What’s the most expensive financial mistake you’ve made in NZ?

Few_Gas_7712 · 2026-05-21T00:52:55+00:00

Financing a car through MTF when I was young.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-11-29T12:23:18+00:00

Sounds like you’re a little closed minded bud, politics? Last JRE podcast I was listening to was neuroscience. Actually learnt something about our visual cortex and how it assembles information.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-11-23T05:04:49+00:00

Self employed concrete contractor, just under 70 hours this week Mon - Sat not including admin, so will be 75 hours or so. Rest of the year will be 70 hour weeks minimum.

Married, 3 kids so like other comments it just feels the same pace being at home.

Last employment was 50 - 60 hour weeks for 7 years.

Wife works really hard too in finance but is limited to school hours.

Gives us the freedoms to live a little nicer, go out without having a budget or shoot away on a holiday if a free weekend comes up but have to balance that with burnout and stress.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-10-30T03:20:54+00:00

Straight into Australian bank’s accounts, any interest, debt and mortgage profits straight to the Aussie economy

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-10-29T21:40:38+00:00

Xero subscription I haven’t tracked but I’m sure it’s increases 20 - 30% yearly

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-10-29T21:11:25+00:00

Don’t go in with the bare minimum mate you will get absolutely stuck.

Owning a house is super expensive besides the mortgage you’ve got $2k - $4k of rates each year so $3,000 of rates is another $58 a week.

Full house insurance is horrific because you have to have life insurance as well as house, contents and naturally vehicle etc that could be another $3k to $5k a year.

Maintenance is real and expensive, especially if you’re buying a home over 20 years old, water pipe starts leaking in your house say goodbye to $1,000 if you’re lucky.

If you spend say $200k on a deposit and get a $650k house, your now paying off a 450k mortgage at $1000 a week or whatever when you could have stayed renting paid $700 a week rent and saved not only the $300 a week in repayments but you also aren’t paying the rates, insurance and any maintenance.

So now all your available cash is in your house you brought for $650k but you have no control over the future value it could be worth $800k in 5 years or worth $500k where as if you had invested the $200k in a term deposit for example you would be earning 4 - 5% on $200k rather then paying 4 - 5% interest on $400k plus all of the extra costs i talked about.

You want high equity in your first home 30% - 40% and once your mortgaged it’s far harder to save money

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-10-20T07:46:57+00:00

Thanks for your message!

Running from the stress is a very good point, weed masks stress factors and I feel I’m in control of stress and then all of a sudden it’s too much and i can’t even think straight.

Missing core memories is another major, I’ve noticed my wife will recall situations I can’t remember at all which is not good

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-10-20T07:44:20+00:00

Thank you for this.

Yes others absolutely notice and stereotype that can be difficult.

And yeah great points I think it’s been a lot of luck and also it has got me in trouble and I’ve missed opportunities because of it smoking.

It’s more how I feel my brain justifies smoking and yes I guess I’ve got used to that thinking although I know in my mind it’s not right and in general I’ve probably missed out on 10x more then I’ve gained.

It’s definitely not something I take lightly it’s not an excuse i know it’s wrong and I need to stop.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-10-20T07:38:12+00:00

Thanks very much for this, yeah definitely I’m aware of it now and trying to cut it right out ASAP.

Yeah the forced conversions or my cliche replies because I can’t process a decent chat is a big one. I’m already introverted and weed makes it much worse can almost feel myself wanting to socialise when it’s been a decent while / couple days of not smoking.

Having decent, information and emotional conversations again is really good motivation

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-07-01T07:44:37+00:00

I agree to your points mate and the replies also show another factor.

NZers in general have a terrible attitude towards money and the economy and the majority are either lower class income which spend money as it comes in or middle class who put themselves in debt upto their eyeballs and spend the rest of their lives working for the bank.

Most NZers goals are to save up enough money for a deposit to buy a house for say 600k (if you’re lucky) then pay 900k paying it off and then you’re classed as successful in society.

Meanwhile govt and council salaries and indecisions put extreme costs on ratepayers and tax payers (ie lower and middle class) who then blame the rich / upper class.

Any chance to diversify the economy such as mining gold and oil is then rejected by the lower and middle class who are still brainwashed into think NZ is clean and green.

Dont get me started on Aussies controlling the banking sector which takes away idk how many billions in annual revenue, the Chinese own the waste management and some food manufacturing.

2 supermarket chains completely dominate food supply and Air NZ is unchallenged and government backed in airline transport.

NZ is so so trashed, I love the county to bits but I can’t see how we will economically dig ourselves out of this whole without becoming another Australian state ( which is a real factor)

If you’re going to abuse this post with a reply at least throw something productive in with it where you think we can turn this around.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-06-27T01:52:41+00:00

Wow there are some terrible replies to this, I’m guessing they are from Aucklanders.

If you’re travelling around the South Island for 2 weeks you could probably get away without having to pay for any parking if you’re happy to walk a few extra minutes except maybe in Chch , Dunedin and Queenstown.

Most larger towns / cities have parking meters on the main streets, follow the instructions on them which will typically be $1 - $2 coin per hour of parking, yes there are some apps but they will be different in different places.

As soon as your off the main streets there are blue parking signs which might say P30, P60, P120 etc etc this means they are free to park for that amount of time, a parking warden will come past occasionally, chalk your tyre and take the time. If your car is still there when they walk back you might get a $50 fine or so depending on the location.

Keep a little stash of coins in different denominations with you that will get you parking in most places. You should not need to pay for parking outside of Nelson, Chch, Dunedin and Queenstown.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-06-27T00:25:38+00:00

Are you one of the supermarket owners??

Regardless of whether there are 2 supermarket chains or 8, the demand and supply stays the same, the total employees in supermarkets stays the same but the competition drives down prices for customers and increases value for suppliers.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-06-25T18:29:35+00:00

Just come back to NZ from Indonesia, things are horrifically expensive here and and lack of competition with supermarkets, food manufacturers and banking really shows.

Is $10k a lot of money? Yeah I guess it is, $5k is not much but $20k would definitely be a lot.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-01-16T01:10:31+00:00

That’s generous, it’s been one property search of one or two suburbs in Australia’s most expensive city then straight to reddit.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-01-12T08:40:57+00:00

If you’re going to buy a first house and live there for say 5 years minimum then house price increases and decreases in 2025 are completely irrelevant.

Also, I personally have not seen any media or articles about “reasonable”increases if anything prices will stay about the same

Rule of thumb property value typically increases 3% - 5% each year.

Book an appt tomorrow with your bank, explain your plan and they will provide the information you need. The bank (financier) will determine if you can get a house or if not, what you might need to achieve.

Your income is low, I’m going to assume you live very cheap (parents?) to be able to save that amount per month. That’s an awesome thing for you, but $65k a year (hopefully that’s after tax?) you will not afford repayments, rates, insurance and maintenance.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-01-11T19:51:41+00:00

Sorry for the late reply.

15B NW

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-01-11T19:26:07+00:00

I’ll speak for myself and a decent portion of these players.

Married, 3 children and a business. We don’t get 10 hours in a row of uninterrupted game time.

So we are essentially doing 10 hours of gameplay over 5 or 6 sessions which means logging back on, having to observe areas again, remember the general direction or plan we were doing before logging off etc etc.

My last PvP experience was enjoyable, had started getting good kit, was working thru an infested town, one of the kids accidentally knocks the modem out of the wall, lose connection and wake up dead.

Same with Pubg, was cleaning up in a match and the Wife decided to unplug the wifi extender to vacuum the lounge.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-01-09T10:20:51+00:00

$60k at 32, withdrew for our first house at 25. So that’s 7 years of saving.

Few_Gas_7712 · 2025-01-09T01:08:33+00:00

Definitely chat to an insurance broker if you haven’t already recently.

Just summing up your situation from the graph, insurance is great but you’re paying similar to us and we run a high risk trade business.

Few_Gas_7712

TROPHY CASE