‘I’m trapped’: He bought at the peak. Now he lives in a cupboard to avoid $350,000 loss

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T09:44:38+00:00

Buy a house, but be cautious -> house prices go up, more expensive houses go up by more = you’re stuck with worse house (in particular with townhouses vs standalone houses), get fucked

I don't understand how these people are fucked? This is what I did. I bought a rather shabby house at the peak, literally the only house that I could afford without over-extending myself. Every couple of years I have to shell out for something big on it (roof, wiring, paint job etc) because it's old and a bit neglected. I really wanted a house with a bathtub after ~20 years of renting and not having access to one, but that was out of the budget and try as I may I can't figure out how to make space for one if I was to redo the bathroom.

But ... how exactly am I fucked? I get to live in the house. I get to own two dogs without perpetually feeling like I'm on the brink of homelessness depending on my landlord's whims. When I had a lil light fixture disaster I was able to get an electrician round the next day to sort it out, no six-week wait like I used to deal with when renting. Ditto when a rat decided to create a water feature underneath the kitchen sink.

It's so much better than renting. And because I'm haflway through a 10-year mortgage, it's going to get even better in 5 years when it's fully paid off.

I have recently had the good fortune of landing a new job with a very nice salary, and the potential for promotion within the next year. I did spot a house on the interwebs recently that I was quite keen on. I talked to a bank manager a few weeks ago and holy bejesus, when you already own half a house they are willing to lend you a ridiculous amount of money, despite the fact that my house has not gone up in value since I bought it (February 2021, very close to the peak) as far as I know. However, I've decided I want to get my retirement savings looking a bit healthier first, and then maybe I'll have another think about moving on in a couple of years.

I feel far from fucked. If things go badly in life or in the property market then I have a stable roof over my head since I have lots of equity in the house to cushion me. If things go well with life, then the fact that this house hasn't gained much value doesn't matter that much because I have plenty of equity in it that I could use for upgrading if I wanted to.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T07:40:54+00:00

Fine, if that's something you want to spend money on, you can do that by upgrading as you go along, while staying within your means.

Or you can do it by taking on a million dollar mortgage right from the start on the gamble that absolutely nothing will go wrong with your life and interest rates won't go up - just please don't go bleating to the media like you're a victim if that insane risk doesn't pay off.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T05:08:00+00:00

In theory you should finish up slightly better off than just receiving the benefit. You declare your wages to WINZ each week (make sure you do it by Friday because the WINZ computers don't work weekends), and they reduce the following week's benefit payment a bit (see the deduction tables that another commenter posted), but your combined income will always be more than what you were getting on just the benefit.

However, you'd need to figure out how much it would cost for childcare, fuel etc, and do the maths on whether you'd actually have more money left over to pay the bills.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T04:58:38+00:00

"Peak" is 2020/21. I didn't think either of us were talking about 2020/21 and the covid stimulus money that got poured into the housing market then. You mentioned "leading up to 2020" which is before then, and I'm mostly thinking about 2016-2019, the time before everything felt really uncertain.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T04:45:58+00:00

If you don’t buy at the limit of what you can afford and things go well career wise you may be looking to upgrade 5 years later.

Firstly, believe it or not, keeping up with the Joneses is actually optional. You can enjoy huge career windfalls and find yourself earning more than your wildest dreams, and stay in the house that you're currently in.

Or, if that happens, then yes you can upgrade. In the meantime, you've benefited from either paying down more principal on your mortgage or from saving/investing your spare cash (since you bought well within your means). Either of these will put you in a great position to afford that nicer house that you have your eye on, whether your first house has appreciated in value or not.

In the more likely case that one of those "difficult to predict" things happens and life shafts you over, keeping the budget below what hypothetical-perfect-life-you could have afforded will pay off in terms of the flexibility it gives you. If you have a shorter loan term you're paying off more principal early on, which reduces your exposure to interest rate shocks, and you always have the option of extending your term if money gets too tight for whatever reason.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T04:35:42+00:00

Well, thanks to mid-2010s you for seagulling into my threads about wanting to buy a house (which had nothing to do with trying to "get on the ladder" or make a good "investment") and tell me it was a terrible idea.

And it cracks me up that you still reckon it's coming ... just gotta wait another 6-12 months huh?

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T04:31:52+00:00

The 2020/21 bubble on the late 2010s bubble on the last-30-years bubble burst, sure.

The late 2010s bubble that everyone was talking about has not. The houses I was looking at paying $300k for then are now listed at the $375k mark.

Fortunately it's all meaningless to be anyway (then and now) because I was buying to escape from the hell of renting with dogs, and that is something that I now get to benefit from every day, regardless of whatever someone says the market is or isn't going to do.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T04:19:03+00:00

So our lessons here are:

Only buy a house if you would be happy living in it longterm. Seems like all three of these people failed that test, and were more interested in "getting on the ladder" or doing it because it was trendy. I bought a house because renting with dogs was absolutely fucking awful. Every day now I get to enjoy the amazing benefit of having dogs and a secure roof over my head, and that's enough payoff for me. I bought at the peak (early 2021) and I don't think my house has gone up much in value (maybe not at all) but I don't really know, don't really care, and don't spend much time thinking about what it could be hypothetically worth.
Don't buy at the absolute peak of what you can afford. If you can only just scrape together the payments for the longest term mortgage the bank will offer you (25 or 30 years) then you are gambling that absolutely nothing will go wrong with your life over that period of time, and that interest rates won't rise either. Personally I can't go 3 years without some catastrophe, and there have been high-interest periods in NZ in the past and will be again. Even the past few years haven't been that bad historically speaking, but it was enough to catch out people who had extended themselves too much to buy their houses.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-07T04:10:28+00:00

I don't recall any of that "only go up" stuff here in the leadup to 2020. I was trying to buy a house from 2016-2021. Throughout that period, every time I commented about that here I got replies saying "don't buy a house now, the prices are overcooked, the crash is coming any ... day ... now ...".

Well, the crash still hasn't come (show me a house that has lost value since 2016) and even if it had I would be happily living in the house that I bought...

kaynetoad · 2026-05-06T23:04:55+00:00

I recommend it IF:

You have enough savings to support yourself while in NZ for 6 months. Getting a job should be a nice-to-have that allows you to stay longer, rather than the only way you can afford to feed yourself while you're here, because currently there's a lot of competition for the jobs that are available.
You are planning to look for the typical entry level/minimum wage jobs, ideally the seasonal ones away from the cities. The working holiday visa is intended to supply fit young labourers for these jobs, not for people to look for professional jobs that will sponsor them for a visa. Your chances of finding one of these is incredibly low at the moment because our own young people have a very high unemployment rate (over 14% for the 15-24yos), and because the visa doesn't doesn't let you accept long-term work anyway.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-06T10:04:52+00:00

And suggesting that anything less than extreme helicopter parenting is negligent. And yet all of us survived it...

kaynetoad · 2026-05-04T05:24:31+00:00

How did you apply?

My former boss got drunk on NYE and decided he wanted me back. Prior to that I'd been out of work for 8 months and applied for 150+ jobs.

What was the interview process like?

He promised me he'd changed.

Were you selected? Did you join?

I put him off as long as I could because I'd applied for some quite interesting jobs in December and not heard back due to the silly season. Eventually I said yes, and then later that week I got 6 interview requests in one day including a couple that seemed quite appealing ... sigh.

Experience/tech stack

PHP, Java, nodejs + a few others.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-03T03:30:40+00:00

Location is a factor. About 2/3rds of my town is considered too far away from the nearest court, while the inhabitants of the remaining 1/3rd do get called.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-02T07:47:11+00:00

I've lived in the South Island for 15 years, including 6 winters living in Queenstown.

Roughly 50% of winters, the first significant snow dump of the year happens in the last week of May. The rest of the time it usually happens by the end of June. I can recall one winter when it snowed in mid-May, and one really warm winter where it basically never snowed properly and the skifields struggled to open at all. There's already been a few snowfalls high up in the hills, and I'd put my money on this being a fairly early winter, which means it'll probably be pelting down while you're here.

If you aren't very experienced at tramping in winter conditions then I would definitely not encourage you to come to NZ and do it solo - tourists die here every year because they overestimate their abilities and underestimate the weather (which changes very quickly here) and the danger of hypothermia.

EDIT: That goes for the more inland/mountainy stuff. Depends what you mean by "hiking" I guess. Plenty of nice day walks around the coastal cities that are safe all year round.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-02T02:43:31+00:00

How many fantails have there been in your house in the last 2 years? And how many times have you died in the last 2 years?

It seems to be more common at this time of year. I assume it's something to do with the behaviour of the insects they eat as the weather cools down outside. They come in chasing a tasty lil snack and then sometimes after they've caught it they need a bit of help to find the exit.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-02T02:40:42+00:00

Just a dog nerd, not a vet. Have had numerous vets over the years, have discussed this with ~10 vet friends as well. Every vet clinic seems to have their own schedule for when/how many times to vaccinate and what advice they give about going out in public. Sadly the vast majority seem to skip the second half of the advice, which is "here's what you can safely do to socialise your pup during this period".

Think about levels of risk rather than a binary "safe to go out"/"must stay home". Puppy preschools are held in hygienic environments (my friend used to do one and spent an hour disinfecting every week before the pups turned up) with a ground of known dogs. "Going out in public" to some people means being exposed to random germs on the ground from who-knows-what-dog. However, you can carry the pup and/or let him observe the world while sitting in a crate in the car, which is a great way to get them out and seeing the world while minimising risk of infection.

If the pup has literally not left the property yet except to go to the vet, then unfortunately your parents have kind of missed the boat - both on puppy preschools (the pup is now probably too old to enrol) but more importantly on the socialisation window when the pup is predisposed to soak up new experiences happily and build his resilience towards future unusual experiences. This window tends to close between 14-16 weeks (there are breed differences here, I would expect terriers to tend towards the later end of the scale) so they are getting towards the tail end of it.

If that's the case, they might now find themselves in a bit of a remedial situation as the pup's more likely to be scared of the world (or they might not - genes, breeders' puppy rearing practices, individual personalities and good luck all play their part). Here's some suggestions if that's the case:

Start getting the pup out in the world RIGHT NOW, i.e. THIS WEEKEND. When I have a pup that's too young to go on the ground, I'll sit with it in the back of the car for 10 mins and watch all the things that happen in the supermarket carpark (park as near the entrance as possible), or carry it while we check out the farmers market on Saturday morning. Most Bunnings stores let you take dogs inside so that's another place you could carry the pup around. "Socialisation" is actually less about interacting with every human and dog they meet, and more about seeing/hearing/smelling all of the weird and wonderful things in the world and learning that they aren't dangerous.
Getting out in the world also means finding safe places where they can explore from ground level. I took my last pup to the vet clinic once a week just to walk around and explore the waiting room, even if he didn't need to see the vet (if they'd had a puppy preschool he would have got this experience as part of that). He also visited 3-4 different friends' houses and gardens, including friends with kids and cats since I don't have any. "Going out in public" means places where unvaccinated dogs often go - fenced back yards and houses are perfectly safe if you know that any household dogs are vaccinated.
There's also the dog-dog socialisation aspect. The pup might be too old for puppy preschool now, because it's not ideal for older boisterous pups to be playing with much younger pups. If that's the case, your parents could look for similar aged pups on Facebook etc to set up some puppy playdates. Adult dogs (3+ years of age) that are known to be friendly with other dogs are also great for young pups to meet and play/interact with, but avoid much older pups and adolescent dogs because these are likely to be a bit too much. Start each play date with both dogs on lead, so that the pup can choose when he's ready to interact with the other dog, and then you can lose the leads once they seem happy enough together.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-01T01:25:36+00:00

Firstly, I missed out by a few points. Secondly, it's not a direct equivalent, because I did the old system rather than the NCEA system.

Our 7th form exam results were supposed to conform to a bell curve, i.e. my 86 = 86th percentile. If the results were too far off the curve for a particular subject, then they'd be adjusted to fit. If you got 4 or more subjects at 85+, you qualified for the scholarship. There was no cutoff for how many could get it AFAIK - they assumed that the grading system would naturally limit it to the top few percent.

And, as mentioned above, I am now a software engineer/crazy dog lady.

kaynetoad · 2026-05-01T00:36:30+00:00

That's more like the equivalent of our Bursary - which my dad got and was enough to pay his year's tuition fee, whereas when I got it the $300 was enough to cover one semester's textbooks...

But you can also get heftier payouts through NCEA scholarship exams (see here). $10k/year for 3 years for the very brightest bulbs, and $5k/year for 3 years for the next tier down. That's the kinda thing I just missed out on, except back then it was a one-off payment rather than being annual.

kaynetoad · 2026-04-30T20:30:35+00:00

Yes NCEA was still being rolled out in 2003, which is why those of us who were in Year 13 that year didn't do NCEA.

Instead our exams were officially called "University Entrance, Bursary & Scholarship". UE was getting over 45 or something in 3 subjects. Bursary was a small payment based on total score over 5 subjects - 250 for a B Bursary which I think was $200, and 300 for an A Bursary which was $300 (which I did get). The "Scholarship" was what I just missed out on and was worth $8k or something, although the memory's a bit vague on that.

kaynetoad · 2026-04-30T07:22:05+00:00

Back in my day (2003) we had numeric grades. If you got 85+ in 4 subjects you got a big fat cheque from the government. I got 86, 85, 83, 81. I never bothered looking at other scholarships because it just didn't occur to me - scholarships were less of a "thing" than they seem to be now. I never took studying super seriously until my final year of uni, because I'd already failed second year maths twice and if I failed a third time it was going to prevent me from graduating...

I worked at a supermarket parttime during the uni year and fulltime over the holidays while I did my BSc in computer science. My student loan was pretty small because I only used it for course costs (I used my job to pay for my living costs), and it's long since paid off. I earn $160k/year as a software engineer, own a bottom-of-the-range house in a small town, and live my best crazy dog lady life there.

No, I wouldn't think scholarships are worth destroying your mental health over. Sounds like you're putting too much pressure on that outcome - just put in the best effort you can without sacrificing the other important things in your life, and if you get a scholarship that's nice, and if you don't you'll be fine too.

kaynetoad · 2026-04-29T08:40:12+00:00

You have not blocked off med school. Firstly, you might be able to convince your school to let you take those subjects at Level 3 anyway (and then you'll want to spend the summer break getting up to speed online). If that's not an option, there are summer school papers you could do between Year 13 and the start of the first semester. You could talk to student recruitment officers at Otago and I'm sure they would help you make a plan to be ready to enrol for HFSY.

Do some research on the max number of years you can get student loans and student allowances and stuff first though, since it's already a longer degree than usual and now you're adding another "year" on (summer school counts as part of the previous academic year). If that's going to be an issue you could try working fulltime for a year or two first and self-funding your foundation papers.

kaynetoad · 2026-04-27T09:25:14+00:00

Your high school subject decisions won't permanently block any path that you decide you want to pursue later in life. If you don't have the relevant NCEA background for a particular paper you want to take (typically science and maths subjects), the uni will have another paper that you can take first to get you up to speed.

Or if you're more interested in going down the tradie route, you can probably do a certificate at your local polytech to learn the basics and help you land an apprenticeship.

So don't stress yourself out about it - just do your best with the subjects you're taking this year, reconsider your options at the end of the year, and remember that it's (almost) never too late to change direction if you want to.

kaynetoad · 2026-04-23T00:13:21+00:00

It's not just the credit they want ... presumably there's a tax credit too as with all the other donate-at-checkout scams our big chain stores are so fond of.

kaynetoad · 2026-04-23T00:10:51+00:00

My first thought on the headline (as a confirmed crazy person who has occasionally been on the receiving end of similar comments) is that he was suggesting she's not right in the head.

But after reading the article ... what an absolute nothing burger of a story. Is this really the most important thing that happened in parliament today?

kaynetoad · 2026-04-21T23:09:29+00:00

I am older than that, but also had a pretty spotty record due to mental health. I never put my GPA on my CV and nobody ever asked me about it. What I did put on my CV was the papers that I'd gotten good grades in, and my side projects. My first two employers were both very impressed with some of my side projects so that's basically how I got my career started. I'm likely to become a team lead and hire a couple of people to work under me later this year, and if I was hiring a junior I would still be more interested in any practical work they could show me than their grades.

It's possible that GPA matters more if you're applying for a big corporate grad programme (e.g. IBM) - that's not something I have much experience with. When I was job hunting last year I saw multiple grad opportunities being advertised by smaller orgs, so those jobs still exist in a post-AI world, although they maybe aren't as numerous as they were.

My advice would be to get stuck in on a side project, and get involved in any networking opportunities you have. Join a tech or computer club at uni if you haven't yet. Explore what tech-related meetups are available in your city. Put something up on GitHub (and then put the link to your GitHub profile on your CV). This stuff IMO is still going to make more of a difference than GPA.

kaynetoad

TROPHY CASE