Quote:
Originally Posted by KiwiHopeful
I haven't found the various cost of living calculators to be too useful myself, or necessarily reflective of the actual cost of living here. Groceries, for example, are generally under-estimated--especially since the price of milk and dairy products have gone through the roof. (Milk was about $2.50 for 2 litres when I arrived in July; now it's $3.00 or more most places.)
FWIW, for 2 adults and 2 children (ages 3 & 5) we pay about $200 per week for groceries. (We don't buy a lot of pre-prepared or packaged foods and generally eat pretty simply and unextravagantly.)
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For us, groceries are definitely our biggest expense. We are a family of 5. We don't buy ready cooked food, frozen food or processed foods. We buy fresh and cook every day. I imagined fruit and veg would be cheap here, I'd heard from others that it is but it's not. We can easily spend $80 everytime we go into a fruit and veg shop. Yes, that's once maybe twice a week. You can't buy a weeks worth of fruit or veggies here in one go because in summer it just doesn't keep. You have to make maybe three trips a week. On top of this we spend anything betwen $300 and $400 a week in the supermarket. Meat is expensive here unless you aren't fussy about what cuts you eat. We eat mainly chicken breast, hardly any red meat at all, chicken is one of the most expensive meats here. We prob spend about $50 a week on it. Fresh fish and other sea food is much cheaper but unfortunately for us I HATE fish. You can't get brown rice or brown pasta unless you go to a speciality foods shop, we sometimes find brown pasta in the organic section but not very often. Fresh orange juice is expensive, bottled water is expensive, fizzy pop is dirt cheap how annoying is that! Cheese is expensive and a lot of it isn't any good at all. Good bread, wholegrain bread, is expensive, crappy white refined bread is cheap!
When I compare it to Asda where we used to shop in the UK - weekly shop about ?180 including fruit, veg and meat. A mixture of branded goods and own label stuff. NZ - $350 including meat - $80 fruit and veg - do the conversion thingy and it's about the same BUT earn the kiwi dollar and it's much much more expensive. That doesn't include pet food either.
The first time we went into a supermarket here we were shocked at the prices of groceries.
Beware!!