Martinborough Fair 2012
Having escaped the big city rugby booze-fest this weekend, we got up early and headed to Martinborough for the first fair of the year (it’s held on the first Saturday in both February and March so you get 2 chances).
Now having been a number of times, we are pretty quick at getting around the event, and tackle it as a kind of assault course. We get there early (around 8.30) to beat the crowds, and today managed to finish by 10.40, including a stop for coffee half way round. However, unless you have been a number of times – I would bank on spending at least twice that amount of time wandering around and browsing.
We really tend not to spend much money, mostly because I seem to have expensive tastes and the stuff I like and want to buy is in the hundreds of $$$. So I take a card and add it to the list of things I will buy one day when I have a stash of cash burning a hole in my pocket.
However, we did buy some delicious Satay Sauce from Sone’s Satay. Unfortunately they don’t have a website, and stockists are short, but if you see this stuff anywhere – grab some. Its the best Satay Sauce I have ever tasted in New Zealand. At $10 a jar it is quite expensive – but it is worth it.
Hubby spent some money on some real Turkish delight from Loukoumi. I cant stand the stuff, and it’s full of sugar, but he confirms what the seller said, in that it really does melt in the mouth and is delicious. At $12 a box, I would say its quite expensive, but it gives you 16 pieces and hubby it’s worth it!
What I didnt but was a stunning hand beaten copper still from Alembics.
This one was distilling a Eucalyptus oil which you could catch on your finger as it came out. Now I have a lot of essential oils – I am actually trained as an aromatherapist – but I have never actually seen a still in action and I have never smelt an oil straight from the still. It was beyond devine. For the serious DIYer, lifestyler this is a true treat. Even better, they sell a range of stills for different products – the large ones for distilling essential oils and making hydrosols, and smaller ones for distilling alcohol.
And they are gorgeous to look at.
At $295 for the smallest stills and $795 for the large 10l column still its not pocket money. But to be honest with the cost of essential oils in New Zealand, you could probably save that relatively quickly, not to mention savings on Alcohol, and having the pleasure of owning a beautiful item.
And may favorite whimsy of the day was the Car-B-Que. Only in New Zealand!
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.
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.
Charging for Bonus Fly Buys
Filed under: Avalon's Money Thread, Cost of living, General Budgeting
Fly Buys – the ubiquitous “loyalty” scheme that gives you points for spending money, that you can then in theory swap for flights. You need to spend about $25 in New World to get 1 fly buy – which is worked out generally to be worth 15-20c, depending on what you buy. If you get the new Fly Buys cards you can actually get the points put directly through to Air New Zealand Airpoints.
You get $1 of airpoints for every 6.25 Flybuys. So you need to spend $156.25 at New World to get $1.
Checking how much it costs to buy the flights – on 25th April 2012 you can get a flight only (no check in bags) for 363 Fly Buys (which takes $9075 spend at New World).
Using Airpoints $ it cost $69, or the equivalent of 431 FlyBuys or $10,781.25 spend at new world.
Now I am actually on the scheme that converts directly to Airpoints Dollars – basically because I just cant be bothered with the faff and hassle of FlyBuys. The scheme is actually pretty complicated, and seems to con a whole load of people into paying more for stuff by sending them to retailers who will give them “bonuses”.
Well, last week we spent just short of $300 at New World Oriental Bay on wine. (For clients – not actually for us!)
When we got home, we noticed on the receipt an extra charge of 1c under the heading of NW Wine Bo.
Now no mention of any extra charge was ever made, and I was curious as to what it was. Besides – why is any company charging 1c for anything? I didn’t buy anything for 1c. So why am being charged for something I didn’t buy, don’t want, and didn’t get a choice about?
I emailed New World.
I was ignored.
I was now pissed.
So the next time I went to the store, I went to Customer Services and asked. It seems that among the bottles of wine we bought were 3 bottles from the New Zealand Wine Awards and NW were offering 10 bonus fly buys. Their “system” “can’t” just work out that I bought the three bottles and give me the fly buys, so they have to scan a bar code for it. And the “system” also “can’t” scan a bar code without a charge, so the “have to” charge 1c for the 10 bonus fly buys.
I asked for a refund.
New World also “can’t” refund to my credit card. And there is no longer any legal tender for 1c, or 5c. They ended up refunding me 20c.
Why bother asking for a refund of 1c?
Because they bet on you not doing it. There is no rhyme or reason for charging people for bonus flybuys. Other retailers manage it all ok, and New World having a crap system does not constitute a reason to charge you for something that is supposedly “free”.
However the main reason for doing it is that what New World is doing is blatantly dishonest and I feel they should not be allowed to get away with it.
And if they didn’t know full well they were scamming people – they would tell their customers up front that any bonus fly buys would be charged for. The amount is irrelevant. Just because they aren’t stealing $10 a time doesn’t mean they aren’t stealing – and they should stop. I would start by replacing whoever programs their till systems and finding someone who can get it to automatically give bonus fly buys. After All, if the “system” can work out that I have bought 2 bottles of Coke and automatically knock of $1, I fail to see why it can’t register buying 3 bottles of wine and adding on 10 fly buys.
The art of supermarket bag packing
Get used to having your supermarket bags packed for you. Badly.
Some humour from the guys at XKCD webcomic – for those who despair at the inabilty to pack items into as few bags as possible. Hat tip to Nigel.
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.
The joy of a $5 bookshop
Filed under: Cost of living, Hubby's Views, Life in New Zealand
Along with hideous (for us) quantities of money being spent on stuff in Melbourne, I also spent some time hunting down cheap books.
As you’ll be aware, this is one of our pet peeves with NZ – a ‘cheap’ book is only $30 for a normal fiction paperback. ’only’ $50 for a fiction hardback. When compared to the whole 3for2 at Waterstones, reading becomes an expensive dalliance. It’s also no wonder that Borders & Whitcoulls in NZ have gone bankrupt. Try selling over priced stuff, just because you think people will pay for it? Nope – that’s the magic of internet shopping.
Even second hand books are pretty pricey, which probably reflects the retail price of new books. Arty Bees in Wellington – an emporium for booklovers and stockist of impressive quantities of Sci-Fi and Fantasy will charge $15 – $20 for a second hand novel. Up a bit from the 50p we would be paying at a UK Car Boot Sale.
So it was with some pleasure that in Melbourne I spotted a $5 bookshop.
Now its set against Minotaur, where I spent the best part of an afternoon just oggling books. And that was before I looked through all the other merchandise; or Of Science & Swords, with too many cool t-shirts too! I wasn’t expecting much in the way of Sci-Fi at the $5 shop. So I wasn’t disappointed on that score. They did have a large selection of general fiction though. So it was nice to browse around and wander through a bookshop that had more books than we do at home.
My bargain for the day – Jonathan Stroud’s Ring of Solomon. UKP5 at Amazon, NZD30 in the shops here. AUD5 over in Melbourne. So that’s one thing off my Amazon wish list.
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