[Dawn]

The more I read and hear from people the more it seems to me that there are two distinct types of people that hanker after a life in NZ and I think the types are looking for different things although at first it may appear they are looking for the same.

There are those who.................I was about to start writing a sociological thesis from a capitalist perspective then but you don't wanna be reading that with your cup of tea and a biscuit and anyway it is only my opinion and anyway you may well be irked into thinking 'what the hell does she know about me?', so I won't coz I like you all and I want to have some people in NZ who still want to provide us with hot cups of tea and friendly faces when we arrive.

It does come down to money but not how much you have or how much you want. It's about it's value and that, I think, is different for all of us. I know that $1 is worth $1 and will only ever be worth $1 but if you only had $1 and you really wanted that sweet little $25 pair of sandals that would just go perfectly with that sweet little dress you bought for your sweet little girl last weekend then your measly $1 is gonna make you kind of unhappy, everytime you looked at it it would make you feel angry, frustrated and even maybe inadequate. Eventually you would begin to associate not having enough $ with being angry, frustrated and inadequate, one would come to mean the other.
If all you had was $1 in your pocket and your sweet little girl who isn't really bothered whether she has $25 sandals or not because children don't value those things like us materialistic adults do until they're conditioned to by the same materialistic adults and by our capitalist society in general that targets them subliminally because they are the next generation of spenders and investors in the capitalist machine, running around the garden in bare feet blissfully unaware of how many $ you have or don't have in your pocket, wanting nothing more than to know when she smiles at you you will smile back, when she comes to hug you you will hug her back, that she is loved, respected and unconditionally accepted by you for who she is and for all that she will grow to be, then that $1 in your pocket, that can now stay in your pocket, no longer takes on the same importance it did before, it becomes secondary, it's value is more than monetary because you'll spend it with integrity.

This may sound twee and it might not even say exactly what I was trying to say but we should never forget that it is always completely our choice how we choose to spend our money. We have come to just see money as that stuff jingling around in our pocket or those four secret numbers we punch into a machine. Having money can enable our actions but it can also disable our thinking. Everything's so easy come easy go and we have no one to blame but our greedy selves.

There's more to life than money. There's more to money than money. You just have to think about it.