[terbo]

Hi there

I am looking for anyone from South Africa who has emigrated to NZ and who can inform us how affordable it is to survive on one salary with a 3 member family. Is buying a house expensive (3 bed 2 bath) etc. My husband is a teacher and we have been told that the average NZ family of 4 gets by on $3000 nz a month. is this true?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Terbo

[smitjo]

Hey Michelle,
It all depends on how much capital you can bring with you! Do you have a house to sell in Durban? As far as I am aware (from previous posts) it would be very difficult to survive on one wage with a mortgage etc. Not impossible, but I imagine you would have to have a very strict budget.
Cheers,
Jo

[Hannah]

We compared cost of living in UK to cost of living in Nz and it was exactly the same - until of course you include the fact that NZ salaries are lower and then cost of living in NZ is relatively higher (others may not agree - something for another thread maybe....).
We managed on a wage of $3k a month when we lived there - just about. We could not save for retirement, holidays etc. and some months went overdrawn if we spent on luxuries. It can be done - but it's tight and you are always watching the dollars and wondering if you will be overdrawn next week. Mortgage rates are high in NZ also (although we were renting - at $400 a week). I guess a lot depends on your lifestyle (we had the odd treat - like a meal out or tea and cake while shopping etc. but no big spending on alcohol or anything). This was a big factor in hubby decision to remain in UK after we returned here - the watching pennies (or rather cents) thing got him down. It doesnt' suit everyone. Personally it didn't bother me too much - we never went without food (although did get our debit card turned down in a restaurant once and had to go home and have beans on toast!!!!)
hannah

[Charlosparky]

Gotta say those figure seem about right from what we've been told. we are a family of 6 and initially will be living off 1 income. We have been told by our brother in law who has been there 7 yrs now that we need around $3400 a month to live on , assuming $1200 a month rent and including everything. Dont forget when adding up your income (40 hrs @ $20phr etc = $800 a week for example) to deduct income tax- we did! :D

[Lizelle]

terbo - firstly, good luck with that 2 bathroom problem :) It takes a bit of a huge perception shift to get used to the NZ homes when you are used to South African homes.

We looked at a lot of houses with 4 bedrooms and only one bathroom. Sometimes, when you are lucky, you will get 1 bathroom without a loo, and then another loo.
House prices in Auckland is ridiculus. Having said that, it depends greatly on where you live.
Anything west of New Lynn becomes a bit more affordable (NZ$200k - and that is for a basic place at the back of 3 other properties - subdivision is HUGE in New Zealand), anything east of New Lynn to the city just becomes impossible to afford if you do not have a very good deposit (much closer to $400k and up for a normal house).
North shore you go to if you have a lot of money - it is very pretty, and a lot of south africans live there, but I think it is the rich lot, also, travelling times from there into the city is terrible, and not really advisable.
South Auckland is more affordable again, but there is also much more violence and crime there (lots of gangs)
Of course, there are always exceptions to this, but that's the general rule (cannot say anything about houses in the rest of NZ).
A good website to try and get a general feel for the house prices:
http://www.realenz.co.nz/

On the salary thing. General cost of living is pretty much the same - if we spend R800 per month on groceries, here we spend $200 (so, at an exchange rate of R4 for every $1, which it is about, i think :). Houshold things are a bit cheaper, I think, and electronic stuff is cheaper. But in general, you day to day stuff will be about the same when you convert the $ back to rand

I know that the surveys all say that $3000 per month is about normal for a family of 4, but I honestly don't know how they would be able to do that. Well, actually I know, everyone is mortgaged and credit card'ed up to the hilt.

We are in the position of getting a higher salary here than in South Africa (not very difficult with the exchange rate), and we (only 2 of us, and no children) live comfortably on $3800 per month (after tax). We buy the food we like - mind you, we don't really have extravagent tastes, but we also don't eat out more than about 3 times a year - and we don't really worry when we have to spend the unexpected $300 somewhere. That is with a mortgage of $1800 per month (we owned no house in South Africa, so had to buy a house with pretty much no deposit). I know we can save on that if we scrimped on stuff (smoking, say :), but in general, If it was $3000 and not $3800, we would just be spending, and not saving anything.

Mortgage rates are lower here than in south africa, I think. About 7.5% (give or take, depending on if it is fixed or flexi). Don't know what the south african one is at the moment, but I think it will be slightly higher than that.

Can't really say anything about the cost of children here :)

Also, BIG thing to remember:
Our biggest single cost per month is the house ($250k). If we bought the same house in Dunedin, it would've cost about $150k. I know salaries are lower in the South Island, but not by that much. Again, have a look at the
real estate website, and try and get a feel for the housing costs for the different places.