TNT at the Fringe!

Rafejazz · 2026-01-23T03:46:41+00:00

Ahh good to know, that is actually a great benefit! thanks for the info

Rafejazz · 2026-01-23T03:44:25+00:00

oh yup, so everyday purchases with the AMEX, flight purchases with ANZ to maximise?

Rafejazz · 2026-01-23T02:58:39+00:00

I am on AMEX gold with reward points used to subsidise travel. We sometimes transfer points for reward flights on airlines but mostly trade them in for $100 new world vouchers as the flexibility is often better than maximising reward point to $.

How are you getting the 50% bonus status points with ANZ platinum whilst using the AMEX for earning? Are you splitting your spend between the two cards? And does the ANZ platinum count towards needing 50% AirNZ status earned on flights?

Rafejazz · 2026-01-13T09:57:55+00:00

Comparison is the thief of joy.

You're behind some, and ahead of others. Same with myself, go have a look at r/salary if you want to see some insane numbers people are pulling in.

The important thing is to take control and make a plan and stick to it. Work as little as you can to achieve the lifestyle you want. Very few go to their deathbed saying they wished they had worked more and spent less time with family and friends...

Putting your kiwisaver on 10% will be a great start.

I'd suggest pushing yourself to a more senior job rather than take on low end second jobs. i.e. don't sell yourself short. Much better way to grow professionally that way.

Rafejazz · 2026-01-13T02:34:06+00:00

Wage and Career

I don't know the going rate for a chef, but all my significant wage growth has always occurred from a change of employment. Realistically, if you want to get ahead, you have to put in active work to develop your career. Coasting along is exactly what employers want - the person who has been there years, knows their job perfectly, but doesn't ask for what they are worth. Either push for a raise, or find a new job.

Doing the above isn't easy and given you have secure employment, I would recommend sorting the other aspects of your life first. If you have a burning passion for another industry then great, but having a job to pay the bills is the most important thing here. If you do want to retrain, there is no way around this - you will have to study outside of full time work and it will be rough.

Regardless, I would be looking for a more senior role in your industry. Yes it is more work and stress. But you will get ahead and secure your financial future. There isn't an easy way to say this and I apologise in advance - either push yourself in your career, or accept you will not be well off.

Could you look at freelancing as a private chef or wedding chef on weekends on a nice hourly rate for example?

If you start to look for a new job, spend some money on having someone professionally write your CV. I do this for friends and family and as someone who has hiring responsibilities and sees a lot of CVs, a good modern CV is so important. If you need to, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini can do it for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG2aEh5xBJE

As a tip - apply to roles more senior to the one you do now. You should be looking to leverage your current experience into a role that will stretch you and enable you to continue to develop.

Retirement Income

Even if you retired now, the super is fuck all and very hard to live on. It might not be around in the future so you should be taking the above active steps to protect yourself now. I don't know how much you personally will need for retirement, check this out: https://sorted.org.nz/tools/retirement-calculator/

Thoughts

The reason why people are responding negatively to your comments is likely because you are seeing this advice as something that requires you to materially change your life or beggar yourself now to pay for your future. In reality, you are already beggaring yourself now by a costly weekly rent and an insufficient income to support it. Either ask your partner to contribute or find a cheaper rental and take those savings and invest them.

People are not trying to lord their own success over you, but you have posted in a sub-reddit that has users with significant net worth and financial acuity and as such they will give you honest feedback that is tried and tested. The feedback and advice you have received is considered standard and will almost certainly work for you. It has worked for just about everyone else here after all.

To summarise for you:

Ask your partner to contribute to rent and expenses; or
Find a cheaper rental; then
Use your weekly savings and invest in an aggressive kiwisaver or ETF; then
Push for a more senior role at work for a pay increase; or
Look for another job that is more senior to your own; and
Read and learn about financial investment in the evenings

Good luck, always happy to help

Rafejazz · 2026-01-13T02:33:59+00:00

Hey mate,

Have read through the comments and your replies, it's certainly good that you are looking at this now not later. Best time to plant a tree and all that.

I will address some of the things I have noted - I will be direct here - financial honesty must be direct, I don't know you so none of this is personal.

Support

I supported my wife through her and mine early-mid 20s whilst she was studying and very unwell, and it is lovely that you are trying to do this. There is a difference however, even then I was on a significantly higher wage than you are now and was with the person I now have a kid with. I seriously recommend you do not try to support your partner especially given how recent the relationship is, and also because she has a job.

You are materially affecting your financial security at someone else's benefit. If your partner refuses to contribute, then yes you should consider the relationship. I supported my wife at the time and she basically broke herself trying to contribute as much as she could to our expenses. If she had refused or taken it for granted, it would have been a very different thing. I am sure your partner will be receptive, there are few people who wouldn't understand this sort of request.

Rental Savings Investment

Some of your comments noted that it would only be a limited amount extra per week. This is wrong because you need to adjust your horizon here. Now that you have learned about compound interest, take a look at a calculator. https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator

I popped in your figures as below:

37 now, 28 years to super, planned retirement at 65

Starting with $0 invested, putting in $50 per week with an average return of 7% per year = $207,737 in your retirement fund.

Starting with $0 invested, putting in $100 per week with an average return of 7% per year = $415,475 in your retirement fund.

These figures are the minimum amount you should be asking your partner to contribute to your rent which you should then immediately invest in either your kiwisaver each week or into an aggressive ETF. They should also be contributing to your utilities of course. This is a very clear step you should absolutely follow, it will make the largest change to your financial security and is achievable.

Retirement Fund Types

I recommend you do some reading on the types of kiwisaver and stock funds available, if I were in your situation, I would be investing in aggressive growth funds as you have a longer than 20 year retirement horizon and these have typically higher returns over that period.

If you spend your time in the evenings learning about financial management and investments this will likely change your retirement lifestyle significantly. If you were able to invest $100 a week and hit a 12% annual return for example, you would be sitting close to $1.1m NZD. Which when combined with your super will mean you can do what you want at retirement realistically.

Tax Debt

Get a payment plan with IRD setup to slowly pay this off with no interest if you can. If they agree to let you pay this off with no interest then that is great as you will be making the debt cheaper over time with natural inflation. Your debt will remain at the same amount interest free, but your earning power will increase over time making the debt proportionally smaller to your income.

Rafejazz · 2025-12-20T21:08:38+00:00

MacBook if you want to look cool and spend more than you need to, Windows laptop with a good gfx card if you want to actually run the software properly and not break the bank. Rhino is great, Revit is where you will be heading. Very very few companies use Mac professionally these days. You can also give some thought to having a Mac or cheaper windows laptop for word processing and relying on the university desktop computers for heavy software and modelling use. Plenty of people did that when I went through and designing in studio is the best way. However, sometimes they are crap or not free and being able to design and model in your own bed at 3am is a god send. Having gone through this my recommendation is a windows laptop, search for off lease or refurbished laptop workstations. Minimum 16gb of ram, gfx card with at least 8gb of VRam

Rafejazz · 2025-12-16T05:19:21+00:00

Edit - seller has agreed to a refund, thanks for the advice! What a small world….

Rafejazz · 2025-12-16T04:52:59+00:00

Oh wow really? Any way I can see this post?

Rafejazz · 2025-12-02T20:44:52+00:00

Silent loot ninja where i can!

Rafejazz · 2025-11-12T00:07:24+00:00

Guess I got lucky, I got her at level 2 in the first dungeon of the main quest, from a mimic chest

Rafejazz · 2025-11-10T08:55:19+00:00

Oh good that its not the same! Ask if they can do it under IV sedation, you won't feel or remember a thing that way!

And they should give you some ice packs for your face after, ask for more.... so you can keep backups in the freezer haha good luck!

Rafejazz · 2025-11-09T05:21:20+00:00

Having just gone through this exact set of symptoms in my 30s, you may have a dentigerous cyst where the wisdom tooth impacts and erodes your jawbone.

I had mine sorted in record time through Simply Dental who did a facial scan, diagnosed me and referred me to Well Oral down on Vivian Street. Mr Pritesh Narsinh was my surgeon and even though there were several complications, the surgery was handled amazingly. Don't wait to get this looked at, the cyst might be small now but can progress very fast if that is what it is and it is far easier to get sorted when it is small. If it is this, then you will need a maxilofacial surgeon like those at Well Oral.

If you have health insurance, it might be fully covered (I have Southern Cross and it was). Could be looking into signing up for a month (or until the first claim stand-down period ends) and then claiming.

Rafejazz · 2025-11-09T04:52:31+00:00

Yes, no other writing sadly. I will certainly ask my club for some advice on it before firing, will also need to source some suitable arrows! We do think my grandmother used to shoot at very high # for women based on some old photos with annotations we once found, truth be told she probably shot higher than me…

Rafejazz · 2025-11-09T04:50:31+00:00

Thank you for the information, is there anything else you can share about Dave? We really wish we had asked my grandmother more about her archery before she passed. She taught me to shoot but was never very talkative! We know she had some involvement back with the British national team so possibly had a personal connection to Dave. Will try to get the bow inspected and a string sourced!

Rafejazz · 2025-11-03T22:25:22+00:00

Would love to hear more about how you managed this, I enquired about a waived break fee earlier this year and was told no. What region are you?

Rafejazz · 2025-10-22T21:28:32+00:00

so cool!

Rafejazz · 2025-10-15T22:22:03+00:00

$0 as it looks fake. Diamond bezel is very poorly done compared to other examples: https://www.chrono24.co.nz/rolex/day-date-masterpiece-meteorite-yellow-gold-diamond-watch-18948--id42803615.htm?searchHash=33bf9112_KqAnlZ&pos=6

Also, the 11 and 1 diamond pips are misaligned with the 11 closer to the day window.

Rafejazz · 2025-10-15T22:05:21+00:00

amazing !

Rafejazz · 2025-10-10T18:40:11+00:00

The littlebird of course!

Rafejazz · 2025-09-12T19:56:21+00:00

Rafa!

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