It is so easy to get caught up in the daily grind of a working life, commuting an hour to work every day, working an 8 hour day before the 1 hour commute back home, you get yourself into a routine, a pattern and soon 1 year turns into 5 years, your twenties are over and you are now in your early thirties and it’s not long before your knocking on the door of your forties, and you start to wonder, what have I been doing with myself? Where did that time go? The cancer scare was a kink in the chain that stopped me in my tracks in my early thirties. I was forced to re-evaluate my life.
My type of cancer had a very good success rate, but you can’t help to think, what if I am in that 5% that doesn’t make it… what if this is my time. During the chemo, this is all that I could think about even for the year or so after the treatment when I was in the clear, those thoughts still came rushing back when ever I had a checkup or had a similar pain to what I had experienced in the past.
Having come through all of that, I felt that I had been given a second chance, and I said to myself looking ahead I’m going to do things differently. Now I’m 100% healthy… so don’t get my wrong… but I asked myself, if I only have 10 years to live how do I want to spend that time. 10 years really isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things. So this new mind set has kind of taken me and my partner down a new path of living life for the now with the one I love.
It was time for me to get out of the rat race, and really start enjoying life.
I grew up in the country as a kid, and I really miss that rural lifestyle, smaller communities and living off the land. Gary on the other hand is more of a city boy, from Malaysia Borneo, but he has always been drawn to the city. So I’m kind of dragging him along on this new adventure, but he is fully on board with me. Thank you dear for our patience and understanding.
I love Auckland, the multicultural city it is, and I’ve been lucky to travel overseas with work, but I always love coming back home to Auckland. However living in Auckland does through up some challengers, transport is a nightmare, and even on two incomes, getting ahead in life is very difficult in Auckland. The housing market is ridiculously expensive and the average salary is only enough to get by.
I truly believe there are no hand outs in today’s society and if you want to get ahead in life, good old hard work is the way to do it.
Although we didn’t intend on it, it just kind of happened, but we brought and sold our way up the property ladder. We started with a 2 bedroom unit on the North Shore. We used the government Welcome Home Loan scheme to get into our first home. http://www.welcomehomeloan.co.nz The low deposit facility setup helped us into our first mortgage with Kiwibank. www.kiwibank.co.nz
P.S. This blog isn’t meant to be an advertisement, but I’m just sharing our experiences, and will pop in the links that you might find useful.
We’ve always found the Kiwibank fees & rates favourable but they are very picky on the small details. So keep this in mind should you ever have to deal with them.
I think we only had a $2000 deposit at the time, but that was all we needed to get into our own home a 2 bedroom unit. The property was rather run down, so we redecorated the unit ourselves over the next couple of years, new paint, new carpet and a little landscaping. We couldn’t afford contractors, so it was all a bit of trial and error, with a bit of “google”, harassing the hardware store attendants and a lot of blood, sweat and tears during our weekends.
I must say I hate painting. OMG it is so boring!
TIP: to end up with a good looking result at the end, preparation is the key... spend something like 75% of your time preparing, and only 25% of your time painting.
We soon outgrew the small unit and we got a little annoyed at how close our neighbours were to us, so we decided to sell and upgrade to a 3 bedroom house out West Auckland. We secured a very good price for the freshly redecorated unit and by looking for a property further away from the expensive North Shore we could purchase another rundown property, but a much larger 3 bedroom house with a section out West Auckland. So you guessed it, out with the paint brushes once again.
It was this climbing the property ladder and the booming Auckland property market that has allowed us to get ahead and purchase our block of land. We could have never saved the money to do what we are about to do, living a lifestyle dream.
After our third property we decided to sell up and rent a small flat and we stored the majority of our belongings. Like anything to do with property in Auckland, renting storage space in Auckland is expensive! After some hunting around we ended up with www.kiwiselfstorage.co.nz they offered us a good deal and the location of their facility to the motorway on the North Shore would be very handy in the future.
It wasn’t long after the move into our small rented basement flat, that the hunt was on for our block of land.
When selecting our block, it mainly came down to the price and a useable space. At that point we still had no idea as to what we will do with the land, but we wanted to build our own home, and have options for the future for large gardens, perhaps an orchard.
We spent a lot of our weekends driving around looking and comparing various blocks both north and south of Auckland.
When we finally discovered our block on Wattle Lane, it was perfect, with a small stream at the boundary, north/north east facing rural views, it was a good size and it was pretty much all in grass with a small stand of pine trees. So a blank canvas with plenty of opportunities to work our magic on. I must admit it wasn't our first choice, but it ended up being the best choice, as we got a great deal on the land and we've both now fallen in love with our little piece of Aoteroa.
Kaiwaka, is situated on State Highway 1, located about 1 hour drive north of Auckland, and about 40 minutes south of Whangerai, or more importantly we are about 10 minutes from the beautiful Mangawhai beaches! The location for us is fantastic, as it is an easy commute back to Auckland, so we can stay in touch with friends or enjoy a night out at the movies with dinner. We didn't want to feel cut off completely from the outside world, so we are still just within an arms reach of the Auckland city.
Kaiwaka is a small rural community servicing the local farmers and passing motorists. We've heard that the village comes to life at night with the various light displays throughout the village. We've yet to be witness these displays as we haven't been around at night to see them, but I will post some photos when we do see the lights.
It wasn't until our offer was accepted before we decided to take a good hike around the block. But there were some cows were grazing on the property so we needed to pick up some gumboots, as I wasn't going to get cow poo on my good sneakers.
Now I don't want to look like one of those "try hard townies" trying to fit into the country. I wanted to look like I was from the country, so there was going to be no colourful "Designer" gumboots. It was to be pure black gumboots, no exceptions! I remember something as a kid about red band gumboots, a true NZ gumboot that has been around for a long time. I remember dad had a pair, but when I discovered they were priced at $80 plus for a pair, I wasn't going to be spending that amount on a pair of gumboots! However on a visit to The Warehouse... I did find a pair of the New Zealand made Skellerup Gumboots for about $40. Black boots with good tread and high sides. Perfect! Armed with our new gumboots we spent an afternoon exploring our block. The cows were fenced off at one end of the block by an electric fence. They seemed to be excited to see us, as we were of them. Although they were not our cows, and we still had to find out who they belonged too. It felt good to be back in the country walking in our own paddock!
After saying hello to the bovines, I tried in an unsuccessful attempt to go under the electric fence that fenced them in. While trying to perform this awkward maneuver in gumboots, without getting an electric shock, I fell flat on my face into the mud! Gary thought this was rather funny, considering I was the country boy. He made it under without any issues. I'm sure the cows where laughing at me, and when I was trying so hard not to not looking like a townie! I have yet to work out how to get past an electric fence without getting a shock. I think the cows are trying to work out the same thing too. The next visit to the block the cows had gone, so I wondered if the cows were owned by a neighbour and they witnessed me plunging into the mud!
So that is how we ended up with the block Down Wattle Lane.
I promise our future updates will be brief compared to the above and Gary has promised to put together some pictures that we will add to the blog soon.
