[Tia Maria]

I think this has probably been mentioned before, but we have an ASB visa card which gives us true rewards points (most banks have a scheme like it).

I chose to convert our points into Farmers vouchers and some airtime for my mobile. So for the next couple of months I have no phone charges to worry about. I then went and cleverly spent my Farmers vouchers in the sale, and got double what I would have got for my money out of sale time.

Now bear in mind it costs about $30 a year to collect the reward points on two cards, its still a good deal when we convert something like $300 a year into various vouchers!

Ha Ha, that's pretty much what we did, or would have done if I could have found their new points card in time. I think everything we bought at Farmers was pretty much 50% off, they have sales so often there is just no point buying anything full price.

Cheers

Tia

[Tia Maria]

Errr haven't posted on this for ages, but I've had to redirect my mind to finances since we've had to re-mortgage at a higher rate (2% higher - gulp!).

This week I managed to sell off a ton of baby stuff on Trade Me, thought I'd get about $150, turned out to be $450! So that should pay for a few driving lessons!

My 4 year old is doing his bit by becoming dry at night (Woo Hoo :clap ). No more need for those pull ups, which saves us $13 every two weeks. Not a lot but every little helps!

So new list of savings:

Selling on Trade Me (one off): $450
No more pull ups: $26 per month

Cheers

Tia

[Milliemoo]

Phone the IRD and make sure they know you are resident in NZ. I know, sounds a bit dim, but for some reason, even though we've both been earning and paying tax via PAYE and had our IRD numbers from the word go, the IRD didn't think we were residents :confused:

Anyhoo, just by chance, I'd just sent off my tax forms for the UK (which have to go via NZ IRD) and a nice chap called us up and said we're due approx $2800 as we've been paying too much tax.

Shibby :D

Milliemoo

[Tia Maria]

Phone the IRD and make sure they know you are resident in NZ. I know, sounds a bit dim, but for some reason, even though we've both been earning and paying tax via PAYE and had our IRD numbers from the word go, the IRD didn't think we were residents :confused:

Anyhoo, just by chance, I'd just sent off my tax forms for the UK (which have to go via NZ IRD) and a nice chap called us up and said we're due approx $2800 as we've been paying too much tax.

Shibby :D

Milliemoo

Woo Hooo - forum drinks are on you! :cheers

Cheers

Tia

[Tia Maria]

By the way anyone got any car budgeting tips?

NZ has turned us from a no car owning family to a 2 car family (soon!) and I have no concept of what is expensive for petrol or any of the car associated costs.

Cheers

Tia

[Carol]

By the way anyone got any car budgeting tips?


Tia

I've got one.

Don't let your teenage sons learn to drive!
:eek::eek:

[Tia Maria]

I've got one.

Don't let your teenage sons learn to drive!
:eek::eek:

:laugh Luckily my boys are only legal to drive a scooter or a three wheeled trike......

Cheers

Tia

[Drover Jess]

hi everyone

great thread wherever you live...

belt tightening is global and not just a NZ thing, gotta fill up my car today diesel £1.18 - £1.20 litre where we live - scary..

I just have one comment to make about the reducing the washing machine temperatures..

if you have a anyone with asthma in the house you need to wash the bedding at 60 degrees to kill the dust mites,
or else put them in the freezer!

all the best and all the tips are great
keep them coming

[Carol]

or else put them in the freezer!



:laugh
I have a vision!!!!

We've found some unrecognisable things in the back of our freezer before - but imagine finding a long lost sheet! :laugh

[IanW99]

By the way anyone got any car budgeting tips?

NZ has turned us from a no car owning family to a 2 car family (soon!) and I have no concept of what is expensive for petrol or any of the car associated costs.

Cheers

Tia

It is common for a company to initially offer a low premium and then raise it, in following years, so always get several car insurance quotes each year when your renewal is due.

For saving fuel, check out Save your fuel dollar (http://www.energywise.org.nz/yourtravel/save-your-fuel-dollar/index.html)

Ian

[Tia Maria]

Thanks IanW99 - thats a great link!

Tips on reducing fuel consumption:

By making a few small changes to your driving style and keeping your car well tuned you can cut your fuel bill by as much as 20%.

This effectively gives you over two months’ worth of free fuel a year.

Take action
Fuel saving tips

Try the following tips for a month and then recalculate your fuel economy using the online fuel calculator. How much have you improved? You could save up to 20% on your fuel consumption by adopting these driving habits.

- Drive smoothly
Accelerate smoothly. Change gear early, but don't labour the engine. If you drive an automatic, choose economy gear switching as this will keep the engine speed down.

- Don't speed
By travelling at 100 km/hour instead of 110km/hour you can trim around 13% from your fuel bill.

- Look ahead
Look ahead, maintaining a safe following distance and you'll keep at a more constant speed. This uses less fuel than constantly accelerating and braking.

- Care for your car
Keeping your tyres at the right pressure saves fuel, as does regularly checking the wheel alignment, engine timing, air filter and spark plugs.

- Watch your air con
Only use air conditioning when you really need it: it tends to guzzle up to 10% more fuel than if you left it off! The rear window demister can also be a drain so switch it off when not needed.

- Keep your load down
It sounds obvious, but a heavier vehicle means more drag. Leave at home heavy items from the boot and roof when you're not using them.

- Limit idling time
If you are going to be stationary for more than 30 seconds, switch off your engine.


It also has a link to this site, which tells you the price of fuel at different garages in your area:

www.price-watch.co.nz

Cheers

Tia

[dilanium]

I also recommend using one of your trip odometers to count the miles between gas fill-ups. That way you can calculate your usage, and try to get it better. I find it a fun game to try to get my mpg as high as possible!

[nippa&pippa]

Thanks for tips there as I had bit of shock this morning, cost me $89 to fill my tank this morning and I used nearly whole tank per week :eek:

Best tip is look into how much you drive by week, is there other ways that you can cut down like, walk to shop? walk to school? use bus? etc
In my case, all of these above is impossible as I live in rural locations BUT once my son start school in July, he will be using school bus picking him and dropping him off outside my gate. So therefore my petrol usages will drop very big time because the main reasons for big petrol use is taking him to and fetching him from kindy 15 mins away in Lincoln every day :clap (till next child start Kindy :exit )

[CJ22]

The best tip I found for fuel economy is to avoid filling your tank up altogether. If you're tank is full, you're essentially using fuel to lug fuel around (this is why space rockets have stages). Only half fill your tank if you're never far from a petrol station, and you'll burn less fuel. To measure the effect, notice the burn-rate of fuel on a half a tank of petrol compared to the burn-rate on a full tank. There's a noticeable difference.

[IanW99]

The best tip I found for fuel economy is to avoid filling your tank up altogether. If you're tank is full, you're essentially using fuel to lug fuel around (this is why space rockets have stages). Only half fill your tank if you're never far from a petrol station, and you'll burn less fuel. To measure the effect, notice the burn-rate of fuel on a half a tank of petrol compared to the burn-rate on a full tank. There's a noticeable difference.

That's great advice in the UK, might not be so great in NZ though, if you only half fill your tank you might not make it to the next petrol station especially on the SI. It can be 100s of Kms between stations or if you do find one they are so rural that they charge way more than you would have saved :yes :)

Another problem you can get is that with the price of fuel rising its sometimes better to top up when the cost is still cheap or when you have a particularly good supermarket fuel voucher.

Still good advice to keep the weight down as much as possible so keep the boot empty, take off the roof rack when not in use etc.

Ian

[nippa&pippa]

That's great advice in the UK, might not be so great in NZ though, if you only half fill your tank you might not make it to the next petrol station especially on the SI. It can be 100s of Kms between stations or if you do find one they are so rural that they charge way more than you would have saved :yes :)


Agree with you, Ian :yes

[mgbridges]

Thought I'd make my first post to this thread as we've finally started getting a handle on our finances after being rather caught out by the cost of living here. Not that we didn't do our research but buying a house, having visitors for 3mths, Christmas etc rather set us back before we'd even got a handle on things!

Both OH and I have got much better at looking out for specials at the supermarket and also keeping an eye on the till as things go through. Twice I've been charged over $5/kg for pears when they were around $2.50/kg! I haven't yet done a comparison shop, visiting two supermarkets but have decided a switch to Pak 'n Scratch will soon be in order, at least for the basics.

We've long since cancelled our organic veg box delivery, frankly the quality had slipped and we kept throwing stuff away.

My ability to complain and/or ask for money back even if its less than $5 has improved. e.g. the other day I ordered a coffee whilst at Chipmunks, 30mins later it still hadn't arrived and we needed to leave for DS's swimming lesson. Rather than just going I made sure I got back the $3.00 I'd paid.

My intake of cafe purchased coffee (& muffins) has diminished enormously and is about to drop again as I start my diet on Monday. :wah

We now do a monthly running tally of what we're spending so we can keep an eye on things and make sure we still have enough in the account to pay all the DDR.

I ALWAYS use a petrol voucher from the supermarket when filling the car. Have got one at 10c off at the moment so may fill up soon and then after that only half fill as the point about using fuel to transport fuel hadn't occurred to me before. We're also planning to sell our gas guzzling Mitsubishi Outlander and trade down (might even switch to Diesel) as frankly with only one child and no boat or caravan to tow we don't need such a large car.

I'm forever turning off lights that don't need to be on.

We're about to switch from Telecom/Xnet to Orcon for our telephone & Broadband service. OH has done the calculations and we should make a decent saving with hopefully an improvement in service as a bonus.

All in all we've both become much more concious of where the dollars and cents are going, will post again if we make any other drastic changes.
Anneliese

[nippa&pippa]

Mainly I did for it for children's sake and myself as I was forever coughing and sneezing everytime I used cleaning products to clean bathroom, toilet and kitchen. My friend and MIL suggested to try use vingear, baking soda and lemon instead as it does work as they have used it. I search high and low for last few months before I found this website www.vinegartips.com is the best.

So far, I was surprised how effective they are with moulds!!!! much better than most expensive cleaner product you could find to get rid stubborn moulds...
No more coughing and sneezing
No chemical involved mean children's ezcema getting improved (I am getting there..) and children can get involve helping you with cleaning too.
Best for septic tanks
And the most surprised for me is the money.....Go and have look at bills, how much do you spent on cleaner stuffs per month......you may don't realise till you sit down and count. It was shocking and now it is cheaper with just buy vingear, baking soda and lemon (just buy cheaper brand will do!!)
Hope that help you further with the money diet.

[Georgebulldog]

Great link Sophia, think I'll be off now to stock up on vinegar & stuff as mould around windows in our house & I want it gone before the baby comes :exit

[Tia Maria]

Thanks also! :nice1

I'll be trying the vinegar thing too. We've got some really stubborn mould on our bath grouting, (I think just because the boys splash so much!), and I haven't found anything that will shift it yet.

I fact I've been considering just buying some more grout and grouting over it! Except I know I'll mess it up and it look all bumpy and horrid! :(

Cheers

Tia

[Familyofmonkeys]

Thanks also! :nice1

I'll be trying the vinegar thing too. We've got some really stubborn mould on our bath grouting, (I think just because the boys splash so much!), and I haven't found anything that will shift it yet.

I fact I've been considering just buying some more grout and grouting over it! Except I know I'll mess it up and it look all bumpy and horrid! :(

Cheers

Tia

We have a bleach pen for laundry from supermarket....and it works a treat on grouting (used it loads in our last rental).

[nippa&pippa]

More tip

www.thedeal.co.nz - the deal is about brand new products, not second hand goods, is an online outlet mall focused on real deals.

www.kidspot.co.nz - online aims for parents wanting to buy and sell used kids equipemnts, sport equipments, clothing and all the other bits and pieces. Best of all to buy and sell is FREE of charge, unlike Trademe.

www.bargainshopping.co.nz - Bargain shopping is a guide to places that offer products and service at bargain prices including factory outlet, discounter, direct to public outlets, aution houses, markets and second hand shops.

www.retailonsale.co.nz - all product are sourced from mid to high end retailers and wholesalers from all over NZ. Many items of clothing have huge discounts, mid-season markdowns or just speical retailonsale prices.

www.dumpit.co.nz - is a online products sales site for suppliers selling all new products that are either end of line, excess stock, last years models or just genuine bargains!

Hope that help you more....

[Familyofmonkeys]

More tip

www.thedeal.co.nz - the deal is about brand new products, not second hand goods, is an online outlet mall focused on real deals.

www.kidspot.co.nz - online aims for parents wanting to buy and sell used kids equipemnts, sport equipments, clothing and all the other bits and pieces. Best of all to buy and sell is FREE of charge, unlike Trademe.

www.bargainshopping.co.nz - Bargain shopping is a guide to places that offer products and service at bargain prices including factory outlet, discounter, direct to public outlets, aution houses, markets and second hand shops.

www.retailonsale.co.nz - all product are sourced from mid to high end retailers and wholesalers from all over NZ. Many items of clothing have huge discounts, mid-season markdowns or just speical retailonsale prices.

www.dumpit.co.nz - is a online products sales site for suppliers selling all new products that are either end of line, excess stock, last years models or just genuine bargains!

Hope that help you more....

Useful stuff....i'm not allowed to give you more rep at the moment, so maybe some other kind person will instead :nice1

[Tia Maria]

I love The Deal, I think I posted a thread about it a while back and got the link confused with a stocks and shares company!

A great bargain from there was a bulk lot of lightbulbs. Not particularly interesting but has saved us lots of $$$.

It sells quite a few things in bulk lots, so quite good if you've got a kids party coming up and need to fill party bags!

Cheers

Tia

[jubjub]

Just found this on my other forum, they are having a money saving thread at the moment too..

some little hints and tips to keep the food bill down and some nice recipes, some of it is a bit *ahem* patronising, but it does have some good stuff in it!

http://www.workandincome.govt.nz/publications/cookbook.html

[Mels]

Thanks for that link Sal. It's simple enough for my two little/big uns to understand themselves so they can make chaos/muffins themselves, (with me still at a distance :roll)

Giving some brownie points :yes

Mels

[nippa&pippa]

Here is the link for free samples and coupons in NZ (as well as some others part of world, just click on your country, for NZ, just click aus/NZ flag)

www.mysavings.com

as well as

www.finda.co.nz

[jubjub]

Oooh forgot about things like that Sophia

www.txt2taste.co.nz as well for free samples...

[jubjub]

Another site that has just cropped up on my radar...

http://www.360o.info/

Its got links to online books about cheaper (eco friendly) cleaning and 101 uses for things like honey & carrier bags!