More free money? I am so freaking generous

Well not money, but vouchers.
I always used to think that the get paid to do surveys thing was a scam. But AC Nielsen is legit and I've got $40 worth of vouchers already. Surveys are done online, at your convenience and are about 10 minutes to complete usually.

You get points for surveys. You trade in points for vouchers. You pick the store Mitre 10, Living and Giving, Dick Smith, Hoyts, and Farmers just to name a few.

Every now and then they need to add more members to the survey panel. So they get existing members to refer people. Thats me.
So if you want in on the gravy train click here and sign up!

Would you like free money?

I have a Raboplus savings account.

Its an online savings account with no fees ever, and a high interest rate even if your balance is only $5. No fees for withdrawals, no fees ever. I feel I must repeat this point. No fees!

Its pretty cool.

Anyway they are having a Christmas promotion where I can invite my friends to get a savings account too. If you sign up they give you some cash.

Yes. They give you some free money.

You will get anything between $25 and $500 as a special Christmas gift.

Plus everyone who signs up also goes in the draw for 4 chances to win $1000!

So I'll email everyone when the promotion starts. You can thanks me later.



(disclaimer: er...uh... I may just happen to get $10 myself for every person that joins up.... but hey YOU get $25 and you could get up to $500! Its a sweet deal that helps your friend the scientician. And if you aint into it, feel free to delete that email as soon as it hits your inbox.)

The Pain of Kiwisaver

I already had a retirement savings scheme going on, $50 a fortnight tucked away into a unit trust with the National Bank. So why on earth would a sane rational person sign up for kiwisaver too?

Quite frankly I'm not sure why anyone on a medium type income hasn't already. My unit trust was returning a fairy crap 3% or less return most years, my martini drinking aspirations of my retirement were looking grim and I was having to develope a taste for meths in anticipation. However with kiwisaver I can get an almost %100 return in the first year. My %4 deductions come close to $2000. I also get the $1000 kick start and the $1040 government subsidy in the first year. In later years I will have the employer subsidy to make up the government carrot being taken away. (The subsidy will eventually be %4, essentially matching dollar for dollar my own contributions, so still a %100 percent return on investment)

Of course who knows what National will do to the scheme. It could end up with the same pathetic return as my old unit trust. But thats precisely why I signed up before the next election. I'm trying to get as much free money as I can before John Key ruins everything.


There has been some debate around the office. Some of the older set, having been burned by governments before on super believe that National plans to take all the subsidies back. This sounds ridiculous to me but who knows what kind of power the government really has in such matters. I cannot find anything in the paperwork about it. I still think the outrage levels would be to high if the ever attempted such a thing. National wouldn't be in power very long and would lose my vote (not that they ever had it).

My only problem is that I miss that $74. Our mortgage repayments are pretty high (we switched from a 30 year mortgage to a 20 year repayment framework) and I had little disposable income left after paying all the bills. Plus theres still the pain of my student loan repayments. My only hope for salvation is the pay rise I'm supposed to get this week. I don't think it'll be much after everyone takes their cut (and by everyone I mean the IRD) but it should be enough to dull the pain of saving for retirement.

Ten Thousand dollars

Its a lot of money.

Kiwisaver - Take the money and run.

Its supposedly saving the economy by making us all good little savers but the governments new superannuation scheme offers little incentive to keep saving. When first signing up for the savings program you will be gifted $1000 to the saving account. I expect most people will sign up for as long as it take to get the $1000 credit and then stop.

For one there are no tax incentive for individuals to save into the kiwisaver program. Its 4% of your pretax salary and you still get taxed on that 4%.

Its also inflexible. Its 4% or 8% and thats it. Low income earners should be able to start with a lower amount and gradually build up to 4% and for middle income earners 5% maybe a better option. For me the difference between 4% saving and 8% saving is $74 or $148, while I cant afford $148 I can afford more that $74. So I have to sign up for a private super scheme if I want
to invest more. Or make the manual extra lump sum payments by writing a cheque to the IRD or making payments to my kiwisaver provider. It seems very redundant.

I can already get these savings products. The money from kiwisaver is going to be managed by AMP, ING, ASB and a few others. I can already save regular amounts with these companies and I can have more flexibility, I can put in exactly how much money I want.

Kiwisaver does make it easy for average people to save for retirement. Filling in a form at work is easier than the daunting task of picking a financial institution to invest with and setting up automatic payments and so on. However only new employees get signed up, if you are already employed you have to approach a kiwisaver provider yourself and then take a form to your work and get them to make the necessary deductions.

"All existing employees, including Government employees working overseas, can join KiwiSaver by contacting a KiwiSaver scheme provider directly. They will then need to ask their employer to start deductions at their chosen contribution rate."

I suppose $1000 is incentive enough to get off my arse and do that.