Grandad's photos

I have been organising a bus "P" Endorsement to my licence to do some part time bus driving, and start work tomorrow for Greg Paul Coaches based at the airport. I can get about 30 hours a week work this way, truck driving tends to be 50-60 hours a week. The licence endorsement has cost over $500 so far. I didn't get a photo-id which is required for taxis, but at Greg Paul's they said I did need one as they do some limo work. Another $128 has just gone out on that. And hourly rates for bus driving are less than truck driving!

If you ever think of doing licence upgrades, avoid AA Manukau in Cavendish Drive. The driving test man there was a grumpy individual who yelled at me for thinking he said stop 'by the sign' and not 'stop by the side'. Also he required me to fill in his evaluation (with prompting) and sign it before he got out of the car. Job for life for him. Stress for me.

Greg Paul has 28 seater coaches and some smaller vehicles and does all kinds of charters (e.g. following the rally cars) as well as regular trips like aircrew hotel-airport runs. Many of his staff are part-timers. They seem a good bunch.

I was lucky enough to attend one of Dr Gareth Morgan's seminars yesterday, where he and his wife Jo spoke about their motorcycle trip though North America, NZ's economy, Kiwisaver pitfalls and their beginnings in philanthropy (we only gave him a few dollars to keep him off the streets and look what came out of left field!). 2.5 hours of good stuff, with a $15 entrance fee that they matched and gave all to Kidz First.

Here's a summary of what he said about Kiwisaver. I don't have a copy of his seminar notes so this is just from memory.

Dr Cullen has launched the Kiwisaver scheme with so many tax and other sweeteners that many people will jump in and sign up, just like they got into forestry in the 1970's (who made any money from that?). Dr Cullen has ignored the fact that the investment industry is full of multinational sharks who are very skilled at breaking the rules. There is no policeman to force them to keep to the rules.

People signing up need to look very hard at whether they will actually get any money in 30-40 years. It will be paid out when you reach the age for Superannuation (will it be 65 or 95?). There are no government guarantees on any of these funds.

When you invest in one of these schemes, you pay your money into a Trust, which is administered by a Trustee. The Trustee is not responsible to you to look after your money, he is responsible to the investment company.

Ask for a copy of the Trust Deed. They will not want to supply you with one. Gareth paid $28 to finally get a copy from Tower Trust (as an example). Look carefully for the fish-hooks and compare to other Trust Deeds. Ignore their prospectus, it is only a glossy sales tool.

The Trustee, in the Trust Deed, will usually be permitted to divert some of your money into 'reserve funds', tucked away for such future things that might happen like a tax increase. You have immediately lost that money. The Trustee may also be able to take your money for such reasons that are 'reasonable'. If you don't think it is 'reasonable' you will have to take them to court to prove otherwise.

Other tricks they get up to:

You are an 'unsecured creditor' and get last call on any funds in the event of the company getting into trouble.

The company will cease supplying you with a detailed statement saying 'you have x,000 shares in Telecom, x,000 in F&P, $x in fixed interest at x%'. They will instead convert your investment to 'Units' and you will only know you own x,000 units at x$ each.

After several years they will turn an investment fund into a 'zombie' and not accept any more money into it. Returns will wind down (to zero or negative), and they will launch a new flash fund with great promises, TV ads and glossy brochures. Normally, you will have agreed to a charge of about 30% of your funds to transfer to another fund, but they will make you an offer of only 10% cost for this limited time. Once they have all the investors out, they can pay themselves the reserve funds.

They are very good at rewriting your contract and not telling you (illegal of course). Gareth calls them and says he has lost his contract and requests a new copy. He has not lost his one, and he lays them side by side and compares the wording. Usually there will be some words like 'the Trustee may take funds for reasonable expenses' to the 'the Trustee will take funds for reasonable expenses' .

Personally, I won't be getting into Kiwisaver with only 5 years till I am 65. If I was aged 20-40 I would find the whole thing a pretty scary prospect. 40-odd years are a very long time in the money investment world. My mother paid money regularly into a T&G building society plan for me, started in the 1950s, through many difficult years, intending that it would make a deposit on a house for me one day. When it matured it was worth $250. Inflation and low returns had made it a joke.

Gareth Morgan does have a Kiwisaver fund. If you are going to run with Dr Cullen's tax breaks, get the Trust Deeds and compare Gareth's fund with the others.

Gareth has an article on this subject on his website.

From his article: "It's not uncommon for products with headline fees of 0.5% to have an effective cost of 3%," says Morgan.

So watch out for those mainstream institutions offering 0.5% fees. They may be milking your hard-earned funds.

These are from Emily's zoo visit Sept 06.

This was the inaugural Waihi Hillclimb and the first speed event for the Bay of Plenty Vintage Car Club. A bit of morning rain cleared and we had a good day on a dry road. An E-Type Jag came to grief in the practice run on exactly the same corner that the driver warned us about at the briefing. Otherwise it was all good fun.



Cars included this 1917 roadster with its wooden wheels and Di's supercharged MG that she drove down from Auckland.



There were several 750 cc Austin 7 Specials, as the owners get older they get harder to get in and out of. Austin 7s were sold as a rolling chassis, so the body was free-form and built by coach builders or home builders.



An enterprising chap had a camera and colour printer and was selling prints for $2, these are the two that I bought. I was 4th out of about 30 entrants of all types. Fastest was Steve Sharp's Lotus 7 followed by a fast EH Holden race car and an Austin Healy.

I have to frequently share my office chair and sofa seat with Puss-Puss. This is what she sounds like when I tried to shift her off the sofa so I could lean back.

(The sticking plaster is where a bit of sun-damaged skin got cut out this week - too much sunshine in my life).

This is such an interesting concept that I have signed up as an affiliate and sell it through this page at Binary Systems. The basic unit for home use looks exactly like a balun, but plugs into the keyboard line. If you look behind your computer you will see one balun, at least, already. KeyGhost is a hardware device that records all keystrokes and replays them through Notepad when the password is entered. There is no software, no batteries and the unit simply plugs in the keyboard line. Other more expensive options include a complete keyboard with KeyGhost in the circuitry and encrypted data.

This device can be useful for an author who wants to recover the last couple of hours of typing, independent of a Windows lock-up. Or for home use to see what the kids are up to on your computer while you are at work. And for the business office environment, with a clear warning screen shown at startup, to prevent and catch unauthorised use of the computer.

You can take KeyGhost out and replay the data on another computer. Scanning software can't detect it is installed.

And it's good to know about these things, I wouldn't want to load credit card details or online banking passwords at an internet cafe now!

I had a great day in the Domain Hillclimb on Sunday with the Orchid Special, about 80 vehicles, and not even one went 'off'. A few spinners at Lover's Lane managed not to contact anything. No photos yet, but you can look at this half minute movie from TVNZ. The Uni Engineers had the fastest car, even beating Ray Williams. We all had 6 runs, my best time 27.6 sec was about the same as Datsta used to do and about 2.5 seconds slower than the Lynx. Results are here.