Every year I pick a bucket or two of free olives from public trees in Devonport. I then pickle them. Below is the recipe.

Initial pickling

For green or black olives

• Once picked, take a sharp knife and slice each and every olive once down to the stone. This isn’t quite a time consuming as it sounds and I usually do it in front of the television
• Place the olives in a bucket or container filling no more than 2/3rds full.  Fill with water and one cup of salt dissolved in it.  I buy a 15kg bag of salt, which lasts two years.  Otherwise it’s easy to use too little salt and the pickling fails.
• Weight down the olives with a plate or similar to keep them under the water at all times.
• Replace the brine daily for best results. If you miss a day here and there it’s not the end of the world.
• Sometimes the brine goes a bit smelly, or forms a scum on top. This isn’t a huge problem, just replace the water. Also, it’s normal for little bubbles of gas to come up from the olives to the surface.  Again, this is normal. They haven’t gone off.
• After about six weeks your olives should be ready. Taste them and if they are no longer bitter, then they’re ready for the next step.   If not, keep repeating the process until they’re ready.

The final pickling solution is as follows:

• 1/3^rd white vinegar
• 2/3rds brine – made by boiling water in a pan and dissolving the salt and then leaving to cool. (The brine should be 1:10 salt to water ratio)
• Place olives in bottles (or ice cream containers) and then pour the brine and vinegar solution over them until the fruit is completely submerged.
• At this stage you can also add any of the following flavourings: grated or whole garlic, basil, oregano, chopped onion, red capsicum, lemon juice and lemon pieces.  Especially popular is a combination of garlic, basil and lemon juice.  I also use cumin, rosemary, peppercorns, cloves, star anise, or whatever I have around.  I tend to do a different flavouring for each bottle.
• Top up the bottles with a little olive oil to stop air getting to the fruit. Screw the lids on tight.
• Store bottles in fridge until use.

When you’re ready to use your olives:

If the strong preserving solution is too strong pour some of it out and replace with lightly salted water. Or if you don’t like the salty taste, you could poor all the solution out and replace with cool water, which will help leach the salt out.   Leave in the refrigerator for 24 hours and taste them.  If they are still too salty for your liking then refill the bottle with a fresh lot of water and return to the refrigerator for a further 24 hours.

But I’ve been thinking about online shopping, since I was introduced to DealExtreme.com by my friends David and Simon.  I’ve just ordered a number of items including a new battery and charger for my Nikon Coolpix camera, and an ultrafire torch as the old technology one I have is hopeless when we’re camping.

Some of my favourite international retailers include Eddie Bauer and I love the La Redoute website for French fashion and for its remarkably reasonable shipping costs. The great thing about buying from northern hemisphere clothes retailers is that our seasons are different and we can take advantage of their end-of-season sales.

But it’s not just clothing you can buy. Virtually anything small and light could be shipped to New Zealand. For example Fusion Beads, an American bead shop, ships here — if you’re into that sort of thing. And just check out the range of doggie clothes at Little Pampered Pets. As well as individual retailers, it’s possible to buy all manner of stuff via eBay.

My latest

Here are some other shops that ship to New Zealand:

Shops that ship to New Zealand

• Strawberrynet
• Cabelas
• Shoe Shop
• Best for Bride
• Net-a-Porter.com
• Back Country
• Body Building.com
• Quilters Quarters
• Mountain Equipment Co-op
• Speedo
• Foto.com
• Global Sources
• Next.co.uk

Most of us could save a small fortune if we gave up some or all of the unnecessary fat in our spending. I often remonstrate with myself about some of my spending. So I’ve decided to blog about what I won’t give up just to save money.

Here are the four things I won’t give up until I’m destitute. WARNING: these examples are bad for your long term wealth and should not be followed:

My car
I’m horribly wedded to that expensive piece of metal. I use it for lots of short trips that could easily be done on a bicycle or foot. It’s on my To Do list to find out exactly how much each trip to the local café or supermarket costs me in dollars and cents. According to Fuel Saver the fuel consumption can vary by up to 55 percent for two people driving the same model of car exactly the same distance just due to their driving habits. I accept that I probably need to own a car. It’s just that I could spend significantly less if I cut out those time-saving short trips.

Café visits
Coffee is a drug. It leaves toxins in your body, makes you fat, it’s an unnecessary waste of money, and so on. The part of the addiction I’d like to can is the café visits, not the drug itself. I guess a shrink would tell me to accept this failing and realise that my daily sojourn in a café is one of my great pleasures in life.

After-school activities
My children do soccer, dance, art classes, cubs, guides and so on — which cost around $10 a session on average. I’m well aware that these activities won’t benefit the children’s future as much as many parents think they will. Even so, it’s giving them opportunities. I sometimes think parents who limit the children’s afterschool activities to one per week and give children time to hang around home, might be doing a better job at parenting than I am.

My pets
I know they’re a black hole when it comes to money. Pets, however, are part of my children’s family. Like all of these items above, I would give them up if I was forced to financially. I’ll budget for them, however, as long as I possibly can.

There are lots of other things other people won’t give up to save money. I searched online about the subject and found a number of bloggers and columnists proffering lists of things they wouldn’t give up to save money:

• Fashion blogger Ashe of Mishciefmydear.com, won’t, unsurprisingly, give up quality shoes, good fitting jeans, haircuts, and a number of beauty products such as Urban Decay eye shadow and Palmer’s Cocoa Butter stick.
• Julie Rains on WiseBread.com will not part with: Internet access, fitness expenses, health insurance, dinner with the book club, and annual vacations.
• Girls Just Wanna Have Fund$ poster Ginger asked her readers what they wouldn’t give up, and many cited their Internet connection.

The trouble with a list like this is that all of these unnecessary things I won’t give up stand in the way of boosting my long term savings. Justify them as I do, the money could be spread more wisely if I didn’t do these things

It’s a fact of life. People who budget enjoy more luxuries than those who don’t. That’s because they’re not frittering money here there and everywhere on things that don’t bring them satisfaction. They set goals and focus emotion on looking forward to a strictly limited number of good things in life.

Your say: What is the last thing you would give up to save money?

Read more:

• Cut the cost of driving
• Ten tips when fashion shopping on a budget
• Ten ways to do things on the cheap
• The 10 biggest money wasters of all time

1. Why do you give? Do you give to get something in return, do you give becuase it boosts you psychologically, or some other reason.

2. Do you think families should set spending limits on Christmas spending?

3. Do you like receiving money or vouchers?

4. Would you prefer money or vouchers to a present?

5. Does an expensive present mean more to you than a cheap one? (Be honest here)

6. How do you feel when you get something you don’t want?

7.  Any other thoughts about Christmas spending?

To make the purcahse less painful I have been saving up points on my True Rewards credit card.  I get these points according to what I spend on the card.  Yet I never ever pay interest. So the points are money for nothing.

That, however, is no reason:

a: to treat the points as a bonus. They could have been used to buy a supermarket or petrol voucher, and therefore transferred into cash

b: to buy a more expensive TV than I would otherwise. For the record, I bought the cheapest Full HD 40+ inch TV I could find.

Bargain Betty’s children are very happy.

I phoned the company at 9.30pm UK time. To my complete surprise a real person picked up the phone at that time of night and the order went out in the mail the very next morning. The parcel arrived six days after the order was placed and the total cost including postage etc was NZ$13.40. That’s a bargain.

It is even personalised with “Happy 9th Birthday Milo” on it.  When I did a quick Google search last week  I couldn’t find a New Zealand company offering these – although there probably is. Even if I did, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been that reasonably priced.

This is a real Bargain Betty solution. A wire mesh storage cube hutch:

http://www.therabbithouse.com/indoor/rabbit-cages-cubes.asp

That won’t quite suit us as it will need to be outdoors. But it really got me thinking about Bargain Betty type solutions to our Guinea Pig problem.

 

A new global research report ‘Private label vs. Brands – an inseparable combination’ from Rabobank’s Food and Agri Research division (FAR) shows that

 

• The global market share of private/own label food products is set to double from the current 25 percent to 50 percent in 2025
• A-brands will retain their importance for retailers to anchor categories’ price levels and give consumers choice and familiarity
• Good news for consumers is that they will still have access to familiar brands and have greater access to lower priced private label products
• Smaller secondary brands (B-brands) will have to strategically reposition to avoid being squeezed out of the market
• Two strategies are open to B-brands suppliers: either invest in quality and target the premium market, or specialise in private label.
• A consolidation spree among private label specialists is inevitable to achieve economies of scale and reduce the cost base

 

For more information visit:

http://hugin.info/133178/R/1499322/434858.pdf

For more information about Blog4NZ visit this link.

Holidays are expensive. It’s something I build into my budget. But I’ve just read that a third of UK parents can’t afford to take their children on holiday this summer. Many Kiwi parents will be planning their summer holidays at least six months in advance. So it’s time to start planning. There are ways to keep the cost down and here are some of my favourites:

Staycations These are about having a vacation at home. But don’t just sit at home — there’s no fun in that. Do touristy things in your own location. If I lived in Wairarapa, for instance, I might schedule in daytrips including a mooch down the main street of Greytown checking out the antique shops, take a trip on Featherston’s Fell locomotive engine and take the kids fishing at Ngawi.

Book a cheap bach or crib Last year we booked a basic bach at Mangawhai heads for $60 a night. A friend of mine got one for $30 a night on a remote Northland beach. The advantage of a bach over other cheap accommodation is that they’re usually fully furnished, have cooking facilities to save you from eating out, and often come with toys. Our Mangawhai bach had a PlayStation for the kids and kayaks.

Go remote If you book somewhere in the back of beyond, you’ll avoid spending anything other than accommodation costs and transport to get there and back. I’ve done this — checking into a farmstay hostel north of Kaeo. Another option, which I often do, is to go on a multiday tramp. That way you’re often only paying to stay at Department of Conservation huts, at $15 a night. When you’re tramping, you can’t even carry an excess of expensive food and alcohol.

WWOOFing That’s Working Weekends on Organic Farms. WWOOFing has been around for as long as I can remember. The idea is that you stay and sometimes eat free on an organic farm in return for a few hours labour each day. If you’re cooped up in an office all week, the occasional WWOOFing weekend can be fun. You get to meet interesting hosts who’ve often given up the city life for their dream.

Camping Away from home camping is one of the cheapest holidays you can have. Flash campsites such as the lovely Top 10 ones can cost more than $50 a night. DOC and local regional council campsites are much cheaper — although they usually don’t have many facilities, but they’re mighty cheap, lots of fun, and often in very beautiful locations. I’ve even camped in the garden of a friend’s bach for free — with the use of cooking facilities inside. Cabins and on site caravans If you don’t like camping you can still rent cheap accommodation on campsites — which are great places for kids. I’ve rented both cabins and caravans at campsites.

Cabins are usually cheaper than similar motel rooms — although they can be basic. The last time we visited the lovely Te Aroha Holiday Park we rented a retro 1950s caravan for just $30 a night for three people.

Home exchanges This is a great concept. You exchange houses with someone else in a location you want to visit. I’ve done one formal exchange, when I was in the UK, and that worked like clockwork. I’m also always trying to convince friends to swap houses with me. That way we can have a holiday without accommodation costs. There are a couple of home exchange websites in New Zealand: HomeSwap and HomeLink, although I haven’t personally used either. So try these out, or share your own stories of cheap holidays with other readers by having your say here.