Confessions of a Compulsive Spender

Note: This post has been added to over a handful of days since the start of September.

Charlie and I both started new jobs halfway through this year and it's all very exciting and something I should have blogged about extensively and may do some day, but this is not the post for it.

After working in retail for all the 'New Years' [it's just the plural of New Year here, Mum, I'm sorry] of our relationship I was hopeful Charlie's new job would mean seeing in 2015 together somewhere other than Wellington. Unfortunately not this time.

But I'd already been thinking so much about going somewhere exciting during the summer, that I started considering going solo. Visiting one or both of my two good mates in Aussie and have a holiday by myself.

I have been terrible with money ever since I first discovered the concept. I don't know why - my parents aren't rich, but they sure are disciplined and sensible when it comes to spending. My little sister has been saving for years - spending on both necessary and luxury things along the way, but always with a healthy balance left in the bank.

But me? As a kid and tween I would get a few banknotes for my birthday and spend as soon as possible - the same day if I could. I would get a late birthday card with $30 enclosed and head straight to the toy store to blow the lot on a fancy teddy bear.

And then I got older and older and this just continued (although I finally grew out of teddy bears... new ones, that is. I still have several of my old buddies on a shelf in our bedroom...)

I'm 25 years old now, I have been working a part- or full-time job since I was 15, and I still live paycheck-to-paycheck. Sometimes I need help to get to that next paycheck. It is shameful.

I have a relatively-small student loan from a foolish attempt at study when I was not physically nor mentally fit to complete it. Thankfully it's interest-free, and decreasing merrily with every pay. I have an overdraft of $2000 that I gleefully accepted during those student days and this means I float around in the red and now pay monthly interest. But I'm paid fortnightly and my bank account has not been in the black since I accepted that overdraft and went shopping all those years ago at 17. Thankfully I don't have a credit card. It could be much worse. But it still needs to change.

--

It's the 3nd of September and this evening I sat down and made a solid plan to save for an Australia trip at the end of January. I looked on Kayak at different flight options, and worked out how much I can afford to save if I stop wasting money - it's exciting, and achievable. If I can stick to my plan and can confirm dates that work for both friends and my work, I should be able to book flights in early October, and accommodation after that. And then I'll have over three months to get a tattoo appointment locked in with a deposit, and save a healthy amount of spending money.

Young Adventuress Liz posted this old blog post on her Facebook page today and it could not have come at a better time. I clicked through some of the posts she linked to too, and saw a tip for when you're thinking about making a unnecessary purchase - think what could I buy on holiday with that money instead? Seems bloody obvious, but I really haven't ever had that mindset before.

It's ridiculous that I haven't travelled (on my own money). When people ask if I want to travel and I practically shout yes, my response to why I haven't is "money"/"too poor"/"can't afford", and that's not true, I make a decent income. It's my spending problem, and that's not an excuse. I see this Australia trip obviously as a holiday, but also the first step towards being a "saver" and going on holidays further abroad. Those of you who know me and/or have read my blog for a long time will know my desire to go to the States. If I can achieve Australia in a few short months, I'm sure I can achieve my American dream a year or two after that!

--

It's the 8th of September, my first payday since I decided to save for Australia. Managed to make the remainder of my previous pay last until today and put a little excess into my savings account so for me that's off to a good start!

From my pay today I put around 35% into my savings account and put aside money for the dentist this Wednesday. I paid all my bills (wahhh, electricity) and expenses (including Child Fund sponsorship - yup, maybe an "unnecessary" expense but a damn fulfilling one I won't be giving up), and did a grocery shop this evening for some seriously healthy food - 80% fresh fruit fruit/veges/raw foods, and 20% packaged-but-still-healthy food. Nary a chocolate-anything in sight. The leftover money I have budgeted to a small daily allowance for the next fortnight to use on miscellaneous expenses and any extra food I need. Going to try my best to spend next to nothing from that until I have to, so maybe I can treat myself to a meal out or a couple of beers later in the fortnight.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, hence keeping these updates in one post for now. Writing all this publicly and then failing would be terribly embarrassing, and I have a decade of poor money management to overcome (oh, hell). But my mindset is really different this time. I've seen lots of lovely clothing and art items online during the past week, and in the past I would bookmark them for a payday spend-up, but this time I've quickly closed the tabs. Maybe a little way to go before I resist clicking the links at all! I glanced at overpriced fresh flowers on the way into the supermarket this evening (a regular frivolous expense for me) but walked right on by thinking that's another tenner in Aussie! If I can get through to my next pay without borrowing money or touching my savings, I'll hit publish and continue these posts more regularly... and less lengthy!

--

It's the 9th of September,  and despite what I said yesterday, I'm going to hit publish today. I just read Kelly and Rochelle's posts about "Brokeass September" and if they can be open about money stuff, I can too. I have all my (mega healthy!) food for the day planned out, so won't be spending a cent and today's allowance can carry over to tomorrow. I got this.

Amy Attwood

Today I received a beautiful original painting in the post that I bought from Australian artist Amy Attwood. I love love love the Schielesque style of her latest drawings and paintings, and she's selling them at amazing prices through her Facebook page (PayPal payment available). Check it out!

Amy Attwood Facebook page.

Waiata II

While loading all my CDs into iTunes I rediscovered some albums I hadn't listened to in a long time, particularly by Australasian artists. Since a couple of you enjoyed my previous New Zealand music recommendations post, I thought you might be interested in hearing some older stuff (early 2000s) from these parts. Apologies that some of the video/audio quality is a bit shit, it was the best I could find.

Memories from 2010

I was browsing Nadine's Australia posts tonight, and decided to post some photos from my trip. I went to Queensland on my first holiday outside of New Zealand last November. I was so excited, you have no idea. I took 875 (pretty low res) photos during our week-long trip, snapping away at anything I saw- fast food chains we don't have here, shop signs, unusual houses, the ground, people...

Charlie and I barely slept the night before, and flew out of Wellington at 6.30am. A three hour flight and three hour time difference means it was also around 6.30am when we landed in Brisbane. This is just one of the many happy snaps I took "I'm over the Tasman, o-m-g!"

This was outside, after we landed in Brisbane. I look pretty relaxed here, pretty collected. I was back to grinning like a maniac the second after the photo was taken, I assure you.

"Charlie! Smile! Hey! Smile! Photo!" Direct quote, probably. This photo was taken in Brisbane, during our first visit to GoMA.

We drove south to Broadbeach for the first few nights, and stayed in a hotel. Such good memories of just sweating on the balcony. Never has a view of an access road been so exciting to me.

Through the bars you can see the Gold Coast Convention Centre across the road- nothing particularly special, but I get all dreamy whenever it's in Australian news. I'm such a dork.

I didn't get a tan, just burnt. This photo is a lie.

From the monorail.

The view of Jupiter's Casino from our room. We did go there one evening, and I played pokies for the first time. Which was underwhelming. Unlike the food and drinks which were faaabulous.

Oh yeah, the whole reason we were to Australia in the first place was for Charlie's cousin's wedding, which was up Mount Tamborine and was lovely.

We dressed nice. I swear he was happy to be there, he just doesn't really like smiling in photos.

We spent a night back in Brisbane, and I have too many photos of buildings and streets to choose from. Instead I'll post another happy snap of... a bus stop. "Oh wow, their benches face the bus." Moron.

For the final few nights we drove another three hours north to a settlement near Hervey Bay.

We jumped out of the car from our trip and got handed beer. Perfect.

This was the part of the trip where I got really sunburned. Kayaking and swimming in the warm sea every day was totally worth a little peeling and pain.

Some neighbourhood dog. If you can call paradise a neighbourhood. Sighhh.

A pier at Hervey Bay. Much longer than it appeared from shore. One day Queensland, I will be back.

Watch this!

Dear readers, you're about to be introduced to an extremely cute short film, and I think as thanks for this you should all go and follow the dude who introduced it to me, my flatmate Matt. Otherwise you totally can't watch it. It's only fair. It's 12 minutes long, but it's totally worth it I PROMISE. It's a little 500 Days of Summer, but with out the indie kid cliches and below par conclusion. And the leading lady is far foxier than Zooey, I swear.

Adorable, right? And I was super excited to recognise the girl as the ferocious Nat from Satisfaction, whose name I've now discovered is Kestie Morassi.

Scares and Swears

Thank you to Rhiannon for bringing to my attention the obvious physical difference between Australian (and NZ) possums, and American opossums. Oh, my. The images from a Google search will haunt me. Check out this hideous photo captioned "playing possum" on the Wikipedia page.

On Friday night I met a local girl who had spent the past year going to high school in Minnesota. She said she found it hilarious how she said "Oh, damn" in class once and was admonished by the teacher. Apparently she swore like a fucking sailor in comparison to her peers, even in social situations. Would be interested in hearing feedback on that from Americans, or well-traveled Kiwis. Are we excessive swearers? Or was she in an excessively prudish part of the country? Also, apparently asking "Where's the toilet?" is horrifying. Cultural differences, eh! Just makes me even more desperate to travel there.

As I keep saying in these brief posts, life is horribly stressful right now. It will all die down by Christmas, so I'll be back to my old blogging habits around the New Year. Stay tuned, and thanks for your patience!

Also, apologies if fragments of this post have shown up on your Reader. Google Chrome is just not cooperating with Blogspot today, so I have to open Firefox. Have never had a problem before, so hopefully it's fixed soon.

Queensland- the photo post

The ~6am flight from Wellington to Brisbane was annoyingly smooth- I love flying and I (unlike everyone else probably) was excited for a turbulent flight. But sadly it was completely smooth, and I even got a little bored...! Luckily I got my dose of turbulence on the flight back to NZ... a kid was screaming at one point, and I was just sitting there grinning.

We spent a couple of hours at Brisbane airport due to a rental car mix up. Charlie and I were just excited to be there, so we didn't mind too much. We stepped out of the air conditioned airport a few times for cigarettes (seventeen freaking Aussie dollars a pack by the way), so I got to feel the humidity. It was pretty hot, but luckily overcast, so not as bad as I was dreading.

Once we got our rental car, we spent the rest of the morning shopping and doing a little exploring. By the early afternoon we were totally shattered, and I even slept in the car on the drive to Broadbeach on the Gold Coast. I woke up in time to see some themeparks (sadly underwhelming from afar) and was awake as we drove off the motorway towards the coast and saw the skyscrapers in the distance (surprisingly impressive).

We'd been told not to expect too much from our accommodation, but it turned out Charlie's Mum got a great bargain at the Mantra Phoenician. It was a bit cruddy in places, but fancier than anything I'd ever stayed in (well, bar the Museum Hotel), and the apartment was good and spacious.
We spent three days in Broadbeach, exploring, relaxing, and eating delicious food.

On the last night in the resort, we had some drinks, dressed up nice, and caught the Monorail to Jupiter's Casino. We ate an amazing (and huge) dinner at an Italian restaurant in the complex, and then went into the Casino itself. I was way too broke to gamble, but still played $5 on the Pokies, just to say I had. I don't understand how people can get addicted to those machines- they're so incredibly boring! But regardless, it was really fun and exciting being there. The downstairs Poker Room was especially cool, but with a AU$100 buy in, out of our league.

The next day we went up Mount Tamborine, for Charlie's cousin's wedding. Everything was really beautiful, and the view was amazing (but unfortunately a bit difficult to photograph with my point-and-shoot digicam).

The day after that we drove back up the coast to Brisbane, where we spent one night with Charlie's Mum's friend. We spent the afternoon at the amazing Gallery of Modern Art, and walking along the South Bank of the river. We went on the 60m high Wheel of Brisbane, which was amazing, though a little scary. A bit of rocking in the wind every time we went over the top, but it lasted a good ten minutes so was well worth it. Unfortunately by that point, my camera batteries were starting to die! Useless, I know.

After staying that night in Brisbane, we drove three hours north to Dundowran, west of Hervey Bay, for the rest of our trip. There's quite a lot of houses in the little settlement, but the beach was almost deserted every time we walked from the house to the water. The bay is really sheltered by the massive Fraser Island, so there are little to none dangerous animals, and the water is super shallow for hundreds of meters off the shore, and amazingly warm! I've never swam in salt water so warm. I went kayaking twice, and especially loved it when the tide was coming in and I could practice my surfing hehe.

We didn't really see too much Aussie wildlife during our trip, a bit to my relief. Charlie and his Mum saw a dead kangaroo while I was asleep on the drive. On the first night we were sitting on lawn chairs listening to all the croaking and chirping and rustling in the bushes. Next thing I know, theres a little possum right next to my chair. Freaked me out quite a bit, but it was very cute. Possums are a pest that we kill here in NZ, but over in Australia they're a protected species which is weird!

Our time in Dundowran was definitely my favourite part of the trip. So relaxing and beautiful, with lots of amazing food, swimming, and weather.

I've been back a matter of days and I'm already desperate to go back! Always thought I would be a New Zealand girl for life, but I think I was just ignorant. I do love my country, but I can see huge benefits of going to Australia, at least for a few years. It's pretty tempting, when almost every person we talked to on our trip was an ex-NZer, and had done really well for themselves in Australia.

I guess we'll keep it on the backburner for a couple of years, because I have quite a lot lined up here for the foreseeable future. The biggest part is that I'm starting a new job in the new year, which I'm really excited about and will write about in a future post! Busy times indeed.

Alice is back

We got back from Australia at around 2am this morning. Pretty good flight, lots of turbulence which I adore. The trip was absolutely amazing. I have fallen for Queensland and can't wait to go back.

I was hoping to upload a bunch of photos, but Blogger is not being very co-operative. I'll just give you a brief run down instead, for now.

We spent the first couple of nights staying in a resort in Broachbeach on the Gold Coast. The weather was quite overcast a lot of the time, but still gorgeously hot. In those first few days we did a bit of exploring and shopping, went on the monorail and tiki tours in the rental car, and also went to Jupiter's casino which is pretty amazing (though it was my first time visiting one). Charlie's cousin's wedding was held at a winery up Mount Tamborine, so we spent one night up there. We then spent a night in Brisbane, and were fortunate enough to have clear skies for our trip on The Wheel of Brisbane. We spent some time at GoMA (art gallery) which had some stunning exhibitions. I definitely plan to return there in the future. After Brisbane we drove north to Dundawran, where Charlie's "second mother" lives in a beautiful house near the beach. There's quite a few houses in the area, but the beach itself was usually completely deserted. The bay is sheltered by the enormous Fraser Island, so the water is very calm and very, very warm. We did lots of swimming, and I had so much fun kayaking. I definitely think it's something I'll try to pick up here in Wellington over the summer.

Apologies for how brief this post it. There's just too much to write, and it's difficult without being able to include the photos.

I have a lot of commissions to get done before Christmas, but will do my best to update over the weekend.

Brooke Fraser and Nirrimi

Brooke Fraser looks amazing these days. Check out this post on Nirrimi's blog.

Five O'Clock World

My work faces, in no particular order other than aesthetic. Cheerful, tired, stressed, content...
I set up a savings account yesterday (FINALLY!) mainly so I'll make a real effort in saving up spending money for our Australian holiday next month. I am beyond excited. I've never ever been anywhere but right here in New Zealand, and even then I get excited about any old road trip or weekend away.

We are staying at the Mantra Phoenician for three nights and it feels like winning the Lotto.

I paid for my new Passport today (which features a new-but-equally-as-hideous-as-the-old photo), and I set aside the first $100 into my savings account for spending money. I think I can probably manage to save between $500-1000, if I'm really disciplined.

I should explain; I got a Passport as it was a requirement for the Flight Attending training I did in 2007. But then my health turned to shit and I dropped out, so never used it.

I got a free trial at Exodus gym, so I'm going along tomorrow evening to have a look around. I've never been to a gym in my life, and I'm so unfit it's horrific, so it should be pretty much hell. I'm not seriously concerned about my size at this stage... but it would still be nice to get my summer-body back as soon as possible (which is nothing exceptional either, but it's all relative...) I don't see myself quitting smoking anytime soon, so I've been thinking more and more about how I should at least start eating healthy and exercising. This should be a good opportunity to get my ass into gear about it.

Tonight Charlie and I are going to the preview screening of The Town, thanks to Greer on Twitter. Charlie was unconvinced until I mentioned that Blake Lively's in it.

One of my weekly highlights is each new episode of Dexter being released. Spoilers in the form of speculation ahead. S05E03 was the best so far this season- finally it's getting intense again. Jennifer Carpenter as Deb continues to blow my mind. I should really investigate the few other things she's done (except White Chicks. Poor woman.) And what's the story with Harrison's Nanny? Surely such an important new character will have some unexpected tie to the existing plot, or bring in some dramatic new storyline. I read a comment on the show's Facebook page suggesting she could be Lila's mother, but that seems a bit weak to me- having an Irish mother and an English daughter (presumably- we're never told for sure, but that's what her accent sounds like) seems like a big unnecessary detail to explain. But who can guess? I'm looking forward to seeing more of Julia Stiles next week. She's the first actor on Dexter that I've previously seen in other roles, so I really hope I can disassociate her from "Kat" and "Sara" and "Imogen".

I just IMDb-ed her to find her Save the Last Dance character's name, and ohmygosh! She's playing Esther in an upcoming adaptation of The Bell Jar! This is possibly old news, I don't know. How exciting! They better not water anything down to get a younger audience (see: The Time Traveler's Wife and The Lovely Bones)... it has the potential to be one incredible film.

Day 6, 7 & 8 of 30

I've been useless at keeping up to date with this self-set challenge! I had a busy weekend, and have just been feeling really lazy and uninspired... sitting down to do artwork feels like a big chore, I end up rushing, and the results are less than desirable. Hopefully things will settle down later in the week. Our flights are now booked for our trip to Australia in November, so I'm mega excited! And after I finish this post, Charlie and I will be watching E1 of Dexter S5, which I have been dying with excitement over for months now. Without further ado...

• Your favourite hot drink
• Your earliest childhood memory

My favourite hot drink is a Mojo Coffee flat white. If I'm forced to get a flat white from anywhere else, I usually add a shot of hazelnut syrup, so that if their coffee is shit then it's still drinkable!

The childhood memory I consider to be my earliest is more of a feeling than a memory. I remember drawing a colourful rainbow, houses and a bear over two pages of my story writing exercise book at primary school. I remember running out of time to get the actual story written, and having the most horrible fear of my teacher coming to see my story and getting angry at me. I don't remember getting told off about it, so either I was worrying about nothing, or the teacher went so apeshit that I've suppressed the memory...