where we have to pay, and that we have been able to organise our finances so well for so long that we haven’t had to do this thus far while we have lived in New Zealand. But still – its damned annoying.
Especially since the interest rate is a whopping 19.95%
So – from here on in – hard nosed budgeting and spending restrictions to get us back on track as fast as possible.
Why has this happened?
Some really big bills I’m afraid. Despite the emergency fund, which I still have some left of, we have had some really big expenses come through and no income. The emergency fund is coving our living expenses and top ups on the rentals, but it cant cover:
- Some large medical bills.
- Set up costs for Hubby’s contracting business.
- Legal fees
- Buying furniture for an apartment in the city. (and yes – even though we have 2 houses worth of furniture – it still turns out we need a few things – that was a depressing moment!)
Hubby has income coming in now, but almost all of it is paying the setup costs: new computer, travel, phones, internet bills, city pad – it all adds up.
And at least this time I actually know what I’m doing. I know how to work through the budgets, I know how to cut costs, and I know how to stick to the harder decisions. One thing I am sure of – that debt is not going to be there long. Ill be paying money into it as soon and as often as I can.
I’m just not sure how to cut my coffee budget
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
The NZ budget what does it mean for you
Filed under: Cost of living, Economics, General Budgeting, Property & General Investing
Well honestly – pretty good things for anyone thinking of emigrating. Because no matter what else changed income tax rates went down which means you get to keep more of the money you worked your butt off to earn. And whether people agree or not- I personally believe that that should be the case.
So lets the good bit out the way now – what are the new Income Tax Rates:
Now that has to be good news for earners.
As for us personally – well using the calculators shows that if we were just earning the same 152k that hubby earned we would be doing quite well out of the new rates.
On current rates – Hubby earns $12,666 a month before tax and loses $4093 in tax. On the new rates he loses $3423 in tax, leaving us a respectable $670 a month better off.
There are some downsides. For one GST is going up in October from 12.5% to 15%. But while that’s not brilliant news for a lot of people for many people this is a tax that you have some control over paying. If you don’t spend you don’t pay it. So for the people who want a less consumerist lifestyle when they come to NZ, and are prepared to send less than they earn this works out really well.
There’s a bit if a hit for us property investors in that we can no longer claim depreciation on the building we are renting out. So this will reduce our tax losses and therefore our tax refund. However this is likely to be outweighed by the fact that we will have less tax screwed out of us in the first place.
I still firmly believe that we would have to pay a huge amount less in tax if governments in general would stop spending like there’s no tomorrow because they see us as a constant source of ready funds.
All in all though- this budget basically seems to me to be a really good thing for almost everyone. I have always believed that NZ was a great place to come if you wanted to get ahead financially. Most kiwis look askance at such a suggestion because they think the taxes are astronomically high here. I guess when you come from the UK 40% plus 11% NI plus the gob smacking plethora of hidden taxes- it seems like a breeze here. But then kiwis think 6% mortgages are cheap!
Perception really does depend on where you are looking from.
Your downside is still going to be the pathetically low wages, but I’ve discussed several times that you can do something about that.
It’s more complicated for us because of our rentals, but that requires a sit down with some coloured pens, a calculator, our last few years accounts and lots of coffee. Basically – we are saving a whopping $8,036 a year in tax on the new rates. But right at this moment I don’t actually know how much extra we will have to find to keep hold of the rentals with depreciation on the building gone. I don’t think its going to be as much as we are saving but I’ll let you know what I find.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
What is Swedish Rounding?
In new Zealand our smallest coin is now the 10c piece. Which means if you want to buy something with a price of say $1.99 you can’t get change and effectively get overcharged.
Swedish Rounding basically says that if it’s 5 or under at the end the shop will round down and it’s over 5 they will round up. It’s often dependent on the individual shop as to whether the 5 ( being the midpoint) rounds up or down
So what’s the problem?
Normally it really doesn’t cause a huge issue – for me it’s the principle of the thing that no matter how you pay for something the price charged should be the price you saw on the item. In effect this means that all prices would need to altered to be multiples of 10c which I an damn sure would mean everything goes up in price rather than down.
A good example of this is the the old 45c stamp for standard post in New Zealand. A few people got uppity (fairly I feel) that they tried to buy a single stamp – not needing more than one at the time, and found it cost them 50c. Funnily enough now there is no 45c stamp – the price went up to 50c.
Of course if you pay on an eftpos card or credit card it becomes irrelevant as the amount charged is the exact a
amount of the bill. Oddly shop staff often tell you the bill is a round dollar amount, but what gets charged is the exact amount. I have come across two notable exceptions to this. One was a chain healthfood store who tried to round up from $5.95 to $6.00 and got told to sod off. The other was Radius Pharmacy on Lambton quay who rounded up from $26.95 to $27.00. I didn’t notice that till I got home and did the accounts (many stores actually don’t show you the amount they plug into the cc machine which in itself was a bit naughty). I just assumed that as normal they were telling me the rounded amount but would charge the right amount. I’m not shopping there again
Okay it’s small change. Shops would have to round up 5c seventy or eighty times before I’ve lost the cost of even one coffee. And even then you should find that you get rounded down and save as often as you round up if yo are buying a bunch of things together. With single items though – well – how many things are priced .34 rather than .99?
But what about people on low incomes? And bear in mind that as a migrant that might be you. Low income people tend to pay cash more to avoid the eftpos fees, and don’t have credit cards. So already they are more at risk of getting rounded up than I am with my credit cards. $3.50 lost may not be much to me personally in the long run (though I still to object to it) but for many people that actually could make s huge difference. I wonder if anyone has ever sat down and worked out whether the amount saved by rounding down is the same or more than the amount overpaid by rounding up?
With a Hat Tip for Wafu for his comment which gave me the idea for this blog post.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Tax Changes – boring but important.
Filed under: Cost of living, Economics, General Budgeting, Property & General Investing
In fact so boring and dull, I’ve been putting off writing about it for weeks. But I figured I really ought to get it done, because it could make quite a difference to whether emigrating here is affordable for you or not.
Kiwi’s generally think they have really high tax levels. Coming from the UK, I have always thought they are wonderfully cheap, and its one of the reasons I have always thought you could do financially well here.
So, I’ve already written about the taxes that should be going down – basically the top income tax rate. The finance minister has now “suggested” that the top tax rate will drop from 38% to 33%. That in itself will make a huge difference for many skilled migrants, even if it isn’t going down to the 30% that the Tax Working Group wanted. Company tax looks likely to go down from 33% to 30% – good if you are thinking of running a business, but won’t do anything to fix the fact that people supposedly use companies to hide income for tax purposes.
So the question remains – what’s going up?
Because make no mistake – these are not tax cuts. These are tax cuts equalled by tax increases. For every 1% drop in Income Tax, there has to be a 1% increase elsewhere. Whether people think its fair tends to depend entirely on whether they are paying or saving.
GST
The main increase is likely to be GST – up from 12.5% to 15%. Which basically means you get to keep more of what you earn, but pay more of it out when you spend. So depending on your spending habits, and ability to save money, you may in the end come out better off. At least this is a tax you have some control of. While your fixed expenses are – well – fixed, and they will go up – you can determine how much tax you pay on your non.-essentials by budgeting and shopping around.
Closing a Working For Families Loophole
There’s also talk of making sure that property investors can’t use their tax losses to lower their income and get access to Working For Families benefits. I’m personally a fan of that. Although we lower our income by claiming tax losses, as far as we are concerned we still earn $150,000 – we just plough a lot of it into our investments. So it actually wouldn’t occur to us that we were eligible for WFF (if we had kids).
Property Investor Taxes
Most of the tax hit that Property Investors were going to get look like they have gone. We are still going to take a hit somewhere – but not as much as the people in the Tax Working group (all of whom work in the Share Investment field) would have liked. Which means that a lot less people are about to be bankrupted. It looks like the main rise will be that you wont be able to claim depreciation on the building. It could make investing a property harder for lower earners, but we wont know for definite.
And so far – that’s about it.
Like most things – a report from a bunch of academics and vested interests comes out (at huge cost to taxpayers) which says a load of “academically sophisticated” ideas about reducing tax (I hope they took their own sandwiches to their meetings!). But when you boil it down to what might actually work – you aren’t really left with a whole lot.
We won’t know for definite until the budget in May, at which time everyone can work out whether they win or lose.
For us, while we are highly likely to lose a fair amount in any property tax changes – we also make a fair amount by our income tax going down. The GST will cost quite a bit on our fixed expenses – which is a pain because I’ve just reduced our fixed outgoings by a huge amount lately – and it will make me feel a bit deflated for a while.
Like what Avalon has to say?
Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book
Buy Avalon’s Guide
-
