[ExPat]

My wife and I visited most of the major New Zealand areas last year: Auckland, Rotorua, Wellingon, Christchurch, Queenstown. We fell in love with Christchurch but we quickly realized that living in NZ would simply be too expensive. I wrote a few posts about it but couldn't find them on the forum.

Housing was expensive, Dining out/Food was expensive, Taxation is ridiculous (40%) of income above 60k if I recall correctly.

It seems more people are finding this out and coming to the same conclusion but no one seems to be asking WHY everything is so expensive.

A recent article noted that 70% of income goes toward mortgage payments in NZ and everyone complains that the government should do more. Really? it's governments job to control housing costs?

From what we could see, the entire country is in a malaise and everyone expects government to solve the problem and perhaps that's part of the reason for NZ's troubles.

We may someday move to NZ but in the meantime, we'll make some real $$$ in the US so when that day comes, we can live comfortably in NZ and not struggle on NZ salaries.