MB
18th January 2006, 09:08 AM
Hi, everyone. Hope your NZ plans and lives are going well.
As we've just passed the six months mark here, I thought I'd let you know what's going on with us.
Some pretty big and exciting changes. Next week we are scheduled to close on a lovely little house down in Te Kuiti. As you might know this is a small, quiet rural town an hour south of Hamilton. Winston and I plan to head down there at the end of next week to get it ready. Vera will join us some days later as she is teaching dance summer school at a university up here in Auckland.
Before I go further I should say that we are aware of the boldness of the move we are making, in terms of re-locating to the Waitomo area. Boldness, that is, in terms of our more obviously being the kind of family that should really -- in terms of jobs/skills -- stick v.close to a big city such as Auckland.
Thing is, though, having been down in Te Kuiti, the size, pace and prices there are right for us now. Our rather modest, but useful, amount of money should go into a house in TK where it can work for us in terms of delivering a small mortgage, rather than being a drop in a bucket in an Auckland-area home. In our view we had two ways to jump: use the money the latter way or the former. We have had a decade's experience in Seattle -- which is a bit like Auckland -- of using money and living the "city home" way, but now we are determined to work it the the other way so that instead of scrambling to cover a big mortgage we can try to shape our work pattern the way we want it. Our lifestyle tends to revolve around spending time out as a family with our little boy; reading and DVD/audio; having a few beers; a few pals.... so being in a small town one hour or two's drive from lots of other places suits us fine. And the TK house has room for guests.
Yes, it might be risky, especially as we work to establish ourselves in this new way.
Vera is thrilled that she has just secured a part-time senior-lecturing dance post for the next academic year, which is based up here in Auckland!!... but she will be able to commute to it as it is only twice a week. The summer-school work is already a tremendous satisfaction for her after months of struggling to get the kind of post she wanted. Even so, petrol costs/commute strategy will be a challenge as our vehicle is a Mazda MPV, nice and solid but not the cheapest car to run. In the meantime both of us hope to find part-time work either in Hamilton, or to work from or near home. Our skills, and the closeness of TK to many towns and cities, make this reasonably realistic, though things might take time to build. But we want to make things work, so that we can combine the quietness and countryside of TK with, primarily, spending time with Winston and with the satisfactions of using our skills. If that means a patchwork of part-time work, car-pooling, sharing kindy duties, spending a night or two apart, or whatever, we'll do it.
By the way the house is a 4-bdrm Huntly brick-and-Rimu-wood bungalow, built in the '60s. Checked out well in terms of inspection, Land Info documents, etc.
We have had six good months in and around Auckland. People have been helpful and kind, Winston likes NZ, and we have managed to work just enough to cover the lion's share (though not 100%) of our goal of not eating into our savings. We came over with the, er, challenging US exchange rate, so another reason for the speed and decisiveness of our Waitomo strategy is that -- much as we love Auckland -- we could quite easily see our savings being eaten up by rent and the cost of living here. We are simply not in the assets bracket that would allow us a big buffer to spend another chunk of time here: many migrants are, and I'm delighted for them (Auckland gets the thumbs-up from us), but we're being honest about ourselves and our 'level' and lifestyle.
I know that money has been the theme of a lot of this post but that's chiefly because, as you can tell, we strongly feel that as a new family in NZ we are at a financial fulcrum right now. I certainly don't mean to suggest that all new Kiwis do is talk and worry about cash -- eurgh! -- but I thought you'd rather get an honest feel for our deliberations and motives at this interesting six-month point.
We are thrilled about the prospect of move to TK, and I'll let you know how things go. The house has two plum trees and a peach tree in the garden, and one of the first things I want to add is a hybrid citrus! And as I'm not a gardener by any means, you can tell that there's a quite a buzz of excitement in our little Glenfield rental cottage at the moment! :yes
As we've just passed the six months mark here, I thought I'd let you know what's going on with us.
Some pretty big and exciting changes. Next week we are scheduled to close on a lovely little house down in Te Kuiti. As you might know this is a small, quiet rural town an hour south of Hamilton. Winston and I plan to head down there at the end of next week to get it ready. Vera will join us some days later as she is teaching dance summer school at a university up here in Auckland.
Before I go further I should say that we are aware of the boldness of the move we are making, in terms of re-locating to the Waitomo area. Boldness, that is, in terms of our more obviously being the kind of family that should really -- in terms of jobs/skills -- stick v.close to a big city such as Auckland.
Thing is, though, having been down in Te Kuiti, the size, pace and prices there are right for us now. Our rather modest, but useful, amount of money should go into a house in TK where it can work for us in terms of delivering a small mortgage, rather than being a drop in a bucket in an Auckland-area home. In our view we had two ways to jump: use the money the latter way or the former. We have had a decade's experience in Seattle -- which is a bit like Auckland -- of using money and living the "city home" way, but now we are determined to work it the the other way so that instead of scrambling to cover a big mortgage we can try to shape our work pattern the way we want it. Our lifestyle tends to revolve around spending time out as a family with our little boy; reading and DVD/audio; having a few beers; a few pals.... so being in a small town one hour or two's drive from lots of other places suits us fine. And the TK house has room for guests.
Yes, it might be risky, especially as we work to establish ourselves in this new way.
Vera is thrilled that she has just secured a part-time senior-lecturing dance post for the next academic year, which is based up here in Auckland!!... but she will be able to commute to it as it is only twice a week. The summer-school work is already a tremendous satisfaction for her after months of struggling to get the kind of post she wanted. Even so, petrol costs/commute strategy will be a challenge as our vehicle is a Mazda MPV, nice and solid but not the cheapest car to run. In the meantime both of us hope to find part-time work either in Hamilton, or to work from or near home. Our skills, and the closeness of TK to many towns and cities, make this reasonably realistic, though things might take time to build. But we want to make things work, so that we can combine the quietness and countryside of TK with, primarily, spending time with Winston and with the satisfactions of using our skills. If that means a patchwork of part-time work, car-pooling, sharing kindy duties, spending a night or two apart, or whatever, we'll do it.
By the way the house is a 4-bdrm Huntly brick-and-Rimu-wood bungalow, built in the '60s. Checked out well in terms of inspection, Land Info documents, etc.
We have had six good months in and around Auckland. People have been helpful and kind, Winston likes NZ, and we have managed to work just enough to cover the lion's share (though not 100%) of our goal of not eating into our savings. We came over with the, er, challenging US exchange rate, so another reason for the speed and decisiveness of our Waitomo strategy is that -- much as we love Auckland -- we could quite easily see our savings being eaten up by rent and the cost of living here. We are simply not in the assets bracket that would allow us a big buffer to spend another chunk of time here: many migrants are, and I'm delighted for them (Auckland gets the thumbs-up from us), but we're being honest about ourselves and our 'level' and lifestyle.
I know that money has been the theme of a lot of this post but that's chiefly because, as you can tell, we strongly feel that as a new family in NZ we are at a financial fulcrum right now. I certainly don't mean to suggest that all new Kiwis do is talk and worry about cash -- eurgh! -- but I thought you'd rather get an honest feel for our deliberations and motives at this interesting six-month point.
We are thrilled about the prospect of move to TK, and I'll let you know how things go. The house has two plum trees and a peach tree in the garden, and one of the first things I want to add is a hybrid citrus! And as I'm not a gardener by any means, you can tell that there's a quite a buzz of excitement in our little Glenfield rental cottage at the moment! :yes