Your Plunder for Metal Chicks post this weekend got me thinking about my money problems. I want to have adventures and travel, and save for big things like a house or a car. But I can’t. I don’t have any debt or anything, but I work at a fast-food place, so I don’t make much, and what I do make gets spent on food and booze and concert tickets and clothes, and then there’s nothing left.

How do you and your husband save money for such big trips and moving overseas?

***

First of all, not having any debt is a great, great thing. I brought my first ever item on interest-free HP this year, and I hate it. I hate owing someone else money. I’ve used a credit card before too, and although I paid it off before the interest rolled over, I hate it. HATE.

standing in the ampitheatre at Ephesus, Turkey

I am not the best person to give financial advice, because I am a money NAZI. I won’t buy ANYTHING unless I’m absolutly IN LOVE with it (not mildly like, not really like, but it haunts my dreams kind of love).

I look at money as a finite resource – I only have so much of it, so if I want something, I can’t have something else. If I want a new top now, that’s one less Wacken shirt I can buy later. I’m really good at holding onto thoughts of the future like that.

The way I see it, you have one of two options: Make More Money or Spend Less Money. As well as experimenting with both of those options, you should also consider Saving Your Money and Making Financial Goals.

Make more money

If you’re not making enough money at your current job, and you really, really want to have adventures and do wonderful things that require money, the simple fact of that matter is you probably need either a promotion, a new job or a second job. CDH and I both earn below the average wage in NZ. A large percentage of our European trip and our future move to Germany are funded by my writing and CDH’s two second jobs: doing casual work as the “drum guy” at the local music shop, and helping his dad clean a chicken factory (yeah, it’s about as fun as it sounds). We work these second jobs because we love them (well, the writing and the drum shop) and we can use the extra money to boost our savings.

Do you enjoy your job? Why not look for a new one? Don’t quit unless you find one but start looking around for something else. Yes, I know there’s a recession, but the world hasn’t stopped. People are still moving, still imigrating and emigrating, still having babies and taking time off, still getting sick and retiring, and there are still jobs to be filled. You have just as much chance as anyone else – which is none, if you don’t apply. Remember, the worst that can happen is the company decides you’re not right for them. That’s not so bad at all, really.

In my first year into the job market, I applied for many many jobs, some of them well above my skill level. I only apply for jobs that make me feel excited, like I’d be proud to say “I’m a … whatever”. I got many interviews – and in many instances they chose someone with more experience than me, but eventually, someone said, “Yeah, we like her” and I got my current job, which I LOVE. I got the job over someone with more experience (as in, I had NO experience). I am the youngest in my office by oh, 20 years. I am very blessed. So apply, even for jobs you don’t think you could possibly get. You just never know.

If you really enjoy your job and don’t want to quit, but you’d still like more money, you need to think about making your own money or taking on a second job. Perhaps a family member or friend needs some help at their work – this is how CDH got both his second jobs. Or perhaps you could brainstorm a list of other ways you could make money. Make use of your talents. Can you:

• Perform standup comedy
• Busk on the street
• Audition for a covers band
• Give music lessons
• Tutor high-school kids in a subject
• Write articles for magazines
• Offer yourself for clinical trials (just check the associated health risks first)
• Sell artwork at craft shows.

You can probably come up with lots of ideas. Use your imagination – yeah, it’s not exactly easy to make money as a stand-up comedian, but you never know – you might be a natural. You never know till you try, right?

Don’t choose any kind of job requiring huge amounts of start-up capital, unless your dream is to run your own business. Don’t decide you’re going to invest in the stock market unless you know exactly what you’re doing. In short, don’t be a fucktard, as CDH would say.

Create Less Expenses

The second way to create wealth for yourself is to make better use of the money you already have. Almost everybody can find areas of their life they could cut back, spend a little less and live a little better.

We – as a human race – buy a lot of crap. Crap food, crap toys, crap appliances – stuff we use once and throw away. Stuff we sit on a shelf in our house and hardly look at. How many times have you brought a DVD and only watched it once? How many books are sitting on your shelf unread? How much money have you spent on takeout this week? None of that stuff gets you any closer to your goals.

I say this, and I LOVE books, and watching movies, and eating junk food. But I realize these things are about the experience, not the owning of the thing, so we rent movies instead of buying them, borrow books from the library, and I make most of our junk food at home, because it’s cheaper, tastes better, and you get to lick the bowl.

We eat at home so that when we travel, we can enjoy eating out, like these awesome reindeer steaks in Flam, Norway.

I have our household budget sharpened to a razor-edge. It leaves a large portion of our income – nearly 40% – for savings.

• We shopped around for power companies and found this place called Powershop – our monthly power bill has gone down $20-40, even over winter.
• We decided not to have a landline. Instead, we use our cellphones and Skype to contact people. We haven’t missed the landline and this saves us $40 a month.
• We try very very very hard (though we don’t always succeed) not to eat out. We allow ourselves ONE meal out per week, which we save for going out with friends in the weekend. Sometimes that is a nice meal, sometimes it is takeaways.
• We make our lunches at home.
• I shop online and have the shopping delivered to our home every fortnight, and once a week I go to the farmers market and pick up fresh veges. This saves us money beause it uts down on impulse buying at the supermarket and buying groceries we don’t need.

Here are some more ideas for cutting expenses:

• Downsize. Sell unwanted furniture. I took all our clothes into a designer second-hand shop and got a tidy profit just from a bag of old stuff. Do the same with unwanted CDs, DVDs and other stuff. If you have less stuff, you don’t need as much living space.
• Rent a smaller, cheaper place if you can. Or get in a flatmate.
• Cycle or walk to work, even if it’s only during the summer. Both are free methods of transportation, and help keep you fit.
• Join the library. Borrow books for free. You can even rent CDs and DVDs for cheap as chips.

Save the money you make

If you haven’t already, open a savings account.

Sometimes it can be really useful if you can label your account with a goal – we have a savings account called “Germany”.

Here I am, playing the "East Berlin, West Berlin" game.

From the budget you worked out before, set up an automatic payment to go from your cheque into your savings account each pay, before you even have time to notice the change.

The day before you get paid again, transfer any unused money into your savings as well.

Get Excited about Your Goal

So you want to travel? Where do you want to travel? How long? What do you want to see?

Half the reason people fail to save towards a long-term goal is the goal seems so far away and out of reach they just find other uses for the money. I spend a lot of time daydreaming and planning and reading books and mapping sites of interest and writing budgets. When my mind has plenty to be excited about, I have no problem saying “no, we’ll save this money for Germany”.

Read books about the place you want to travel, and start planning your itinerary. Yes, you can start doing this even if your trip is a couple of years away.

Contact people (like other metalheads) in the cities you want to visit, and see if you can make a friend before you go.

Talk to friends and family members who been traveling. Look at the way their faces light up when they talk about their adventures. Does your face light up when you talk about all the beer you drank last weekend? If so, cool, if not, maybe it’s time you thought about your priorities.

Start learning another language.

I won’t lie, saving money for long-term goals can be bloody hard work, and requires a ton of discipline and a heaped dash of “do I want this now or that later?” But we did it, and we are far from millionaires, so I bet you can too.

Readers, I bet you have some more great advice for our virginal-traveller? Dispense!

Yours, wherever I may Roam

Our gorgeous steam engine

Now, to give you folks in first world countries an idea what it’s like getting around New Zealand. The line they ran the steam train on is a freight line – passenger trains don’t even go from Auckland – Whangarei. If we were to drive to Whangarei from our house, it would take around 2 hours. Guess how long it takes on a steam train?

Seven.

Yep. Seven. The reason – the track is in such bad condition the . If you are ever thinking of coming to NZ and expecting to navigate this country by ease with public transport, THINK AGAIN. Rent a car. Hitchhike, or be prepared to add another two weeks travelling time to any trip you make. We’re on narrow gauge track here, which means – slow trains, poorly maintained track, and a schedule which is more conceptual than actual reality.

Our steam locomotive – the NZR 4-8-2 J Class (4-8-2 refers to the layout of the wheels) – were engineered to follow the head-load K-class monsters, as a lighter-axle train was needed for the secondary tracks. She was built in Scotland, and managed to elude several German U-boats on her trip over here (with 39 of her brothers and sisters) to come into use in NZ in the 1940s. She’s capable of over 60mph with a 300-ton express train, but because of the speed restrictions on the track, they couldn’t push her nearly that hard.

View from the train.

Anyway, enough train geekery. We hop on the train at 7:30am, and settle into our seats for the day. After a hearty train breakfast (cheese, ham, tomato, pineapple toasties), we settle in to enjoy the view, play a few games of naked Greek Men cards (I won), a few games of travel chess (I lost), read our books (I finished Jasper FForde’s “Shades of Grey” which I am insanely jealous I, as a person with achromotopsia, didn’t write.) and talked to more train geeks. I made a cake for CDH to share with the crew, which went down a mighty treat.

Cheese, tomato, pineapple toastie. Breakfast of train geeks.

They stopped the train regularly for photo stops, where they let everyone out, haul the train up the line, and drive it past so everyone can take photos. Most of my photos came up rubbish.

A little NZ countryside for y'all.

View from steamtrain, just past Welsford

Snapped by CDH

We did practically nothing in Whangarei, as there is NOTHING to do. We did find a sweet shop, and wandered around the port and talked about piratical adventures we would have on the boats, and found some tacky sourviner shops, one of which had Puffer Fish on the wall, which you could buy and hang from your ceiling, if you’re that way inclined.

I love the diverse amount of geekage in the world. I’m a metal geek. On Saturday, I met some hardcore train geeks. As in, they sat on the train with GPS and maps, timing the train’s route. They brought expensive camera equipment to take pictures of the train. They have train geek lingo for talking about trains. It was really quite an eye opener.

Whangarei sweet shop

Having held one of these bastards in the ocean, I would hate to have them hanging on the wall. Look how pissed off they look!

I loved all their long-suffering wives, who held maps and made toasted sandwiches, and lugged their camera equipment around while they geeked out.

So yeah, that was my weekend. What did you get up to? I’m sorry posting’s been light over here – I’ve been distracted by work and learning Eluveitie and Einsiferum songs on the tin whistle.

Going off the rails … \m/

So, if you’re fascinated by everything ancient – or you just want a deeper appreciation of Nile’s lyrics – I recommend a visit to Egypt. And here’s what I think you should do:

CDH and I in front of the pyramids at Giza (he's very impressed, really. He just HATES being in photographs)

1. Crawl Inside a Pyramid

The pyramids are indescribable. Until you’ve been there, you won’t know. I knew exactly how big they were, exactly how many blocks it took to make them and how many workers pulled those blocks, but I still stood beneath them

What surprises many people is just how close the pyramids are to the city. They’re right on the cusp of the western edge of Cairo.

Many – less educated tourists mistakingly assume the Pyramids at Giza are the only pyramids in Egypt. They’re wrong – there’s over 75 pyramids discovered to date, spanning a period of over 1000 years, and many more
still undiscovered. You might wonder how archaeologist might possibly miss 150m high sandstone monstrosities poking out of the desert, but the truth is most pyramids have been demolished in ancient times by people using the stone for other projects. The Romans take some responsibility for this, as do the Greeks, the English, and pretty much everyone who’s ever attempted to penetrate Africa. Most pyramids exist only as foundations.

Great Pyramid

Most tourists visit the Giza necropolis and maybe the step pyramid of Djoser, and then go shopping or something, but if you’re still pyramid hungry, visit the necropolis of Dashir. These pryamids (the red pyramid,
black pyramid and bent pyramid) are a little further away, but you can easily find someone to drive you there (we organised a taxi with a couple of others from our group).

The Bent Pyramid.

The bent pyramid was the first smooth-sided pyramid design, and one of the first pyramids every built – by the famous architect Imhotep. After constructing part of the slope, Imhotep realised that if he continued using the angle he had chosen, the pyramid wouldn’t support its own weight, and this wouldn’t please the king’s eternal soul. So he changed the angle, and after a few more rows reailsed this angle was still too steep, and changed it again. He finally completed the pyramid, but the Pharoah looked at it and said “Well, it’s not really very staight-sided, is it? I was really hanging out for a straight-sided pyramid. If you could start on that, that would be super.” So Imhotep built another Pyramid – the Red pyramid.

It costs you nothing to see this necropolis, and something like 15LE to go inside the Red Pyramid, and it’s worth every, single, cent.

Unfortunately, you’re not allowed to take pictures inside.

2. Play Nile on the Nile

Yes, it’s dumb, but our friends dared us to, so we played a little “Papyrus Containing the Spell to Preserve Its Possessor Against Attacks From He Who Is in the Water” in our suite on the cruise ship.

Nile on the Nile

3. Climb Mt. Sinai on a camel.

Camel travel is the best travel.

Camel’s are seriously the coolest creatures. They are so clever, totally mischievous, and they have such unique personailities. The guys who run the camel’s at Mt. Sinai seem to genuinly love the animals and we didn’t
see any cruelty being directed towards them (unlike an experience we had riding donkey’s in Jordan).

CDH’S camel bolted on ahead. He told me later it was plodding along, when it’s owner turned on his cellphone and started playing some music, and his camel jived the rest of the way to the top, plodding in time to the beat.

My camel believed in “slow and steady wins the race”. He was extremely polite and would pull over and wait for people to pass him. His name was Petey and he had the coolest smile.

The journey is about 1 and a half hours, and by the end of it, you think your thighs have permanently worn into a bow shape, but then you look at all the tired people. trudging along around you, and you think “Yep,
Camel travel is the only travel”.

For those of you unfamiliar with biblical mythology, Mt. Sinai is where Moses received the ten commandments. It’s an extremely sacred place for Christians and Jews, and the 3am hike lit by the moon and stars and lanterns, with people singing songs and camels farting. There was a wisp of magic in the air.

Camel Travel

4. Buy the world’s Tackiest Souvineers

Egypt is the land of tack. If you can dream it, they can slap a cartoon sphinx on it and try and sell it to you. I needed a new pen to write my diary and the man we approached was absolutely convinced what I REALLY needed was not one, not two, but SIXTEEN of his tacky pens. An entire box. We didn’t buy them, thank god, because my tacky pen ran out pretty fast.

I'm is in ur temple, defiling ur religious iconograffie

5. Go Shopping

CDH deliberating over papyrus. We spent so much money the manager invited us up for tea.

When you’re in Egypt, be prepared to be treated as though you are an inconveinent means of transportation to your wallet. Everyone wants money for something, and you’ll be dishing it out just to make them all sod off.

We did however spend a really fun afternoon in Cairo visiting a papyrus factory, a cartouche factory and a perfume factory. We also went to the Khan el Khalili market and tried our haggling skills – what haggling skills? Exactly.

Holiday Reading:

Christian Jacq, the Ramses series
Wilbour Smith, River God
Terry Pratchell, Pyramids
Tim Powers, Anubis Gates

Holiday Soundtrack:

Nile – Amongst the Catecombs of Nephren-ka
Iron Maiden, Powerslave
Nile – Annihilation of the Wicked
Ramses – Dellrio de Desastre
Katra – Katra
The Bangles – Walk Like an Egyptian

Salaam Alekum \m/
Steff Metal

We crossed the border into Jordan today – what a change! CDH was so relieved as Syria was – although interesting – a bit of a smelly, dirty place, and it made us so sick. We are in Amman, which is a huge city of 3 million people (1/2 the Jordanian population), but it’s much cleaner and they even have western food here. We’re trying to eat bland food that our stomachs can handle till we get better.

Today we went to look at the citidel and then to take a taxi to the local underground metal store. We met the coolest taxi driver, he took us there, telling us all sorts of stories on the way. Turns out, underground metal store closed two years ago. The guy should probably update his website. So our driver took us to see an amazing black and white mosque and told us more stories and brought us coffee (it tastes like dirt). Was such a great afternoon!

We’re resting up in hotel before going out to dinner. Well, I will go out to dinner, and CDH will stay here and have McDonalds delivered :) (they do delivery here. McDeath’s also do a “Chicken Big Mac” apparently.

Tomorrow we go swimming in the dead sea! then we go to Petra for a day and a half, where I can do some Indianna Jones poses in my wicked cowboy hat, then into the desert to stay the night in a bedouin village, on to Aqaba on the red sea where CDH will be doing lots of diving, and then we climb Mt Sinai and move on into Egypt! Yaaay!

Photos soon, I promise!
Salaam Alekum!
Steff

I promise when I return I shall delight you all with an in-depth analysis of heavy metal in Syria. Currently, all I have to delight you are tales of how bloody ill I’ve been. Syrian food is out-of-this-world tasty amazing, but boy howdy … urgh. I pity the people who’ve had to clean our hotel room.

We took 3 hours to cross the Turkey/Syrian border, a distance of 2km. We had to travel across in groups of 3 and 4 in these tiny volvos that looked ready to fall apart. They weren’t big enough for all our luggage so the drivers propped the boots open and secured our luggage with sellotape. We were asked for our passports about 20 times, had to go to the Doctor who tested our temperature in case we had swine flu (how he can tell from our temperature, especially when his instrument seemed to be out, I don’t know), fill out some silly paperwork, and avoid the land mines, we were all good!

Last night we stayed in Palmyra in the desert, and I wandered around the temple of Baal while CDH was busy being ill. We all had dinner with the bedouin over on the Oasis – chicken and rice cooked in the ground. A Danish Archaeologist turned up to dinner also, so I had a great time talking with him.

Last night we bribed someone into taking us into a forbidden tomb. It was amazing and totally worth the 27cent bride :)

This is the first internet I’ve been able to use since arriving in Syria, and I can’t upload pictures as the signal’s very weak. Most of the internet cafe’s here run on dial-up, and the government has banned sites like hotmail. wikipedia and facebook (I STILL can’t get facebook on this server). We were in a city of 4million people and 3 ATMs, one of which was broken.

Syria – it’s totally something else.

Super Snuggles and Shoggoth Kisses
Steff

Cave hotel in Cappedocia

Love and Horns \m/
Steff

Standing in the calcium falls.

We walked up these amazing calcium falls to the ruins of Hieropolis. As it’s a World Heritage site, you have to take off your shoes at the bottom and walk up barefoot. You are not supposed to swim in the pools as it discolours the water, but all the crazy Russians do it. They also make strange and wonderful poses. Mostly Strange.

We climbed up about 5pm and climbed back down while the sun was setting.

I’m wearing:

Bloodstock Open Air t-shirt
Multi-coloured paint splodge skirt from ValleyGirl of all places. It has netting underneath and is suitably foofy for my tastes.
boots (in my hand)
CDH’s cowboy hat

I shall talk to you all again soon!
Steff

Turkish food, for being amazing, especially chocolate pancakes and kebabs and rice and hummus. The amazing experience of being here during Ramadam and being part of such a deeply religious experience. Our hotel in Panakuule, which has an epic pool, climbing the walls of Troy, air conditioning, free time with my husband, the Turkish guy who stopped us in the street the other day to say “heavy metal!”, when everything is organized for us and we just have to show up, our tour group (who are all rad), the call to prayer eminating from the nearby mosque (there is always a nearby mosque) five times a day – it’s a magical sound, having to surrepticiously throw the goat as it’s seen as “the evil eye” over here, the fact that every place we travel to is innundated with hundreds of adorable kittens, and the wonderful sights, smells and sounds of Turkey.

Yes, I am happy

that's me, throwing the goat at Troy

Steff

me outside the riechstag in Berlin

James and I got in to Istambul last night, and after a whirlwind taxi ride through Old Town (over 100kmph along narrow one way streets) we arrived at our hotel, to find our room had been given away! Luckily, they found a room for us in a hotel around the corner. A tiny room, with an even tinier toilet. Istambul for the win.

We are back in our original hotel, and will be spending the night here before leaving for Troy in the morning. So far, we have taken another crazy taxi ride to the Agia Sofia (a 400AD Byzantium church converted to a mosque), got tricked into having our shoes shined, and done some laundry in the sink. We’re about to head out to find Hammer Muzik.

Although it’s exciting to start a new part of our adventure, it is sad to leave Germany and our wonderful friends. We hope to return soon.

Super Snuggles and Shoggoth Kisses
Steff

Cooking viking bread at Hobro viking village. I have the recipe to make when I get home.

we are so kreig

a lego dragon at legoland, Dennmark

No bogan trip to Bergen would be complete without a trip to Fantoft Stave church, now fully equipped with an epic sprinkler system and several fire extinguishers. I am wearing my awesome multi coloured hat CDH brought for me. I love it!

Lin and I went shopping and I picked out this rad zipper dress, orange shorts and a cute red jackets. yaaay for new things!

I loved this dress. I did not buy it in the end, but I shall remember it always

I did, however, buy these orange shorts!

that is all for now. more soon!

Keep it Kreig!
Steff