The Mortgage Pig

I was on the train today heading to the Wairarapa for the weekend, and I was mulling over our latest money saving exploits. And I was thinking about Fred’s comment and how we actually attempt to make sure that saving are just that – real savings – and that we don’t waste the money elsewhere.

Because of course Fred is quite right – it’s all very well not spending money on something – but if you then spend it on other stuff – you really haven’t saved anything at all.

That’s where the Mortgage Pig comes in.  This was an idea I came across on the MoneySavingExpert forum – and seems to have been “invented” by Aliasojo.

I decided a while ago that I really wanted my mortgage paid off. It wasn’t very large to start with admittedly, but it wasn’t coming down as quickly as I would have liked.

As the mortgage was one of those background constants that just gets paid every month without thinking about it, I figured that if it was in front of us and on our minds more, we might make more of an effort to collect more money to chuck at it.

So……I got a mortgage pig.

It’s a large green pig which sits on my kitchen worktop in a very central position with a ‘speech bubble’ printed on A4 paper and stuck to the wall above it. The mortgage pig explains (in the speech bubble) who he is and why it’s a good idea to check whether you really need that bottle of wine or takeaway and if it might be better to give the cash to him instead. It also a bit to remind us why we wanted to pay off our mortgage and lists the things we want to do in the future.

Now we don’t use cash. And while we have used a physical piggy bank in the past – because we don’t use cash – it takes too long to save anything. So we have a “Virtual Mortgage Pig”. It’s not large, it’s not green and it doesn’t have a speech bubble explaining what it is. Instead, we have a category on Quicken called Mortgage Pig. When we make a saving, get a bit of extra income (such as share dividends, trade me sales), or we use our ASB points to buy stuff instead of money, we transfer the money to Mortgage Savings. Now that our personal mortgage has gone and been replaced by a business mortgage – the Mortgage Pig savings get paid to our Investment Savings Pot.

At the moment, not all our “savings” will make it to the Pig. That’s basically because the past year or so have been very hard for us financially, and to be perfectly frank – savings we make in one area are pretty much eaten up with price rises in another. Right now it feels like Standing Still financially is a battle of epic proportions – let alone trying to get ahead!

Should we have any money left at the end of the month – that too would be a Mortgage Pig saving – and get shoved into to the Investment Savings. These savings are what keep our rental business afloat. Given how much money we lost on because of our issues with Agile Property Services’ negligence and failures to manage our properties – that account is in pretty much a mess. But with some hard work, and some tough management – we are clawing back the losses he caused. It does help that the tenants we now have are paying rent like clockwork, and I am not having to pay it for them. Ill be blogging more about that later – but every time I start I just get too furious at the trouble the Property Manager caused me – and his refusal to get some balls and deal with me.

So yes – it doesn’t really matter how you do it – but you do need some way of locking in the savings. Like I said – ours is for mortgages – which is the best use of money you can make. If you haven’t got a mortgage – then it’s really up to you. I really like the idea of the Mortgage Pig. It’s a bit silly, it’s a bit fun, and you can basically run it however it suits you: from putting all spare change in – to literally deciding not to buy a takeaway and gettimg cash out to put in the pig instead. Remember there is no “one true path” and what works for me may not be good for you – but there is certainly no harm creating your own version of “The Mortgage Pig”.

Thanks Fred 

Who exactly writes new laws in NZ?

Oh , that’s right – my waste of space local MP John Hayes.

Well, I have come across another new law that was written by a total imbecile – so if that is what Mr Hayes does when he can’t be bothered to talk to his constituents – he needs to go back to school.

It is however refreshing to know that it isn’ just the Immigration Advisers Licencing Act that screws the very people it attempts to help.

In this case – it’s the Unit Titles Act 2010, which replaces a 1972 act and is supposed to improve the lot of apartment owners.  When you own an apartment here – the owners usually make up what is called a Body Corporate, and they pay into a central fun to cover the costs of running an maintaining the common areas of the property. Well, that’s the theory as long as people pay up.

Now, every year, the Body Corporate has an Annual General Meeting. Usually not many people turn up – but our next AGM – a lot of people want to turn up because there is a rather big issue in the building with one person owing a lot of money in fees to the Body Corporate. The issue is that not everyone can get to an AGM. Many owners live out of town, or cannot get time off work to attend a midday meeting. So they assign a proxy to someone else to vote on their behalf.

Under the 1972 law, this required that they do no more than send an email to the person they wish to assign as their proxy stating their name, the name of the person they are assigning, and the number of the unit.

Under the new “improved” 2010 law they have to give all this clobber:

Form 11
Proxy appointment form

Section 102(3), Unit Titles Act 2010

To [name of person authorised to receive proxy appointment forms]

Unit plan: [reference number]

Body Corporate Number: [number]
Proxy appointment

We/I*, [full name, address], being the owner/owners* of [principal unit] and therefore an eligible voter within the meaning of section 96(1) of the Unit Titles Act 2010, appoint [full name] as my/our* proxy for the purposes of the general meeting of the body corporate to be held on [date].
*Select one.

If the general meeting is adjourned and reconvened, this proxy appointment is valid for the purposes of the reconvened meeting.
Motions

Complete the following table.
Motion
Type of resolution

[Summarise the motion.]
[State whether the motion requires an ordinary or special resolution and whether, if passed, the resolution would be a designated resolution.]

Date: [day, month, year]

Signature of eligible voter:

So now, we cannot sort out the proxies until the AGM has been called and we know all the motions that people want to vote on. It also means that if you as a unit holder which to propose a motion to be voted on – then that has to be in the proxy forms that go out to the members, so that people who are unable to attend can still vote on those issues.

I can categorically say that this screws over a number of people who find themselves in a crappy situation. And it has just made my life a whole lot harder personally. Once again – the brains behind a new law have not thought things through and are being utterly idiotic.

But hey – that’s just my opinion

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

Thumbs up for Empower today!

One of the things our waste-of-space tenants did before they ran off owing money to a lot of people was not pay their power bill for ages – and got disconnected. I think this may be the real reason the did a runner rather than any sterling effort our ex-property manager claims he made to get rid of them.

You cant power a 46″ flat screen TV, Sky system, X-Box and Laptop if you refuse to pay your power bill now can you?

So not only do we have to tidy up after the dirty tykes, remove their crap and repair the extensive damage, and field several debt collectors (to who we are giving all the aliases this guy goes under)- we also have to reconnect the electricity before we can do much of the work. We talked to Meridian the day we got in the property, but they pissed around so much that it was gone 5pm on a Friday before they pulled their fingers out and would arrange the connection – and then said they had to charge us $60 for a “weekend connection”.

We told them where they could stick it, as they refused to see that their bone-idleness had in fact caused the necessity.

So we contacted Empower – who we used to deal with before shifting to Meridian.

Because the power had been disconnected, we actually couldn’t get it back on till the Wednesday, but we weren’t being charged, so waited patientl;y and did what we could without electricity. Which is actually not as much as you might think.

This weekend we got the bill from Empower – including a $65 next-day reconnection fee!

Well, I phoned (and managed not to get angry – which I feel was no mean feat). Spoke to a lovely chap named Paul, explained the situation and he said he would see what he could do. A minute later and he comes back saying the fee has been waived.

What a lovely start to the day!

So Empower get a thumbs up from me today for being helpful and understanding, and I will now look at the possibility of changing back our home accounts to them.

 

 

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

Are house prices in New Zealand really too high?

Or are people just wanting a Rolls Royce on a Mini Cooper budget?

Auckland first-home buyers Chelsea and David Yandell ended up paying more for their Onehunga place than they initially expected when they started out as house-hunters.

Now, they have a three-decade mortgage. “We realised that paying $350,000 in Auckland, you’d get something that was pretty crappy,” recalls Chelsea of the buying experience. So they changed their expectations and borrowed more.

“The house we bought has been finished to a high standard. It’s perfect. When we were looking, we realised we’d have to spend more. We had a look around for a few months and we had our hearts set on a couple of houses. But the places we were looking at would not have gone up in value. It wasn’t what we wanted.

“House prices are definitely too high and wages are too low for first-home buyers. We’ll be 55 by the time we pay off the 30-year mortgage. But we didn’t want to keep renting. That’s dead money. … We are now more careful with our money and set goals. If we pay a certain amount off the mortgage, we can get new blinds. We’re with KiwiSaver so we know in retirement, we will have something more than the house.”

Sorry – but there is absolutley sod all in this article that suggests that house prices are too high. Now they may in fact be too high – but not because you want a house that’s finished to a high standard. That’s just you wanting a better house than you can afford. What annoys me about this is the amount of times we get blamed for this because we are property investors, and thus automatically we are greedy. But surely the greed is in wanting something you cannot afford?

It is not the fault of high prices that these people have a 30 year mortgage – it’s that the houses they were prepared to buy could only be theirs if they took on more debt than they could manage in less than that time. That is entirely down to them, and thus their own fault.

My first house cost £84,000. I imagine that these two would have turned thier noses up at it instantly. It was old (1700′s – and 1960′s) tiny (two beds) a crappy kitchen, a coal fired stove as the only heating and it didnt work properly, and had the most disgusting wall coverings you have seen in your life, and carpets that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a crap pub. And an avocado bathroom suite! Almost all our furniture was handed down to us from other family.

But it was a great home – and when we got it done up it was a lot better than when we started. It was ours, and we could afford the mortgage on it. Im sure we could have borrowed more and got a “nicer” house – and then bleated about how much that perfect house was and how awful it was that we had to pay so much for it.  And when I was going through a divorce, I could still afford the mortgage on it becuase I had not been greedy and bought a house that we could not afford becuase I wanted something “perfect” for my first home at the age of 25!

Doing that means  that at the age of 35(ish) when we came to NZ we COULD afford the nice house in the country, with stunning views and a swimming pool. I would love to have had this at their age – I just wasn’t that daft – and I sure as hell didnt expect house prices to stay low just so I wouldnt have to bother climbing the property ladder.

I also always wonder what these people will do when they come to sell? Because at the end of the day, house prices are actually determined by two things: what the buyer will pay, and what the seller will accept. Human nature dictates that we complain that prices are too high when we are trying to buy – but refuse to accept “insulting” offers when we sell. We become the problem we just complained about.

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

Christmas pressie from the Reserve Bank

Alan Bollard (bless his little cotton socks) has decided that the base interest rate in New Zealand is not going up this month.

“Interest rates are now projected to rise to a more limited extent over the next two years than signalled in September.

Oh Yay! Just in time for my investment mortgages to come off their fixed rates – and there was me thinking that I might have a snowballs chance in hell of reducing my mortgage payments.

Of course the reason for the hold is becuase no one has any money to spend, so the economy isn’t taking off as well as it should. I’m not sure where anyone expects us to get money to spend from right now – prices are still going up and wages aren’t. And to be honest, even if I had any money – what he’s saying is that If I spend it and “help the economy” hes going to put my interest rates up as a result.

Does this make any sense to anyone?

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

Why the hell should I pay other people’s bank fees???

I’m having a slightly irritating day to be honest. I’m off to Sydney – which is going to stretch my budget to within an inch of it’s poor life, and I’m trying to change the buildings insurance on my rentals. Currently its done via ASB, but I have been looking to take the business from them on account of their refusal to give me any discounts on my bank fees or interest rates.

So I got a quote from a broker – it doesn’t save me a huge amount – only about $50 a year for 2 properties – but it has the advantage of not being via the bank. I reviewed the policy documents, filled out the paperwork, and just needed to confirm the amount of the premiums in order to fill in the Credit Card Payment option with details.

At which point, I am advised that there is a 2% extra charge to pay my Credit Card!

So I double check – no where, but no where does it mention this. Not a scooby.

And even if it did – why the hell do I have to pay someone else’s bank fees?

I pay my own. It is beyond outrageous to expect me to pay someone else’s as well.

When I think about this – it is in much the same vein as the whole MAF Fees scam that some shipping companies try and pull. Where immigrants get charged spurious “extras” which are basically business costs for the NZ subcontractors. I wonder why they don’t go the whole hog and charge us extra for the staff loo roll.

Anyway – they have decided that I don’t have to pay it – but to be honest I’m considering not going ahead anyway.  It’s the principle of the thing.

But always remember – in almost ALL cases – these “charges” can be argued against. At the very least – if anyone tries it one without telling you up front – at the start of the transaction (not whacked on at the end hoping you won’t notice) you have every right to refuse to pay it. There’s about $3500 worth of insurance premiums involved here – possibly lost because of a desire to wring another 2% out of me.

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

What is happening to LAQC’s?

Well, what it looks like is happening is that they are going to be crushed into a billion little pieces and those pieces consigned to the depths of hell where us greedy property investors should also be consigned for daring to be slightly wealthy. That’s the headline, and that’s what most people will read and understand about what the government has done. And I’m pretty sure that most people (who don’t have an LAQC) will be rather happy about that.

However….

Actually – that isn’t happening at all, so if you were thinking of going into Property Investing in New Zealand – don’t panic.

Gilligan Rowe & Associates – the people we used to tell us how to set up our companies and trusts – have written an article about the new setup – it’s actually quite clear and easy to read. Maybe I’ve just got used to hearing Matt Gilligan speak about tax issues – and now I understand him!

Basically it consists of us having to contact the IRD and file a document that says our LAQC will now become an LTC – or Look Through Company. (Who the hell comes up with these names???)

And despite what many people assume is going to happen, other than  that – it’s business as usual for us. We appear to still be able to claim losses against our personal income, as long as that does not exceed the amount of money we have either personally put into the company by way of capital or loans, or the amount of mortgage we have personally guaranteed. As that happens to be an unlimited amount (the banks don’t miss an opportunity to get your signature guaranteeing the moon if they can help it) essentially it means that we can can still claim a tax refund every month.

So at the end of the day – all we lose is the tax refund on the depreciation of the buildings we own. That amounts to about $3000 a year extra we have to find charge our tenants.

Personally, it bugs the hell out of me that I have had to worry about how to cope with suddenly losing the ability the claim tax losses, and being forced to sell three properties (cos I’m damn sure my tenants won’t feel like paying twice as much rent). Because thats what the media have been feeding to everyone. It just turns out not to have been the case. But if it keeps people happy, and means I’m personally not going to have to bankrupt myself for having had the audacity to try and not be poor – I’m actually OK with that.

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

The problem with buying Leasehold properties

Leasehold properties are cheaper than Freehold properties – which makes them look like a bargain. (Well sometimes – you can see leasehold properties for sale at freehold prices!) But theres a reason for that – you don’t own the land – you just own the building on it. Someone else owns the land, and charges you rent for the privilege of owning the house on it.

Like Hawkes Bay Regional Council, whose leases are coming up for renewal, and so they have hiked the prices up.

One week Niki Willis was paying $27 a week ground rent on her leasehold home in Napier, the next she was paying $172.

Now that’s one helluva hike in your weekly budget. And bear in mind this is on top of any mortgage your may have to pay.

The council, which owns about 1000 residential leasehold properties in Napier with a total book value of $85 million, realises many leaseholders are finding themselves in impossible situations when their ground rent is reviewed at the end of the 21-year term

Thats the bit to be aware of: how long is your lease for, and when are the rent reviews allowed. 999 years with no rent review till the end – possibly worth thinking about, but a rent review every four or five years and you could be in serious trouble.

And the worst thing is: not many people are willing to buy leasehold land. I know I wont touch it with a bargepole – so straight away you cot your chances of selling for a good price. Hey – thats why its cheap if you want to buy it yourself.

Many of the new apartments going up in Wellington along the waterfront are Leasehold.

Added to this in New Zealand is that some of the leases are owned by Maori Iwi and you could possibly have issues with any claims under the Waitangi Agreement. SO if you are thinking of buying Leasehold, especially in New Zealand – please take care. Make sure a lawyer goes through all the ups and downs with a fine toothed comb – then at least you fully know what you are taking on.

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

Tax isn’t fair – deal with it.

Over the next year or so, there could be some huge changes to the way you will be taxed in New Zealand. There are a lot of strange assumptions, which are driving the recommended changes. A bunch of “experts” and academics called the “Tax Working Group” have come up with recommendations. However, here I thought it worth going back to one of the basic assumptions – A fair tax.

The headline at the moment is that property investors don’t pay tax, and in fact rort the system by getting tax refunds. This is because if you make any losses in your rental properties (and most of us do because rents in New Zealand are kept artificially low) then you can offset these against your income from a job and therefore pay less Income tax.It is blatantly ignored that you can do this with any business.Property investors (like us) are thought of as greedy “rich pricks” (a term coined by the typically potty-mouthed ex-finance minister Michael Cullen).

Of course, we personally are considered even more evil and greedy because Hubby has a well-paid job. It escapes most people that we worked our arses off to get qualified in order to earn that money. It’s not fair!

So – why do people think it’s unfair that we use a system to allow us to pay less tax?

Because most people have been conned into thinking that Tax is inevitable. Like death. Only it isn’t.

The fact is you do not have to be in anyway rich to legally cut your taxes. You just have to be smart. You also need to get your head round the fact that paying money you earn to someone else is not actually fair, and that the richer you are – the more you pay – is even less fair.

Let’s put it this way:

• If someone comes into your house and steals your TV – you go to the police and make a report. You make a claim against your insurance and get the money back to replace the TV.

• You don’t for one minute consider it fair that someone has come into your home and taken something that they may not be able to afford, and therefore have a right to steal it from you, because it’s not fair that you had the money to buy it and they didn’t.

• And yet – the government takes say 30% of the money you earn, and gives it to someone else. And you think this is OK because it’s called tax.

Here is something else to think about:

• While there is no “tax-free limit” to earnings for low income people the way there is in the UK, the bottom 40% of households pay no income tax because they get benefits to compensate.

• Yet the top 10% of earners in New Zealand pay 42% of the total income tax take.

• If you take out the 40% of people that effectively pay no tax because they get refunds distributed from higher tax payers, we are then responsible for a whopping 76% of the income tax take.

And yet we are the greedy ones for not wanting to pay so much of what we work our butts off to earn. Hell alone knows how much we would collectively pay if we didn’t have a way of offsetting tax.

It’s also worth noting that the HUGE tax benefit that property investors fleece off the government in Tax Refunds accounts for just 1.6% of the entire tax take.

Yep – we are about to get nailed to a cross then burned alive for a whopping 1.6% of the total tax budget – which will then be given to other people. I personally don’t think any of this is going to make that 40% who want our blood any richer.

But I could be wrong.

Over the next week or so we will be going over the recommendations (and they are just that – recommendations) and highlighting what they mean – good and bad.

If you want to see a good and funny illustration of why “tax cuts for the rich” are so wrongly maligned – have a look at this blog post: How tax cuts work.

And for some interesting facts about just how many evil greedy property investors there are in New Zealand – read Are Kiwis really obsessed with property?

And for a light hearted look at just what we personally think of the Inland Revenue (in any country) – take a look at Inland revenue Humour.

Avalon’s Money Thread: Can I Invest In new Zealand?

This is an area that I’ve personally experienced a big difference in from being in the UK. I’ve honestly been bowled over by the sheer opportunity available here to invest in our future. This is usually outside what I guess would be considered normal in the UK. Many more people “do their own thing” rather than relying on a “pension scheme”.

The main principle of investing for a future is:

PAY YOURSELF FIRST

or

SAVE FIRST – SPEND SECOND.

The aim is to set aside 10% of your income for your future. (Add that to your budget!)

Investing  and wealth creation are huge industries here. And something I found amazing was the number of free seminars available. I think you should always be careful about seminars if anyone is pushy and asking you to sign up for an expensive course, walk out. Not that it’s always a bad course but you should “never sign anything” without sleeping on it first! Some seminars you need to pay for but still be wary. If you are the sort of person who easily gets signed up for stuff, don’t go. Or at least don’t take your credit card or you may end up with that much-hated timeshare in Lanzarote! (Which let’s face it – is not going to be a whole lot of help to you once you are in New Zealand.)

Company pensions are available but most companies will not pay contributions into them because they have to pay Fringe Benefit Tax to the government in order to do so. Also, any contributions you make are done after you have paid income tax on the money earned. So you do not even get that tax benefit. Kiwisaver is a new(ish) Superannoutaion scheme which you join automatically when starting a new job, and have to opt out of if you do not wish to be a member.

About the only benefit is that when you finally do take the pension out you aren’t taxed on the income.

A lot of Kiwis seem to go it alone with investment planning and do it with residential property. Property is big; shares not so much as people got badly burned in 1987 and won’t look again. Besides there are nice tax advantages (at the moment) to buying property and holding on to while renting it out. If you want to buy property and “do it up” a la Property Ladder you will get taxed on the profit but if you “buy and hold” you don’t get Capital Gains tax! (Yet)

If you want to get into investing in property, the best place to go is a forum called Property Talk because there’s just too much info and they are active investors.
Do be aware that most people “negative gear” property, which means they make a loss week to week. (We are in this position). This is because the Government pays you some of that money back if you are a taxpayer. But you do need to have spare cash to “prop up” a property if you are going to do this, and it does limit how many properties you can buy.

I will be looking at property for this year but I also invest in shares now. I do this by buying Direct Shares rather than what most people do which is to pay money each month into a Managed Fund. The difference is that I save up $5000 at a time and then decide on a company to invest in, and buy shares in that company. Whereas with a managed fund, I would put say $500 a month into a fund, and then the fund manager takes all the other $500 that everyone else paid in that month, and he picks a load of shares to buy with all that money (having taken some of the money out for fees). I read somewhere recently that if you throw darts at a list of shares you would probably pick just as well as the fund managers do!

Is it risky?

Well yeah, to a point. But I work with a company that advises me on which shares to buy and they use a method called Value Investing. This means ignoring the share price. Most people buy shares because they are “popular” and this means the price is higher. Value Investing means looking at the company and deciding what the company is worth. Then buying shares in that company when the share price is lower than it should be. Basically it’s buying shares at a sale price. It does require education, but then to be honest I’m now a firm believer in the fact that if you want a good financial future, you have to get educated about money. I find it odd that we are not allowed to drive a car without some education but we are allowed credit cards and allowed to invest without it!

We work with a company called Wise Planning But I strongly suggest that if you want to look at this, go to an evening seminar first. The program we did was expensive and you really need to work hard at it and I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Be assured that the one thing Wise Planning wont do is any Hard Sell which strangely is exactly why I joined them, so you can be sure your credit card is safe and you won’t end up with said timeshare in Lanzerote!

(Update: Wise Planning hiked thier fees up by a ridiculaous amount, and I now wouldnt recommend them, as the owner of the company was actually quite snotty and rude to us when we objected to a 100% fee hike with no warning. but if the Introductory seminar is still free – then it’s worth going to.)

The main thing that makes investing risky is ignorance. If you don’t understand what you are doing and the exact risks involved, you shouldn’t do it. There has to be an amount of personal responsibility taken for your future so if this is all gobbledygook, then read some and understand it.

Update: We headed firmly aware from share investing and into property, which for me was much more fun, much more interesting, and easier to understand. Ive made a lot of friends along  the way, and learned huge amounts, not just about investing. Its worth joining a local Property Investors Association if you want  to go to into this – they hold monthly meetings were you can network and learn.

Whatever you do, if you want to invest – make sure you get some advice. A lot of people have lost an awful lot of money in the last few years, and while no amount of knowledge or advice could have stopped all the problems, many people have lost everything because they just “invested” in something without understanding what they were doing or what they were signing.

Avalon’s Money Thread is a series of posts which were originally written in 2007 for an Immigration Forum. They came about by answering questions that forum members asked, about how to cope with the often difficult financial situation they face in New Zealand. They formed the basis of what was eventually to become the book Avalon’s Guide: after another year or so of drinking way too much coffee and finding out way more about taxes, money and investing that any sane person should.

Like what Avalon has to say?

Click Here to buy Avalon's Guide or Click Here to buy the E-Book

Next Page »

• Avalon’s Guide On Facebook

  Avalon's Guide
  
  Promote your Page too

  

  NetworkedBlogs

  Blog:

  Avalons Guide

  Topics:

  Emigration, Personal Finance, New Zealand

  Follow my blog

  

• Ads that help support the site

• Tags

  Australia Avalon's Guide Avalon's Money Thread Banks Budgets Christchurch Earthquake Cost of living economy emigrate Emigrate to New Zealand Family Sponsorship financial crisis Funnies General Budgeting Getting to New Zealand IAA IALA immigration Immigration Advisers Immigration Advisers Authority Immigration Advisers Licencing Act Immigration Agents Immigration Medicals Immigration New Zealand interest rates Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ Investing in general INZ Jobs & Work jobs in New Zealand Life in New Zealand Money saving Mortgages Moving to New Zealand new life New Zealand banks New Zealand Food NZIS Parent Sponsorship personal finance Redundancy shopping Taxes Wairarapa Wellington
• 

• Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

• Buy Avalon’s Guide

  Avalon's Guide

  Avalon's Guide E-Book $12.00 Avalon's Guide (Collect) $15.00 Avalon's Guide (post in NZ) $19.50 Avalon's Guide (post to Aus) $26.50 Avalon's Guide (post worldwide) $31.00

  

• Recent Comments

  • Domestic Executive on Martinborough Fair 2012
  • Deborah on Martinborough Fair 2012
  • Avalon on Martinborough Fair 2012
  • Deborah on Martinborough Fair 2012
  • Avalon on The Sevens – it’s all about the rugby…

• Recent Posts

  • Report time – INZ Permanent & Long Term migration pt3
  • Report time – INZ Permanent & Long Term migration pt2
  • Report time – INZ Permanent & Long Term migration pt1
  • Stop selling New Zealand to…Liechtenstein!
  • IT jobs, as easy as falling off a bike?

• 

  
  
• 
  RSS FeedComments

• Categories

  Select Category Avalon’s Money Thread  (36) Banks  (75) Beaches in New Zealand  (27) Blog and Forum Roundups  (7) Cost of living  (151) Economics  (56) Exchannge Rate & Currency Transfers  (8) General Budgeting  (144) Getting to New Zealand  (80) Hubby’s Views  (84) Immigration Advisers  (50) Interest Rates, Credit Cards & Mortgages in NZ  (58) Jobs & Work  (87) Life in New Zealand  (393) NZIS & Immigration issues  (146) Only in New Zealand  (56) Property & General Investing  (56) Retirement, Pensions and Kiwisaver  (34) The Book and Website  (40) The Family Sponsorship Saga  (24) Things to do  (77)

• Blog Roll - Other Blogs

  • Kiwianarama
  • KiwiBlog
  • Open Parachute
  • The Ombudsman

• Blogroll - Ex-pat blogs

  • Catching The Magic
  • Domestic Executive
  • Hutt City Expats
  • Kiwi Wannabes
  • Life Upside Downunder
  • Moon over Martinborough
  • The Blog of Paola Brett
  • The Brunts Big Move
  • The Kiwi Blog Bus
  • This New Zealand Life
  • Wellington Road
  • WordPress Planet