Tag: Pets

Winter 2025

It has been some time since I posted on this blog, which is primarily about me and my very significant other getting to our retirement in a financially secure and healthy space.

Finances
I have read a few more books, blogs, listened to more podcasts and completed a free online course. The outcome is for the KISS principle (keep it simple stupid) to come back into force. Over the years have been lured (easily and being just plain dumb) onto different investing platforms with individual shares (some that I have had for decades), index funds and managed funds. So as a consequence have had a number of fund managers all clipping the ticket with fees.

So after reading and listening to the Happy Saver (aka Ruth) and doing the Donegans FREE Rebel Finance School 10 week course have started to sell and consolidate investments into one index fund through one provider (okay two). Was thinking about keeping a couple of favourite shares, but came back to the KISS principle.

I am redoing the Rebel Finance School, that started in early June 2025 and picking up aspects that I had missed first time around plus there are a number of new calculators.

We have also put our rental property up for sale, but a bit of a glitch with the Council Records that slowed the process down but is now all sorted with settlement date coming up later this month.

In New Zealand we don’t have a capital gains tax but do have a “brightline” test to tease out those that trade properties. We have had out rental for 14 years so the test don’t apply to us. The proceeds from the sale (after lawyer and real estate agent’s fees) will go into TWF ETF index funds and top up our emergency fund to six month of expenses, currently sitting at four months.

In NZ we are a bit limited with low fee options for TWF EFT (or equivalent). Currently have two pockets basically doing the same thing; SMART and InvestNow. SMART is through the NZX but you need a broker to sell like ASB Securities or you can sell through InvestNow. I haven’t looked into the fees for this yet but is on my “to do” list. The other fund that Ruth the Happy Saver discussed on her blog was the InvestNow Foundation Series TWF. Have a very annual fee of 0.06 but incurs a buy/sell fee of 0.5%. Seems high and MoneyHub NZ (Chris Walsh) did a comparison and long term appears to be offset by the low annual fee.

Travel
On the way to our retirement, we will continue to plan for events and activities that we enjoy. Last year we enjoyed a reunion with fellow work colleagues at Mt Maunganui that was great to meet up with with after some thirty odd years., and then our bi-annual winter escape to Rarotonga, which is always fabulous. Hired e-bikes and rode around the island which is pretty easy until your battery fails even though was fully charged when you left!!! This time did the mud buddy tour which was fantastic, a wee note that the soil colour will never ever come out of your clothes so don’t where t-shirts that you want to wear in public again😂😂. Ms S had her birthday in Raro and had a fabulous dinner at Antipodes Restaurant, complete with a “Happy Birthday” chorus from the team there.

This year we had Easter break and Matariki with my brother and his family, complete with an overdose of bubbles and chocolate. Following that we had a week in Melbourne catching up with a couple of friends and having a great look around as we have never been there before. We would recommend the Complete Melbourne Walking Tour that lasts three hours and gives a bit of history, walking through the laneways with some great and not so great art, viewed key historic buildings (complete with Ned Kelly’s armour) and not to mention a coffee and a beer, although not both together unless that is your thing.

Next year we are planning to do the three day Rakiura walk on Stewart Island in Feb/Mar with friends next March which does mean we will have to do some training for this, as we will have carry all our own gear including food, but we should be ok as is only a three day walk. Weather is what it is, and it is Stewart Island. Will pack out good wet weather gear, thermals and other key pieces only trying to keep the packs as light as possible.

Fitness
We have continued with our fitness over 2024 and in 2025. It helps to have two dogs that need walking everyday, complete with adding in a trip to the river to wash off all the dirt Lottie rolled in.

But do notice the smile on her face…priceless

We will have to start adding in carrying a pack especially with the hike next year planned, and have both started a shuffle, I call it that as you can’t really call it jogging, let alone running.

Ms S still bikes to work at least 3-4 days per week, I on the other hand have been slack as a tad busy with a new job I started Feb 24. Still have yet to add in Mark Sisson’s PEM (Prime Essential Movements) but we are heading in the right direction – again thank goodness.

Nutrition
Still working on the health side, which will always be needed. A reminder if you are woman and of a certain age, we read of a good book by a kiwi author Nicky Pellegrino called Don’t Sweat It. She explains it well and gives you a no nonsense list for your GP.

Still doing ketovore (okay not over long weekends 😉), trying to lean more towards the carnivore. Have done quite a bit more reading and the research seems to be firm. Does make me annoyed that all the mainstream information that we were and are feed is based on weak evidence aka observational studies. Caught up with my older cousin and her hubby recently and they are both hooked, and have a good group of friends doing the same. They have noticed fabulous side effects from this namely; weight loss, decease in inflammation and less fog with memory and brain function.

If you are interested start with watching the Fat and Fat 2 documentaries on YouTube, and then read The Carnivore Diet by Shawn Baker, then Dietician’s Dilemma by Michelle Hearn. One aspect I am quite surprised with is the amount of meat you have to eat to get the amount of protein and fat but you still loose weight – fabulous!!!

We are still doing IF primarily 16-18 hours daily which seems to be working well. I do find it much easier if I am in the office and busy as you forget to be hungry and are not tempted by food and thus opening your eating window early.

Home and Property
We have continued with our DIY projects building compost bins out of old pellets and then seeing the results from those bins being used on our gardens. Have popped some dahlias in to add colour and for the bees, the bees always being thought of 😊

We engaged a builder to extend / build an overhang for the front door as it was affected by the northerly weather. Was all completed well before autumn and blends into the house so well, that the neighbours thought it had been there all the time.

Community
Our community continues to be strong with sharing of ideas, bartering and our Friday Night Drinks (FNDs). These occur every 3-4 weeks and is a hoot, always funny stories to share mainly about recapping mishaps that have occurring on our properties.

Working on our properties does minimise stress and nudges you into including activity as part of your daily life, which is probably the only one verifiable outcome I got from reading the Blue Zones.

Aug – Dec 25
So over the rest of this year we will continue with ketovore combined with IF, doing 10,000 steps, start on PEMs, complete the 2025 Rebel Finance School course (did I mention that was FREE) more projects on our property, complete the sale of our rental, invest in index funds (after researching the Foundation Series TWF), complete the KISS investment accounts and complete the share sale.

Righto simple!!!

It never rains but it pours

So another digression from the planned post which was “more on the money stuff”. I wrote about pets in retirement, as we had found out that dear old Merkin had a fair whack of cancer in his wee body and wouldn’t be lasting very long. So today is the day that I have to take him for the blue injection. Blue you say, yes the fluid they give is a lovely blue colour. How do I know this, well this is the reason for the digression……..

So two or three weeks ago our retriever Charlie had started being a bit fussy with her food. At the time we put it down to her essentially staging a protest as we had put her back on her normal sensitive skin biscuits which I did have to admit looked quite bland. We had to change her biscuits over lockdown as the shop had run out of the bland but apparently good biscuits that we had been giving her over the years.

She still went for walks with us every second day but was still not eating her usual food, which for a retriever was very unusual. So off to the vet we went and did some bloods and an exam but couldn’t find out anything obvious. Next was an ultrasound scan and X-ray (we were well-rehearsed in this process as we had gone through this for Merkin a few weeks before). The bloods came back and showed issues with her gallbladder and liver, with the scan showing the same thing. So off to surgery we went, and she came out of it okay but unfortunately, two days later we got the dreaded early morning phone call to tell us that her vital signs were not good.  

So we had to make the very very hard decision, the staff at Massey Vets were amazing. Charlie was in their animal ICU and they had music for her, sent us photos of her looking comfortable after her surgery, photos of her having cuddles with the staff as well as regular updates. They also gave you all potential outcomes (which for dear Charlie were all bad). We visited Charlie and she became quite agitated and it looked as if she was trying to get up to come home with us, it was heartbreaking. 

So that’s how I know about the colour of the injection. We are okay with that. Our dear furry family members have been part of our lives for 11 and 14 years and we don’t want them suffering any more pain coupled with a quickly diminishing quality of life. We know that they have had good times and lives with us, so that does in some small part go towards easing the gaping hole that they do leave in our lives.

A few cool photos of Charlie and Merkin 😎

Next time……..

More on the money stuff and what have I actually completed from my checklist.

Pets in Retirement

I thought I would change tack slightly and talk about Pets in Retirement. You will understand why as you read on.

We have always had pets and currently we have two dogs; a retriever, and a rough collie and two cats Lily and Mr Merkin. All the pets as you can imagine have so enjoyed Ms S being home during lockdown especially the dogs and have now become “inside dogs”. The cats, well they just do what they want anyway as humans, as we know are just staff 😂.

As I write this Mr Merkin (or just Merkin) has just been diagnosed with cancer and has a very short lifespan left. We took him to the vet as he had lost weight and wasn’t eating. Is very sad as he has a fantastic personality, hangs out with us, follows us to the neighbours and around the property. Let me tell you a bit about him.

Merkin is a ginger ex-tom, and was around four years old when we got him from the SPCA cat. Silly me though that when you buy one it would be relatively cheap as you are essentially doing everyone a favour. Not on your nalley. $150 thank you very much. But when I roughly add it up there is the cost of neutering, chipping, worming, de-flea treatment and then staff and building costs. So all in all it is all worth it as you do get to re-home a pet.

You may be thinking Merkin is an interesting name for a cat. Well the story goes like this…….. When we got him in 2010 he was named Icon by the staff (really what sort of name is Icon). Anyway we were reading a newspaper back then and Lucy Lawless a NZ actor was starring in a TV production called Spartacus: Blood and Sand. She was commenting on the costumes they had to wear or actually lack thereof, as there was quite a bit of nudity. She discussed that she and her fellow female actors had to wear merkins. Now we had never heard of this we read on, and essentially they are fanny wigs or wigs to cover your shaven pubic area (Google this I dare you – but not on a work computer).

So we thought it would be a hoot to call our new cat Merkin. Was all fun until we were building our new house and we were living with friends at the time when Merkin went missing. Ms S pushed me out the door early in the morning to go call out for the cat. She gave me further instructions that in the event that I still couldn’t find him, I was to go house to house asking if they had seen my Merkin. You can imagine that when she was saying this, she was roaring with laughter just at the very thought of me doing this 😂. But luckily for me, oh and Merkin cat, he came back to the house in his own good time, he had just been out scoping out the new neighbourhood.

But thinking about retirement and pets, I suppose the question out of this post is; do you still have pets? Then if the answer is yes, at what point do you say no more? It may be when you can physically no longer care for them, or can’t afford to have them or you go into care. Perhaps all of the above. Something to ponder.

However unfortunately for dear old Merkin his ventures around the property with us will soon cease. We will find a nice place to bury him and plant a tree, perhaps an olive or plum tree to always have this reminder around the property where he used to walk and hang out with us.

Merkin enjoying the summer sun on the back deck (Dec 2019)

Next will be back on task with – what will retirement look like for us.