[PaulandHelen]

This is a question for all the people who live in NZ.

When i go on holiday or when i'm pricing things up in NZ i convert everything to English pounds!

After you have lived there for a while do you start to think in dollars or do you still have to convert??

P+H

[chips]

After almost a year ,you stop thinking in £ and start in $. It can , i found ,get quite depressing if you are constantly reverting to £. It was starting to make me think and feel that NZ is ,well can be a rip off.

[ruthyroo]

You have to stop thinking in GBP very quickly in my experience and start thinking in $$$ as soon as you start earning them. The basic price of things is actually pretty irrelevant - it's the proportion of your salary that is the important sum. E.g. your rent / grocery bill could be half of what you normally pay in the UK in GBP to $$$ terms - which sounds great. But if you are actually spending 50% of your income on it in NZ, rather than 25% as you were in the UK, then the real cost is much higher. I think I spend less actual money on groceries here than in the UK but it certainly takes a much bigger chunk of my NZ income to buy the same amount - becuase the salaries are relatively low and the price of goods relatively high. It's all relative!! The only time I think in GBP now is when I want to justify an expensive purchase to myself...

[jubjub]

When you first arrive, and you are spending your £ you need to convert to know where your money is going, but once you are earning and getting your $, there is very little point converting, cos you can either afford it out of your salary or you cant!

Only time we think about conversions is when we are having to raid our UK funds to bail us out of a hole :(

[Smiler]

I'm with Ruthyroo. I've tried to think in NZ $$ from the start, it's just the big purchases that I've found myself justifying or querying.


How ever when I converted the price of our bedroom furniture and new sofa back to YUK ££, I though we must have been undercharged.:clap :clap But it's only relevant to my salary and spending $$ here, not in the UK.

Try not to convert back, it makes life easier. ;)

Deborah

[Avalon]

I do both!

I work in $ for the most part, that is I budget in $, and as Ruthyroo said, work out costs as a proportion of Salary in $. This I think is really important especially when looking at possible mortgages or rents, overall food bills etc.

Where I convert, is to determine whether or not i think something is worth the money being asked for it. For example - Books. Paperback novels retail at around $25 here. Unfortunately - even after 10 months - it really doesnt mean that much to me, however if I convert - £10 is a helluva lot of money to pay for a book! So i realise that im being overcharged and pop to Amazon.

I also convert when doing price comparisons for online shopping - putting all currencies into £ - so for example if Im looking at Books (which I do a lot!) Ill go on amazon.co.uk, and .com and compare the prices in £ to what it would cost me in £ here. (Often i pay my amazon bills on a UK credit card - so it makes sence to do it this way for me).

Another problem I have (obviously Im a bit dense when it comes to currencies :o ) is that when im in the supermarket and the bill hits $200 i nearly have a heart attack! Every time i hear it - I think its £200!!! And I still need to do the numbers and say to myself - hey thats only £80 - not to bad for a big shop at all!

So generally - I aggree you should try and work in $$$$, but if like me you cant get your head round whether $100 is cheap or expensive for a given item, convert for that.

HTH

[sizzlingbadger]

My husband is terrible at converting back, he's always doing it, I think he does it to justify what he's spending half the time. But everything to him sounds good in pounds rather than dollars.

On the other hand I've stopped it now and work solely in dollars. I think maybe it's because I spend nearly all my time with kiwi friends who haven't got a clue what the pound to dollar exchange rate is and haven't got a clue how much things cost in pounds :-)

[Moorf]

Agree with those above - took us about 9mths - 1 yr to stop converting back to ££'s. Once you start earning $$ you soon stop converting back because it's pretty meaningless..... you can either afford it or you can't!!

[Voice]

Avalon's reply could have been my own! I still convert now and again, usually when I want to justify a purchase, then it's "Oh it's only a tenner!" other times (like with books) I think "A tenner! I'm not paying that!" :roll

But really once you've started earning $ it's all a bit pointless, except to see if it's good value or not.

[Hannah]

As with above, we're still converting as we're not earning NZ $ yet. Some things appear dearer (e.g. food in shops) but other seem cheaper (e.g. food not in shops - ie. eating out, and parking tickets - just £5/$12 :-)
I think it will get better when (if) we start earning - at the moment we view every purchase as eating directly into our savings!! But we're just 2 weeks in! I find some things getting better as i buy more - ie. i know what is a good deal on bread now in the supermarket, and what i am prepared to pay for a cup of tea in town, without having to convert. I guess it just takes time... but as others have found i think earning will help!

[lisa]

Hi

I too must admit to converting which ever way it suits me at the time!!!

Lisa