u/jka8888

Im doing a regular go through our bills and looking to swap where I can. Other than sailing the 7 seas, what are people's alternatives to the bigger streaming services?

Im finding prices are increasing, service/ platform quality is declining and you now get ads even on the paid services (looking at you Spotify) so Im scouting around for alternatives.

Im looking for any suggestions to replace YouTube, Netflix, Spotify and SkySports although I'm open to any suggestions you've got for any others. If the alternatives suck, thats probably good to know too.

TIA

Im back in a cluster period and just thinking about all the other weird stuff that comes along with it.

If I go through a headache or even when I abort one with sumatriptan I regularly go into a blackout sleep. Like almost immediately, no dreams, no moving, no nothing. I basically teleport 8-12 hours. Its like my brain full windows resets and shuts off.

The weirdest one was on a flight from South America to Europe, 11 hours. I felt one coming on just as we boarded. Luckily, I threw up, which for whatever reason always aborts an attack when it happens. I then sat in that shitty economy seat for 11 hours, basically passed out and didn't move until I got woken up on landing. My partner told me after I didn't so much as twitch.

Does anybody else get that deep, weird sleep?

I have a genuine question I cant find the answer to.

I work for a company that has 50% work from home. We have been given a laptop so we can move between the office and home.

I run to work and have done for 15 years. I love about 15km from the office. Since covid, I've left my laptop in the office on my work from office days if I will be in office the next day, as it is not practical to carry the laptop on my commute. Other than the weight, it would likely break the laptop. I also leave clean clothes and towels etc so I can shower. I have absolutely no issue with office/ wfh and always hit at least my 50% requirement. Ive never missed a day due to the laptop staying in the office.

The other day, a manager found out and told me its against company policy and that I have to bring it home. It was a perfectly pleasant FYI convo. Their point, which has some merits, is in an emergency they would like us to be able to WFH.

My point, is that they are asking me to give up my run that is in my own time, which I don't think they can do. I also don't think they can mandate I store company equipment in my house or require me to do anything outside my contracted hours. The WFO requirement is being met in a way that is practical for me as an employee. I can't really see a realistic alternative that doesn't disadvantage me in some way.

Im not trying to get into any sort of fight over something so minor. I am just curious though if this has been tested with the ERA and what the outcome was? Obviously, if it has been, and there is a ruling, then I'll just follow that.

Does anyome know if there is an example of this and what the outcome was? I genuinely don't think an employer would win that case but happy to be proven wrong.

Edit: sweet, from what I can see, no one is aware of this being tested, this allows me to have a chat with work and come to a solution. Hopefully a second "at home" laptop. There has been some great ideas on compromises and some less great insults lol. Some people get very very mad at silly things lol. Thank you for the input and have a great sunday

So a while back I posted about what people had changed in their shopping habits and heaps of people responded. I have just gone through and very unscientificly put together some numbers.

I tried to stick to just the first comment, not all the replies. I took out the clearly joking ones. I did include if someone mentioned an overall category (dairy) or a specific item in that category (cheese). So cheese will count towards the total dairy category and towards cheese. I picked out about 120 item responses. There is definitely more if you go.to each comment.

The most common 3 categories were meat (27), takeaways (26), dairy (21).

In the meat category beef was mentioned the most at 11 times with people either not buying it at all, or buying cheaper cuts and stretching it with lentils or veggies.

In the dairy category butter got 10 mentions, cheese got 7. Most people are cutting out cheese entirely and swapping butter for spread.

In the takeaways, coffee got mentioned 9 times. Most people no longer buying takeaway coffees at all. The rest was mostly generic "less takeaways".

Honorable mentions go to Alcohol (8), bread (6), fish (6), Salmon (4), cosmetics (4).

Honestly, it was pretty depressing reading. I know there is at least 1 entrepreneurial person in here so if you can find a way to reduce the price of beef and cheese and market it, there is a ready made market for it. You will clean up.

Considering this sub skews wealthy I imagine over on R/newzealand you would get more of the same.

For those of you who may be unaware this (gestures at everything) is neoliberal economics. The majority of the Western World has been running under Neoliberal Economics since about 1980.

The basic idea, is that the free market will provide more abundantly and at a cheaper cost than regulated industry or government services. If we get out of the way, the free market will provide.

This, obviously, is not true in the longer term, as due to the profit motive of business, prices MUST continue to rise over time. This is what we are seeing now. All services are raising prices, to increase profits, while claiming it is inflation. Also, for any of you who have ever worked at a company anywhere, you know they will cut corners and quality at any opportunity to increase these profits. The only thing that consistently stops them is the minimum standards set it regulations, which Neoliberal Economics has encouraged to be slashed over time.

It also advocates for the reduction in public services and reducing taxes. The idea is that an individual is better suited to decide how best to spend the money on what they want. This sounds great, until you apply it to roads, or schools, housing or Healthcare. If you cut my taxes, great, I will have $2000 more a year, but Im fucked if I need to.get to Hawkes Bay as the road doesn't get built. Or if I break my legs and need an X-Ray and I cant afford $250k to buy a machine. (honestly this was way cheaper than I expected when I looked it up and thought about changing the example).

The result of Neoliberal Economics is the privatization of goods and services you and I need, which results in these goods and services becoming profit driven, which results in the cost going up and the profits being privatized. Ultimately it gets to its end stage, where a bunch a billionaires own everything and regular folks own nothing, as we are seeing.

So, for those of you furious at the cost of living, power and house prices, you can thank a bunch of guys from The Chicago School.of Economics, who convinced a bunch of people on the 70/80's this was a great idea and then those people continuing to do it long after it was clear it was return to fuedalism. They sold off all our houses and power companies and telcos and charged you back for the privilege.

Neo liberal economics is exactly what we had for all of human history and it resulted in an ultra wealthy elite and a massive poverty stricten working class. We had a short period in the 1900's where the working class got something back and then the boomers sold us out for a short sugar hit. For those of you who think im lying, I encourage you to do.a quick google of Neoliberal Economics.

It is a scurge on human kind and the planet.

I was thinking about this while I was shopping this weekend and buying spread instead of butter. Butter is delicious and I could afford it if I wanted, but I simply refuse to spend $9 on butter. That is just more than the item is worth to me when there are alternatives available.

I was wondering what other people have swapped out based on the cost?

Im not interested in big things like insurances or cars, more like swapping ketchup or bread brand. It might be good to see what good alternatives are available.

I wanted to post something that might help other people who are coming back from illness/ injury/ other breaks from running.

Ive been doing some sort of endurance for 15+ years and up until December I was planning my first miler for April just gone. I was running probably the best I ever have, I felt strong, and my weight was back down to a number I haven't seen since my first marathon back in my 20s.

Unfortunately, I had some unrelated illness around December and eventually had to have surgery about 1.5months ago. I got the all clear from the doctor yesterday to start a return to fitness and Im all healthy. This is the main thing.

Well as of this morning I now weigh the heaviest I have ever been, 12.5% higher than December (too much comfort eating lol). I did an "easy" flat 3km at 20% slower than I was running in Z1 previously and that put me near the top of Z3. All in all, Im pretty out of shape. But that is ok.

I have had breaks before and I know these first few weeks are the hardest. You can not compare yourself to where you were, it doesn't help. You have to focus on where you are going. The runs will get faster, and easier and longer over time. The fitness returns and the weight reduces (if thats your goal).

What you can't do is try force it, that way you get injured. You can't beat yourself up, that doesn't help you stay motivated to get better and you can't try be where you were before, that is looking backwards when you need to move forward.

You need to acknowledge where you are, accept it as your starting point and build from there. Its ok to get frustrated, its ok to be annoyed at the situation but you shouldn't let that discourage you. I am now healthy enough to get back to doing the thing I love most in the world and that is an amazing privilege. It'll get better over time, but right now my cold, rainy, dark, mid winter, slow, plodding 3km feels like the best run Ive had in years.

You can back get there. Just be nice to yourself and enjoy the journey.

So, I posted about scones yesterday and people got mad. Lol. So I have costed it out again with the additional cost of labour and power and mortgage.

I have also included labour in purchasing a scone to keep it even as it takes time to go to the cafe and back which is happening at a time you definately could be working. If time is money, then it is in all scenarios. I have also taken on the feed back that I under priced a coffee and scone in a café and its more like $6 each.

So, the home baked now includes 30 minutes of oven power costing $0.50. 30 minutes of mortgage $0.38c (P&I) (work out your own mortgage, this is my actual mortgage at 4.75%). 30 mins labour (rounded up because people seem to think scones are impossible to cook or clean up from) at $55 an hour is $27.50.

Shopping for ingredients came up alot as a time cost, but, as I have to go to the shop anyway for all my other food I haven't counted this. If you want to include this I think we also need to include the total life cost of not shopping and starving to death or, the cost of all the takeaways you have to buy because you don't shop..All the ingredients are things I have in my house/shop anyway so I am not spending any extra time on this regardless if make scones or not. There is 0 marginal cost to the activity. If you are a complete pedant you can add $0.45 ( $0.05 per scone) to the total cost for the 30 seconds it takes to pick up 5 ingredients from the shelf.

So your home baked scone now costs a completely nonsensical $3.66, still substantially cheaper than buying one.

Now a scone at a cafe is $6 I have been reliabley informed, but it also takes 15 mins to leave your desk, walk down, queue up, order, warm it, and return. So, that is $13.75 per scone. This is repeated each time you buy the scone as alot of people wanted to point out they would only eat freshly baked same day scones. Total scone cost is $19.75.

So, even in the scenario you add in all the silly costs to assume your Sunday afternoon is big business time for big business bois, you are now $16 per scone worse off.

To be clear I am am not saying anyone has to cook scone, or should cook scones or that I can run a café cheaper than the professionals. I am saying, for maximum scones per $1 (which we know is time from yesterday) it much better to bake. You can have your scone and eat it too as one person said. Side note, baking is a well known stress reliever too, which may help some responses. Lol.

Given how nasty this got yesterday, I will ask you keep it civil and I'm not responding to anyone. lol. If you want to re-cost it to include other cost do it, show your workings and we'll see who can include the most amount of arbitrary costs to get a home made scone to more than the cafe. It definitely can be done (add childcare costs maybe, lol). That could be a fun game.

My preference is just to add more delicious scone recipes though. Someone included a date and orange one yesterday that sounded incredible. Id also love a savory muffin recipie, mine is not great.

I love morning tea. An 11am coffee and a cheese scone is a banger.

I've been making my own over the last few years as I know its cheaper, but I never actually costed it out until yesterday to see how much cheaper. I'll have a look at home made sausage rolls and lammingtons later in the week but below is for a cheese scone. (If there is a chef/baker in here who has the costing please feel free to save me a job)

So, to buy a coffee and scone is going to be around $10. Some might be more, some will be less but we can use that as an average.

The recipe from the Odlins cook book worked out at $4.58 for 9 scones. So $0.51 per scone. (Break down below)

We get fresh ground coffee delivered to us (bougie, I know) and I've worked it out at $0.65 per cup. Im sure there are cheaper or more expensive options available.

So that is $1.16 vs $10. Its literally 8.62x more expensive. That is mental. Im genuinely shocked the difference is that big. Im sure other have costed things before but I never have. Anyone looking to cut back without missing out on morning tea, fire up the oven and bake for 12 mins.

390g Flour - $0.52

24g baking powder - $0.38

75g butter - $1.25

100g cheese - $1.57

350g milk - $0.86

So, out of curiosity I looked up how much it costs to book the Stadium. Turns out it is $20-$30k depending on complexity, wanting access to vendors etc.... but for a simple booking we can assume its $20k. Probably less if you didn't really need anything.

Now, a soccer game need 22 players plus subs. Given most of us are out of shape, you will want rolling subs, at least 4 per team. Total 30 people.

That says to me, for $666 per person, we could book the stadium, use the dressing rooms and play a game of footy in a proper stadium. Just saying, for a once in a lifetime experience, that is not a bad deal.

If anyone's keen to put it together im an out of shape centre midfielder who will not track back and hasn't played in 5+ years that is willing to come out of retirement for 3 or 4 10 minute stints.

My partner and I are late 30's/ early 40s. We have always been savers and never had any debt other than the mortgage. This has put us in an OK position, so long as we can stay employed.

We are "probably" already Coast FIRE and we had hoped to FIRE in about 10 years or so, depending on returns. This would not have made us rich, but with enough to live a pretty quite lifestyle. Our holidays are generally camping, not 5 star hotels and both of us exercise a lot as our hobby, for example

However, with AI, its unlikely both of us will remain employed for the entire 10 years. My job in particular is very vulnerable to AI, and we are already implementing tools that will result in loss of jobs. I suspect I'll be one of the last to go, based on performance, but I also suspect 5 years might be the time horizon. I am already working on getting a new role and upskilling in the use of AI to protect myself, but my industry is going to be one massively transformed by AI. Just factually, lots of jobs will just no longer be required.

If AI had come in in 5 years, we probably could have seen out the 5 year implementation period and then rode off into the sunset. However, it looks like it may be 5 years too early, causing us to scramble for lower paid roles at a time the market is saturated. Best case, this extends our retirement date, worse case, this eats our savings.

I was wondering if anyone else feels like they are in the same situation? Or do people completely disagree and it will just change roles not disestablish them? Am I just a doomer? What are people doing to prepare themselves? What impacts are predictable that you can pre plan for?

TLDR: Likely my job won't be needed due to AI before I have enough to retire. What do?

Hey all, I am struggling to find an answer to something either on the ANZ website, their "how to" guide for Go Money or in any old posts on here.

Basically, my Home Loan is due for refix. I currently overpay the loan. The new rate will be lower than the current interest rate and I will be keeping the payments the same. However, nowhere in the app does it have an option to keep the payments the same and their guide and website don't mention this either.

If I choose the new lower rate on the app will my payments automatically decrease based on the new interest rate? Or will they stay at the same amount they are now but the maturity date will change?

Trying to avoid calling them, so if someone knows the answer that would be amazing.

EDIT: Answered below: Yes it brings you to a screen to choose your own payment amount after you choose your rate.