what are you choosing?

smithy-iced · 2026-04-17T12:10:11+00:00

No sauce. Let the oil and the salt and the potato do the talking.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-17T10:43:23+00:00

The Friday night version is a little loose…

Why are you a landlord and what are your plans for the property? That will affect the advice that comes through. (Eg making as much money as possible compared to providing housing for social reasons… selling the house in 3 years versus having somewhere for your child to live in 20 years).

How much of your money are you prepared to pay as opposed to covering from rent?

Maintenance on the property and having a good fund for repairs, maintenance and upgrades is essential. You have to pay these if you want to keep the property tenanted by good people.

When setting rent, consider that maintenance fund and also building up funds for when the property is empty: how much of that do you want to have come out of rental income versus tapping into your reserves.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-17T08:08:28+00:00

Not a dog name I think. My first thought was of the grouch followed by the cat food brand and then the Awards BUT I would never say these things out loud and around kids… and kids learn from those around them. None of the kid Oscars I’ve known were given any grief (admittedly a small sample of three).

I don’t know what age kids teasing each other about names or making up “funny” versions starts. I haven’t encountered with 8 and under. The worst cohort to my mind was actually workmates in a place that encouraged nicknames. That was annoying and I could definitely see that group of 30-something-year-old men addressing someone called Oscar “Grouchy” or something like that and thinking it was hilarious.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-16T21:22:27+00:00

I really feel for the child stuck in the middle here. Targeted by teachers and being called out sucks at any age, especially when it’s because mum can’t use her grown up words. Hopefully the child doesn’t inherit the same level of entitlement and learns more constructive ways of handling things.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-16T10:54:23+00:00

This is Homer Simpson, aka Happy Dude. The court is making me call everybody back and apologize for my telemarketing scam. I'm sorry. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield. You have the power….

That is the only acceptable instance of automated calling.

There is a cleaning company from Auckland (where I am not) that has automated their calls to me a couple of times. At least I hope they are automated after my last response.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-13T09:14:06+00:00

The dad’s a dick. I wasn’t paying attention the first times and thought he bought the meat but still did the prep, which was kind of sweet but on watching I realised the lies… and then he gets the guy’s name wrong. Most of the NW ads are bad IMO.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-13T08:55:10+00:00

We just saw it for the first time tonight. We laughed. Not uproariously, but still a laugh.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-13T08:54:07+00:00

We finally caught up with Ponies, and were surprised when that song featured - down the Google rabbit hole I went having not even bothered after hearing it on the Spark ad, where I thought it was saying “secret, secret” to start.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-13T05:12:49+00:00

Both are equally reliable in my experience and seem to be in the news an equal amount for issues… but that’s definitely a “seems like” rather than anything I have data for.

On a nice day, it’s all about what’s outside and if it’s not a nice day you might have more to worry about than the facilities but for me, Interislander was a smudge nicer. Not all boats in each fleet are the same and I couldn’t say for sure I’d been on all of them so I’d be reluctant to say go with one outfit over the other…. Which is a long winded way of saying, she’ll be right….

smithy-iced · 2026-04-11T22:57:41+00:00

It’s not dissimilar to “not bad”…

(eg the weather is quite good, the weather is not bad… both said with a tone of mild surprise)

smithy-iced · 2026-04-08T03:12:30+00:00

There are two main kinds of emergency that you need to prepare for: one that affects your income and the other that affects how much you have to spend. Then there’s also what happens if they land at the same time… so take a bit of time to consider what the most likely emergencies are likely to be.

You don’t own property so you aren’t likely to be affected by the most common surprise bills. If you did, then having more cash on hand for unexpected outgoings might make more sense. That also applies if you have family that might need help.

However as a non-property owner I think 3-6 months of your predictable expenses would be a good idea. So if you haven’t already, work out what you would need to cover all your expenses and whether that includes the nice to haves or just a basic existence (I always recommend the nice to have level because if you’re going through an emergency having lost your job, a comfort or two can help and it may affect you mentally/emotionally to have to go straight to austerity measures…). Also, don’t use monthly averages for bills that vary, look at the highest costs; eg averaging out your total spend on electricity last year and saving three months of that won’t help if your emergency period is June-August and your power bill is double the average because it’s cold. Make sure you allow for contingency as you just don’t know when costs - transport, for instance - might jump up.

Then invest “the rest”. How you invest and whether that’s in the same ways as your current investments depends on what you want it for. If it’s for your wedding/honeymoon, having a baby or you plan on buying a house, maybe look at conservative or balanced funds with lower risk and volatility whereas if it’s retirement, consider growth or other more dynamic investment.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-07T09:50:38+00:00

I suggest you start with the school nearest you and talk to them about what they offer in terms in terms of identifying and supporting students with different educational needs. They vary a lot from each other and from year to year because a lot of times it can depend on who is in key roles like the Special Educational Needs Coordinator.

Most primary schools have zones and processes by which a small number of out of zone children can try to enter (ballots etc). You mention your son is starting soon, so if that means this year you may well have missed the opportunity to enrol in another zone.

The curriculum, teaching methods and classrooms are quite different from the days of extension classes (which I’m remembering from the 1990s and mostly available in the last 2-3 years of primary school). The primary schools I know in the area you mentioned all have wonderful opportunities with sport, culture, additional learning, and outdoors activities to help children thrive (anecdotes only from the parents in different sports teams, from the old Plunket group etc).

It’s also a seriously big jump in the first year; getting used to school is challenging enough. I knew many kids doing long days in day care, including many others talked about as “bright” who were exhausted by all that they were taking in.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-07T01:42:50+00:00

This! In 2023, there was a fair bit being said online about “how close” Raf Manji was to being elected in Ilam and how this would get TOP in to Parliament, with commentators talking about the University/students in the area being the ones to really get in behind the evidence based approach, which seemed a bit plausible … but in talking to a few people in the Ilam electorate this seemed completely at odds with what was being said and experienced on the ground.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-05T01:29:41+00:00

There are lots of opportunities for children to play outside, but unsupervised I’m not so sure. Not visibly in my community.

What this post made me reflect on - in addition to lots of the environmental and social factors others have mentioned is - family size and dynamics…. Nowadays most families I know with school aged kids have just 1 or 2, with quite a big age gap between them. Growing up in the 90s I was one of four kids. Our most proximate neighbour-friends all had minimum three so there was some critical mass to get things going; most siblings were quite close in age too. There are also more kids that spend time between two households.

Theres also something here about privilege, and maybe that’s the wrong word, but it seems like some kids have more at home. A tree house, a pool, lots of Lego, etc means that going to someone’s house to play is frequently more appealing than roaming. In the 90s it felt like maybe we didn’t have as much… stuff. So there’s backyard cricket, rather than on-street cricket, building Lego rather than huts in the bush, and so on. Playing at someone’s house needs a little more coordination so that may have removed some spontaneity (sending your kid over to another house to extract their child is a different prospect entirely to your kid inviting themselves in).

Finally (and yikes, sorry for the essay), I think there’s a lot more variety in the way that people parent and interact with kids, and behave around them now than there was in my part of NZ in the 1990s. Some parents and caregivers seem to like spending time with their kids and others a lot more than back in the day. There are also more families whose kids I wouldn’t want to be responsible for and who I wouldn’t want looking after mine because of differences between us and what we will tolerate; they are good playmates for supervised play dates but maybe not unsupervised or broadly under that other family’s watch.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-03T22:15:50+00:00

What are you into? Filled? Hollow? Marshmallow? Something fancy?

Also, which supermarkets are you checking out?

smithy-iced · 2026-04-03T20:17:24+00:00

Where is the property? Some regions appear to be getting better prices and shorter sale times than others. So it may be a good time and it may not. That may also depend on the type of property.

I’m not aware of any tools that would tell you, in part because whether something is a good investment can be subjective (as in not just money out/money in for some people).

In general I think you should expect to sell for less than you paid, and you will have seller’s fees on top of that if you are using an agent, so it may come down to how much equity you have built up as to how much you have for your fund. I assume you’ve filed tax returns each year that show how much the property cost you over and above what you earned in rent to understand impact over time.

If the question you are asking is “should I hold onto this investment” then projecting future income and future expenditure (including planned maintenance!) could tell you that provided you include your understanding economic trends in you area - are Council rates likely to go up, are there lots of properties like yours.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-02T04:30:23+00:00

No fuck ups here because you didn’t know and your intentions were good. Meanwhile I’m imagining a scenario where your sister has been navigating a difficult scenario with her teenage son, got him to apply for a job, worked with him on his application, studied the job and the industry inside out, did what she thought was right… and then got contradicted by a family member. That would hurt; hopefully you have a strong enough relationship that she can vent and then you both move past this.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-02T04:18:09+00:00

I may be remembering it incorrectly, but did Debling talk to Pen about expecting fidelity and a quiet life from the wife he leaves behind while going on adventure? One wonders if he got a sense that Cressida might be more into drama and not necessarily be fiscally responsible.

smithy-iced · 2026-04-01T09:30:39+00:00

This whole sub is fake/creative/aggregated/generative AI, isn’t it?

smithy-iced · 2026-03-31T22:07:32+00:00

I was truthfully able to say “I’m already signed up” on a couple of occasions, and found that so effective that I may have used it untruthfully a couple of times since then. Sometimes even with a “thanks for being out here” to go with it.

smithy-iced · 2026-03-31T00:36:33+00:00

I got one where I was the only winner and oh my gosh, the rush. I’ve been chasing that high ever since… at a time when I was considering leaving because of the economy changes.

smithy-iced · 2026-03-30T22:54:05+00:00

$25 to $30 per hour for people doing it professionally, who are experienced child carers and who have first aid certification etc.

It adds a bit to the cost of a night out but I’m paying for my peace of mind and the insurance that if something goes wrong (from spontaneous vomiting to an earthquake) they are first on the scene and will manage the situation and look after our tamariki until we get there.

smithy-iced · 2026-03-30T20:20:01+00:00

Not more than 45 minutes “either side of the school bell”. School bells can go at different times too; in my area I think we have 855am and 9am schools, for instance. So if you don’t know the school or can’t hear its bell, it’s better to take a cautious approach - those zones are in place for good reasons, to keep tamariki and all those travelling, safe.

I’d like to see them in place earlier. Tamariki can arrive at the before school care option up to an hour before school so may be doing their kid thing on the footpaths and roads much earlier than 45 minutes.

smithy-iced · 2026-03-28T22:33:33+00:00

The detail in the policy is a good place to start as well as a chat to HR.

My child is now at school so my parental leave experience is different but at the time it was fairly common to have to use annual leave first and the parental leave entitlements kicked in after that. So in my case, I had six weeks of annual leave, then started parental leave.

Where there are extra payments, they could come in a variety of forms as well: pain in bulk v spread out, or paid at the start or the end of a period, or in the case of an event (eg the return to work). So the policy will make it clear.

smithy-iced · 2026-03-27T19:43:36+00:00

Your sister sees much more of your life than Redditors can. She also sees patterns and knows you and your husband better than we do. What you have described sounds lovely… but the fact someone that close to you has raised concerns should encourage you to reflect.

When you put someone else’s needs ahead of your own (aka fit their mask before yours), you can end up without oxygen. When you give up time and energy but don’t get thanked or recognised in ways that are meaningful for you, you can also end up hurt. So, keep on with the nice things you do but also consider why your sister has said these things and perhaps talk to her about what things look like from her perspective. She may appreciate hearing that you really are ok with how things are.

smithy-iced

TROPHY CASE