My latest trip was flown with Air New Zealand. I flew out on Saturday 11 June and back on Sunday 13 June. In recent years, I’ve been catching flights to Tauranga via Wellington. This route offers the best of both worlds. Flights depart Sydney at a civilised hour in the morning (9:45am). The stopover is relatively short (2:05 hours) with a quick and easy domestic transfer (none of that schlepping between distant terminals as in Auckland). Then the final flight arrives in Tauranga in time for dinner (6:20pm).
While in town, I took Mum shopping to buy some display shelves for the sunroom zone in her house. For years Mum’s had a chunky low profile “diarrhea brown” bookcase on display here. She and Dad inherited it when my grandparents moved into Uncle Stuart's granny flat. This bookcase always looked out of place once my parents moved to the Mount.
I’m delighted to report that we eventually found some stunning dark chocolate brown open-ended bookcases at Greerton Furnishings. Mum’s dolls from Japan and Africa now have pride of place on these stylish new shelves, along with souvenirs from her recent trip along the Mekong in May.
I’ve also updated a personal budget I created for Mum two years ago. At the time, Mum was worried about her financial well-being. To reassure her, I analyzed 12 months of her personal expenses, investment income and, so on. I then used this data to build an annual budget that showed she could live comfortably for another 15 years. The budget included all living costs, plus a series of one-off expenses such as international holidays, a replacement car and a contingency for the unexpected.
Matt told me that Mum burst into tears of relief the first time I completed this exercise in 2014. She’d clearly been concerned she didn’t have enough money to live. In hindsight, it was another of those watershed moments she experienced after Dad’s death. He’d always looked after the household finances, so this was all new territory for poor Mum.
This trip I got an updated valuation for her home. The property’s value has increased by almost a third in two years. This reassured Mum that she could afford to downsize, at any time in the future if funds ran short, and still have plenty of cash left to sail around the world if it pleased her.
Talking about sailing, I think I’ve also convinced Mum to take a closer look at doing a solo cruise around Hawaii with Norwegian Cruise Lines. They do a brilliant week-long route around the islands taking in many of the highlights I’ve enjoyed in the past.
In the meantime, Garry and I have agreed to take Mum to Port Douglas for a tropical reef experience over the next year's ANZAC long weekend. Mum reminded me that she’s not been to Far North Queensland since 1992 (I think it was September).
At the time, I flew up from Sydney to see her and Dad. This was the first time we’d caught up face to face since I’d relocated to Australia in February 1990. I’d been so poor in those early years that every penny I earned was ploughed back into living expenses. That's us above heading off to Green Island for the day.
Our upcoming Queensland excursion came about after I realised Mum had a pile of Qantas frequent flyer points that were about to expire. She'd earned these during our trip to South Africa last year. After a small points top-up from me, Mum had enough points for return flights from Auckland to Sydney, so we booked some trans-Tasman flights while I was in town.
UPDATE: 2 July
For ANZAC next year I've booked us into a superb apartment overlooking the beach in Port Douglas.
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