[Moorf]

I'm running out of ideas now so more PM's with suggestions please!

This should be a hot topic!

Is it "cheap" to live in New Zealand. Will you be living the life of a South Pacific millionaire or scrimping and saving for a "fush'n'chup" supper?

Do both parents need to work to bring in enough? Are flights back to your country of origin within your budget? Were you prepared to take cuts in pay and disposable income?

What costs surprised you the most?

Did you have a vision of being better off financially after moving to NZ?

Does your definition of "standard of living" relate to how much money you have or the environment you live in?

Over to you....

[Lupin]

Broadly I think it's about the same, if you consider everything. I've been most surprised by electricity, fuel, interest rates and groceries ( I knew about them before we got here but was surprised when we were researching from the UK).

I think standard of living definitions will always involve a bit of both environment and disposable income and for us we have a better standard of living because the environment we live is a dream for the UK., but we're in about the same boat financialy.

[StevieD]

I can honestly say that our "standard" of living is fine and would say that it has improved. It is all relative depending on where you live, but most things tend to offset other things. Fuel and insurance are way cheaper, groceries bargains can be found everywhere, so it is a case of individuals making their own decisions on it all.

[incredible hulse]

There is no doubt in my mind that NZ is a more expensive place to live day-to-day than the UK in real terms. Most goods in the shops are 2.5-3 times the UK price yet wages in the main are not. I do not know how even the most pro-NZ/anti-UK person could argue this fact
That said we have a good standard of living here as we brought UK pounds over with us which enabled us to buy a great house without a huge mortgage - something we could not afford in the UK.
I do worry though about the future as despite earning well here I am personally not able to save let alone think about pension provision

[Lupin]

There is no doubt in my mind that NZ is a more expensive place to live day-to-day than the UK in real terms. Most goods in the shops are 2.5-3 times the UK price yet wages in the main are not. I do not know how even the most pro-NZ/anti-UK person could argue this fact

I'm not anti-UK at all but our grocery budget is NOT 2.5-3 times our UK one :confused:

[jubjub]

Hmm, hard one, some things do seem cheaper in comparison, others much more pricey.

My mindset is now set to $ earning and spending, and when you fully hit that stage things seem more expensive! to me now spending $100 is a lot of money, when I first got here, I thought hah, its only 30quid and spent it! I now treat $100 with the reverence I used to treat 100 pounds.

Bearing the above in mind, insurances are cheap, as is eating out and takeaways (depending of course on where you go!) Groceries we constantly over spend our budget (but then again we always did!). clothes and shoes seem pricey, as does some groceries like cereals & bread, today capsicums have skyrocketed to $4 each for red ones :confused:

Beer and wine in pubs seems OK price wise, not too bad when you
compare to UK.

Going away is expensive, even just for a local weekend, a nice hotel room at cheap rate is about $150, two nights, plus travel and a few activities and a meal, you are heading towards $5-600, and thats for two of us with a toddler! We had a week in Oz recently, cost over $2500 inc car hire/hotel and flights. Some people dont even take home $2000 in a month on an average salary.

As for a trip back to the "old country" it set us back about $10000 and we only needed flights and hire cars (plus personal spending money) we stayed with family.

We are curerntly waiting on quotes for a new roof :wah , and the only way we can afford that is the extension we took on the mortgage to buy a new car, luckily we bought a cheaper car than we thought, so have a bit left! Savings are pretty scarce, although kiwisaver has just been signed up to, so we dont even see the money to try and spend it!

We had great ambitions of leaving a chunk of money in the UK for emergency flights :uhoh , thats gone.... we needed it to bail us out of a couple of large car repair bills. Garage bills are horrendous here..... or maybe we just had expensive things go wrong!

books..... there is another pricey one, $40 for a new release.... :no , so we use the library mostly, much cheaper!

In balance I think its a bit more pricey living here, and wages do seem lower for the most part, but there are ways of making things cheaper... see Tia's thread... http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10799&highlight=money+diet

[leachio]

My opinion, NZ more expensive day to day than UK. Wages are lower so we feel the pinch even more. We have used some of our UK money to indulge in car, huge tramp (NZ must have) huge TV (;) Stevie D) but we now have some UK money left which I am desperatly clinging to in case of emergency. We both work and claim child tax credit, dont drink, smoke or go out much but still have nothing left to save and like someone elses mentioned we have done nothin about future pensions as yet.

[incredible hulse]

I'm not anti-UK at all but our grocery budget is NOT 2.5-3 times our UK one :confused:
I didn't say mine was :confused: BUT it is regularly 2 times more; 500 pound compared to 1000 dollars - I've learnt to go without the luxuries and the extra bottles of wine that we used to take for granted in the UK

[Moorf]

I now treat $100 with the reverence I used to treat 100 pounds.Snap! Takes a while before you stop comparing though.

I was just trying to do a "shop" on Tesco's online site but couldn't get in without signing up, thought it might be interesting to compare prices... another thread perhaps? Some real-time grocery shopping in NZ/UK :laugh (where's my anorak?).

I tend to feel that groceries cost more here - I was trying to think how much I spent in the UK to compare with here. I "think" I spent around £80/wk (approx $210?), on average, and here I spend anything between $250 - $350 per week. So yes, slightly higher cost and MUCH less salary. Some things could indeed cost 3 times as much (thinking cheese again here!), but some things are cheaper and for a little "inconvenience" you can shop around and find better bargains.

Oh, heard a great debate going on in the local Raewards today (near airport) - a Welsh lady was having a fit because she wanted to clean the mud off the potatoes so the weight wasn't affected by the "clods of mud" :laugh - they were asking her not to handle them to much! They were just dirty, not clods!!

[Sam B]

Well, I've taken a big pay cut, nearly half what I was on in the UK, but I do have rental income from the UK, and money from my house sale, so we're fine. I think on balance it's a bit more pricey here, some things cheaper, some considerably more (in comparison to wages) but we consume less and do more free things. weekends away in our Mazda bongo campervan are quite cheap and we all enjoy that.

I'm addicted to Trade Me and we have got lots of bargains off there.

[clg]

When it comes to our ability to buy more frivolous things and the types of cars we own we have cut back and I expect this to stay. We also use the library instead of the bookstore, toylibrary, etc. We are more careful with spending, buy on sale when we can but we don't worry too much. All of this gets much easier over time as you get used to prices and know where to buy things.

We are getting by on one income at the moment but things are tight, they would have been in the US as well on one income. Still, we can live and eat well and travel within NZ though we can't save anything on one income and a big unexpected expense (1000+) would have to come out of savings. Going 'home' on one income would be a once every few years sort of thing. When we go back to two full incomes ( or one full one part time) we will be able to save and travel internationally. We should be able to manage a nice international holiday each year as well as an internal NZ trip. I know others who live like this here so it is not that uncommon.

I would say for sure that cost of living is higher here and that from the standpoint of buying things we are better off in the US. Quality of life though wins easily here and there are only so many things you can buy. We are fortunate though in that we came over with a good chunk of cash and we earn well so we would have a good standard of living in the US or NZ.

[Caroline and Dave]

Snap! Takes a while before you stop comparing though.

I was just trying to do a "shop" on Tesco's online site but couldn't get in without signing up, thought it might be interesting to compare prices... another thread perhaps? Some real-time grocery shopping in NZ/UK :laugh (where's my anorak?).



Hi Helen.
There are some tesco comparisons here http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=11995&highlight=shopping+comparisons

If you would like to pm me a list I will get an up to date equivalent for you and put it on here.

Kindest regards

Dave and Caroline

[andreamatt]

Have been in Wellington (Northland) 5 weeks now - and loving it so far. We haven't been able to properly budget yet (with all the start-up costs such as newish but boring car, a new TV, and school contributions and some items of school uniform) but I don't think we're going to be any worse off financially. Where we are so much better off is in having lots of free things to do here at the weekends: the Botanic gardens, Wilton-Otari bush etc and the children love the beaches we've found so far. The central library is fantastic. We can walk to school which we couldn't do before, and OH walks to work in Kelburn (and takes sandwiches!).

The one heat pump in our rental house seems to be on pretty much all the time - am not looking forward to the electricity bills. But cold, as opposed to chilly, houses are not fun. Otherwise all good so far.

Best wishes, Andrea

[nippa&pippa]

I was just trying to do a "shop" on Tesco's online site but couldn't get in without signing up, thought it might be interesting to compare prices... another thread perhaps? Some real-time grocery shopping in NZ/UK :laugh (where's my anorak?).



I can!, just PM you :nice1

[nippa&pippa]

Well it is hard to compare the cost of living as my OH was a manager and I also used to work at Tesco :p at night to bring enough money per week to get by with high mortgage, high council tax etc while feeding four of us...
Now in NZ, my OH is just panel beater and I don't work mean we have a huge pay cut, bringing home approx $45k a year, but we managed well with mortgage on top of it for family of soon-to-be five. Hopefully I will be working part-time at local school while all my kids is at school (that will be in five years time btw:laugh ) to bring in second income to allow us have hoildays etc.
It is case of research for cheaper foods and products, that can be take your time.
Like few of others, we tend to think $100 mean £100 rather than £30.
I find toys, books, baby stuffs etc expensive that we tend to use library and only buy what we really need..that most important to us, it has help us cut down amount of clutters at home by the way!!! You should see how many toys we got in the toy cupboard that we brought with us from UK:roll and since we were in NZ, we become very strict on toys...and use toy library.
Trade me, become useful website that we have brought few farming equipments from.
In the end of day, is the quality of life is more important? for me that my OH able to spent more times with his children, to spent more time with me, to be less stress or stress-free than he was in UK, long hour and high stress....

[Familyofmonkeys]

We find cost of living compared to salary comparable to UK, on the whole. The proportion of salary spent on individual things is different, but when you add it up, its similar.

What makes it much easier here, at least for us, is the things you can do for free with children such as going to beach without spending fortune on parking, ice creams etc. Even in Auckland CDB you can park all day for $8 (parkright carpark near ascott metropolis hotel) only 2 minutes walk away from Queen st. When you compare prices like that to UK, it means we can actually afford to do things like go out to restaurant with kids occasionally.

Interest rates are higher here, but houses are certainly cheaper...it's just a case of finding a happy medium. We found that the cost of things escalated alot in our last year in UK...council tax, tv licence, water and electricity rates etc all went up by way more than inflation, and therefore payrises. Car insurance went up, despite having more years no claims (and yes, we did look around for lower quotes). Even morgage interest rates went up...OK they are not as high as NZ, but it still bites when you need a big morgage just to get on the market.

I am also planning on working part time in about 5 years, when all kids are in school, so we can afford holidays etc...not sure what I want to do though :confused: It was hard in Uk to find interesting part time job with decent rate of pay...don't expect it will be any easier in NZ.

[Moorf]

Thanks for that Dave and Caroline! I must have missed that before... :nice1

[renew]

I was just trying to do a "shop" on Tesco's online site but couldn't get in without signing up, thought it might be interesting to compare prices... another thread perhaps? Some real-time grocery shopping in NZ/UK :laugh (where's my anorak?).




you could try Tesco's price comparison site where you should not need to login.
http://www.tesco.com/todayattesco/pricecheck.shtml you can also see alsda, sainsburys etc.

Ian