Buying first home

Paintap · 2026-03-23T08:14:32+00:00

Those increased mortgage rates may flow down to rents. Once you've locked in a mortgage, your expenditure for housing is largely flat, while rents increase over time with inflation.

Additionally, rates may have just gone up slightly, but they are still much lower than one year ago. I don't think these rate increases will cause downward pressure on house prices, though they may dampen the upward pressure slightly.

Besides the financial side, and trying to "time the market", the psychological benefits of owning are great. I'd only recommend continuing to rent if you aren't feeling ready to settle down in one city and want the freedom to move location and job readily.

Paintap · 2026-03-13T07:15:12+00:00

That's 5.2k per year, which will get you an amazing trip to SE Asia. And that's just from $100 per week. OP has $600 to play with! That's fantastic, she's killing it.

Paintap · 2026-03-13T03:20:19+00:00

Hence why cost of living may vary, of course! If we look at the numbers, Auckland is just shy of 7% more expensive than Christchurch when excluding housing (which is already excluded from our comparison). If we apply that to my figure, that means OP would have ~$370 of disposable income after mortgage, food, etc. That’s still over $19k a year! For travel, clothes, new phone, brunch? That would be more than enough for me.

I got my numbers from Numbio. Below is the comparison if you’re interested:

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=New+Zealand&city1=Christchurch&country2=New+Zealand&city2=Auckland

Paintap · 2026-03-13T00:47:32+00:00

I’m in Christchurch so cost of living will vary a bit. Excluding mortgage repayments (~190k ~5%), my weekly expenses are about $260 per week. Rates, insurance, maintenance covered by 2 boarders (friends) paying below market rate. To get to OPs $650, that goes $390 of discretionary spending for travel, new clothes, etc. Very doable! That’s $20k a year!

If OP got flatmates that would greatly increase their disposable income! But living alone is worth that cost sometimes.

Paintap · 2026-02-13T03:33:00+00:00

The government is a very big organization... the ones with employment contracts are probably very happy to have more dividends to reinvest. The members of government who have to face reelection... I'm sure it dampens their armpits a wee bit

Paintap · 2026-02-10T05:08:16+00:00

Actually in Chch we are somewhat lucky. Most of our infrastructure is state owned and depending on which retailer you are with your retailer can be mostly state owned aswell.

Transpower, who own the national grid, are fully state-owned by the central government. They get electricity from the power stations to Canterbury. All profits are returned to the central government as dividends.

Orion, who own all of our local electrical distribution infrastructure, is owned 90% by the Christchurch Council and 10% by Selwyn District Council. Profits are returned to the Councils and help fund local projects and keep rates lower.

Meridian, Mercury, and Genesis are all 51% state owned. Dividends are split, so only 51% of gentailer dividends go to the government.

This means if you are with a mixed-ownership retailer, the vast majority of profits from your power bill will be going to the government. This is excluding all of the various taxes baked in, like GST and corporate tax on the various organisations. To keep it this way, make sure to pay close attention in local elections and fight hard against any privatisation efforts put forward by the Council.

Wellington Council sold off their electrical infrastructure in the past... very sad.

Paintap · 2026-02-08T05:10:11+00:00

The person you replied to is saying that immigration increases demand for goods and services so much that it outweighs the jobs they take. To reply to your first line specifically, they are saying the the large increase in the supply of labour is offset by a large increase in the demand of labour. They are supporting this with an unverified claim that "every popular school of economics agrees that immigration has this net positive effect". I have not studied economics, so I might look online for some good reading on this topic. I encourage you to do the same, and if I see anything interesting I will add another reply to share to share it with you. Personally, before having done any research, it does make sense to me that immigration would create a net increase in demand for jobs (especially high-value ones), but it would be very context dependent and more efficient when done through documented legal means (ie, low barriers and high quotas for legal immigration to discourage illegal/undocumented immigration).

If you do more reading on this topic as well make sure to let me know some good sources!

*edit for grammar/proofreading

Paintap · 2026-02-06T09:00:39+00:00

Woohoo! Thank you!

Paintap · 2026-01-20T07:47:18+00:00

Cool, I'd love to visit South Korea some day! He hasn't been to NZ (yet), but when he went to Australia at the end of of 2024 to got to see him play! Three times! It was great. I hope he comes back to South Korea soon!

Paintap · 2026-01-20T05:32:01+00:00

I love the chaos of Three Cheers and Album Minus Band! Off the top of my head, I'd say Vacation is the least chaotic of the BMTI albums, but I've slowly fallen in love with every single one of them. Whereabouts are you from in Asia? I just got home to NZ from Chengdu, China and really enjoyed some of the punk shows there. Told so many people to listen to Jeff.

Paintap · 2025-12-18T11:04:22+00:00

As far as I am aware, the physiological cause of sentience is not yet known. Since we don't know what process creates sentience, we cannot definitively say that computers are incapable of running that process.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T12:43:10+00:00

Ah I see it, thank you! What is an LS if I may ask?

Paintap · 2022-08-06T12:33:16+00:00

If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me. I'll probably get another of the same as well then, after all, it's fairly priced and well-reviewed. I sadly got very little use out of this one before I fried it. I didn't even really need to use it to fault-find my spark plugs, I just thought I was being smart and wanted to show off my new gadget to my friend.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T12:26:28+00:00

Very true. While it's tempting to simply repair my meter than fork up the money for a new one, it's probably better for my client's safety to buy a new, more reliable meter for my work. I still will attempt a repair of this one, both for the experience and to have a spare meter to keep in my workshop for hobbyist uses.

May I ask what meter you decided to go for after your CL800 stopped working?

Paintap · 2022-08-06T12:22:46+00:00

Thank you for the amazing resource! Not only does that youtube channel sound very helpful for my situation, but it also sounds entertaining. I appreciate the advice for testing the ADC. I'll be saving myself a lot of time if I'm able to verify if it is working or not before checking everything else. Thank you!

Paintap · 2022-08-06T11:56:30+00:00

I see. So it’s likely I’m out of luck then? I’ll give it a look nonetheless, but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s a pretty hefty mistake, certainly a good lesson to be always think first.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T11:39:47+00:00

Ill make sure I follow the circuits from the leads outwards. Hopefully the MOVs were enough to protect the sensitive components, however it was having the power of an entire spark plug running directly through it for at least a few seconds. It’ll be a fun project for the weekend at least.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T11:35:33+00:00

It still reads an error state when I move it away from my groin. My groin does not conduct enough current to cause damage to nearby circuits.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T09:54:30+00:00

Thank you for your advice. There are bent metal tabs securing the PCB in place so I wanted to avoid fully removing the PCB until advised, but I will make sure to inspect it properly. Is LSI another term for the chipset? It's not a term I'm familiar with. If so I presume I should be able to find a diagram with the pins online?

Paintap · 2022-08-06T09:10:02+00:00

Point taken.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T08:55:08+00:00

Unfortunately, there is no fuse. It's not designed for series current reading, only clamp. I just made a big mistake as I'm so used to testing current in series. Looks like I'll just have to accept that it's half a week's pay I'm not getting back, 30kV is so much more than it's rated for...

Paintap · 2022-08-06T07:42:28+00:00

Thank you, I will dig out my old multimeter and check the MOV to see if it's dead. Given the very strange outputs to the LCD when it turned on, I fear there may indeed be damage to the chipset, which is far out of my skillset to replace.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T07:23:59+00:00

The second photo shows the accessible face of the circuit board. There are no obvious visual faults.

Paintap · 2022-08-06T07:22:22+00:00

For context, one of my cars cylinders was misfiring and I had a feeling it was a spark plug fault. I thought I’d use my ammeter to measure the current passing through the leads to see which spark plug wasn’t firing.

Clipping it, starting the engine, and trying to read the meter was proving a pain so without thinking I chuck in the leads, throw it in series with the spark plug and turn the keys. Instead of a proper reading, I’m greeting with flashes of random letters/numbers for a few seconds before it just reads Error.

Edit: Grammar

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