Practicalities of returning to study

We live in Wellington, recently dubbed The Coolest Little Capital in the World by Lonely Planet. One of the great joys of Welly is that almost everything is within walking distance, depending, of course, on where you live and where you want to be. As we have been renting since we arrived here two years ago, it was relatively easy to decide to move to a suburb closer to the university. So towards the end of 2010, with our current lease coming to an end in early March, I started househunting for the fourth time....

And as luck would have it, I found the perfect place almost immediately, which was both good and bad news. The good news was that it was affordable, perfectly positioned for a brisk ten-minute walk to university, had three huge bedrooms, a bathroom with an actual bath (something of a rarity in rentals, it seems) and the owner was not only happy to accept cats, he was also happy to offer it to us. Win all round! The bad news was that it was available immediately, and with three months still to run on my old lease, that meant if I couldn't find a suitable replacement tenant, I'd either have to give up the new opportunity or pay three months of double rent. But I guess the rental gods were smiling that day. I threw an email out; a friend forwarded it to a friend who works for Weta and my little ad got posted on the Weta internal ad board. Within a day, I had interest and within three days, I had a new tenant, willing to move in soon. The old rental agent, however, was highly uncooperative and put all kinds of delays and obstacles in the way, so I paid double rent for a month - but in the end, it was totally worth it.

So now we live in a beautiful old villa with high ceilings, creaky floorboards and beautiful views down a long, green valley. Outside my back door birds sing, trees rustle and hedgehogs nose through the rubbish bags if you leave them outside over night. But it's also close to civilization, being only three minutes walk to the local shops and bus stop, and ten minutes walk to campus. Practically speaking, this is a huge benefit as it means less money spent on bus rides, less time wasted getting to and from class, less hassle if there is a long break between classes and you want to pop home for lunch or a nap or to finish some work.

And that all means saving money and now that I've cut my hours down, saving money is a major priority. I talked to my boss at work and arranged to drop from fulltime (10 shifts per fortnight) to 0.7 (seven shifts in a fortnight). These shifts are mainly over weekends and evenings, so that leaves my days free for classes. Both kids have part time jobs and are thus able to take care of most of their own needs, while I pay rent and food and other basics. The plan is that, like any other students sharing an apartment, we'll share cooking, cleaning and laundry tasks and so far, the plan is working well!

 Next post: classes and courses. :-)