Austerity measures

As you can imagine, 18 months without work leads to some serious austerity measures. Fortunately between my partner getting a part-time job and our international student payments offset some of the costs, but we both dipped deep into our savings. (My partner's ex has not paid child support in two and a half years, and New Zealand lets him get away with that because he works out of the country and they decided it wasn't worth the hassle!)

Oddly, the last 'luxury' was free range eggs, and we were staring down the barrel of homelessness before we finally started buying battery farm eggs (which were half the price). My partner has already said the first thing she is going to do when I get paid is go back to free range eggs.

Of course, the eggs don't represent luxury, they represent the ability to make a choice. (Of course it could be argued a better choice would be to raise our own chickens, or to not eat eggs in the first place!)

Apart from the eggs, we've lived very frugally: no holidays, no major purchases, no cable TV. Clothes came from charity shops and gifts were often handmade. That said, we still did a heck of a lot, but there was always a sense of a brick wall waiting for us to smash into it.

Now that I have an income again, the brick wall has been averted, but the only  extravagance -- apart from the eggs -- is to take the kids to California to meet my family, and the only reason that's possible is because I will be travelling to the US and UK for work.

Otherwise we continue with the austerity measures until the savings have been adequately topped up, in the hopes that next year we'll be in a position to buy a house.

(On a related note, we took the kids to see the new house today and they loved it. One even asked if we could move earlier! I just pointed out we have a lot to pack in the next two weeks...)

Moving again

I just talked about moving 12 times in the past 10 years and now I have to move again!

When we rented this house, we were hopeful that within a year I'd be gainfully employed and the property distribution between my partner and her ex would be settled, so we could buy a new house. Needless to say, neither of those happened. But we were perfectly happy in our rental except for the cold downstairs, so I offered to make a deal with the owners.

Rather than let the rental go month-to-month, which is normally what happens after the first year, I offered to sign another one year lease in exchange for them putting in a heat pump downstairs. It seemed reasonable to me, as we knew they intended to reoccupy the house at some point, so they would benefit from it, too.

They responded they would be reoccupying the house in May.

May is a terrible time to move house in NZ. It's winter and nobody else is moving, so there is very little on the market. Almost all house moves occur in January, before the school year starts. We got this letter right before Christmas so we decided to start looking straight away.

Remarkably, the house we tried to rent the year before--but someone else pipped us to the post--was back on the market! It wasn't perfect, the kitchen was dated, the carpet was cream colored, they didn't accept pets and the cat the vet said would be dead 18 months ago is still going strong. But it had two living areas, four bedrooms, two and a half baths plus a study. (Initially we were going to convert the study into a fifth bedroom and get another international student, but then I got the job offer working from home so it will be my office.)

It's also much closer to the shops, library, recreation centre, swimming pool. It's near the main road but at the end of a cul de sac, which is surprisingly quiet. The only sounds you hear are the birds and the stream that runs through the front yard.

Our international student returns Jan 29, the kids go back to school Feb 2, we move Feb 5 and I start my new job Feb 9. I will also be going to the UK for a couple of weeks (courtesy of my new company!) but the dates haven't been decided. 2016 definitely seems to be the year it all comes together.

And hopefully 2017 will see us buying a house, although realistically we'll want to stay in Karori until the youngest one finishes primary school* in two years, and I'm not sure we want to buy in Karori or someplace more convenient for the colleges.

* In New Zealand, primary school is often years 1-8, although in some areas  primaries are 1-6 and then intermediate school years 7-8. College is years 9-13, and please don't ask me why they call them colleges. In Wellington most of the colleges are single sex--only two are co-ed--and for some reason the boys colleges are on the opposite end of town as the girls! So in two years we'll have to decide which college to send the youngest to and then move into the catchment area for both the girls and boys schools.

Airbnb

Our international student, who has been with us since February, went home for the summer holidays (in December!), leaving a hole in our family as well as our finances. She'll be back end of January so we can deal with the family part it, but as for finances we spoke to the university to see if they had any summer students, but they didn't. On a whim, I posted a photo of the room to Airbnb.com. Less than an hour later, I had three guests coming that night!

Of course, Airbnb doesn't let multiple people book the same room--I got separate enquiries from a couple and a single woman. As the eldest child has been staying with her dad for the past six months, I made the command decision to rent it out.  That also meant I had to take out all her stuff and clean it from top to bottom; I had to do the same for the international student, as well.  Did I mention we also had friends coming for dinner that night, and we had put out an open invitation to the community to celebrate Hanukkah with us that evening?

So I spent the next six hours cleaning, doing laundry, making dinner and organising! By the time our Airbnb guest arrived, I was shattered. Worse, my partner was (understandably) upset that I had put all of her daughter's stuff in the garage. I was already shattered and we were bickering all evening.  Hopefully none of the 15-odd guests noticed.

The Airbnb people couldn't have been nicer.  The single girl was a 25-year-old French student spending a year working and travelling in New Zealand. The kids enjoyed her so much, they asked her if she could stay longer!  The Dutch couple were also very nice, but they arrived late and left early so we hardly saw them.  Since then we've hosted around a dozen people, from China to Latvia, who have all been lovely.  We weren't sure how the kids were going to handle it, but they seem to have enjoyed having visitors as much as I have.

Financially it was also quite successful, earning about $800 over the holidays.  (We could have made much more, but it is our holidays as well so we blocked off quite a few days, and turned away several requests because they wanted to stay more than a week and we didn't want to make that kind of commitment.)  As the holidays draw to a close, we have one more couple coming this weekend (from Germany) and then our international student returns on the 29th.

Comparing Airbnb to my B&B days is apples and oranges.  One was a full-time job and I worked hard to make it a 'luxury' experience.  The other was letting people share my home, meet my kids, and have dinner with us.  It was much more laid back, but also much more intimate, and I could get into discussions with guests I could have never done in the B&B.  (The woman from East Germany was particularly fascinating!)  The Airbnb guests were also much more open; they played board games with the kids and watched movies with us.

Of course there are some Airbnb horror stories out there, although all the ones I saw involved rental properties, not family homes, plus each guest has 'reviews' from other hosts and you can reject a reservation request for any reason.  I found it a very positive and rewarding experience, and if you have a spare room (or even a spare sofa!) I highly recommend you sign up and see what happens.  As long as you're honest and set the expectations, your guests will be happy.

Job

Isn't life strange.  I've spent a year trying to get a work permit in New Zealand, and just as I accomplish it, I get a job offer from the UK. For a company in the US.  Working from New Zealand.

A bit of background: In 2000, I worked with someone on a project in San Francisco, and then again a few years later at Honda.  We kept in touch even after I moved to the UK and he moved to Quebec/Boston/New York. In 2013, he moved to the UK and so we saw each other regularly.  He tried several times to get me to come work for him, but he always seemed to be working on high-pressure projects, and I was always too lazy.

Six months ago he had teamed up with someone from that same project in San Francisco 16 years ago, and they developed an idea for a new product.  They had just managed to get seed funding to bring the product to market, and now needed a couple of developers to make it happen.  Even though I was now 12,000 miles away, he called me.

I'd like to say I accepted because I was desperate and had no money, but that's not true.  In fact, just the opposite: Since I now had NZ residency I was confident I would have no trouble getting a job. In addition, working with people in California and UK was going to be a nightmare just finding a timeslot to have a conference call; in the past I didn't like working from home; I'd have to travel every couple of months; and because the project was a startup, the pay wasn't great (although it did come with some equity in the company).  I also hadn't done any serious development in about ten years, and was used to managing a team of developers rather than doing it myself.

So there were many reasons to turn it down, but I accepted simply because the project was really interesting.  In addition, I knew I could work really well with my friend, and when I travelled it would either be to the UK or California, so I could also visit friends and family.  Working from home was an issue when I lived on my own and never saw anyone; now that I have a family that won't be a problem, and it actually gives us more flexibility since I'll be home when the kids leave for school and come home.  It will still be hard to find a timeslot but since I am managing my own time, making a call at 10pm isn't a problem.  And because I really think the product will be a big success, I think (hope) the equity will be worth a lot in a few years.

There are still some formalities to finalise but if all goes well, I could start as early as next week, and I may be in the UK as early as February 10.