Shopping

[Jodie]

Hey guys,

Thought I'd start a thread about shops over here - I'll start with supermarkets.

Pak n Save - very cheap, and quite a range of products, although not too much range of frozen food generally. You buy your carrier bags (or bring your own) and the cashier scans them through the checkout and puts all your shopping on top of it back in the trolley! Then you have to go to a certain area to pack your shopping in the bags you've just bought (unless you can dodge the cashier's arms and fill them as she's stacking the stuff in the trolley! ). It feels quite like a cash and carry, a bit like Aldi or Lidl in the UK, but with named makes aswell as the 'basic' range.

Countdown - a bit more expensive than Pak n Save but a slightly 'nicer' place to shop. It's not as much like a cash and carry, you don't pay for bags and the cashier packs your shopping (which actually takes ages!). They always seem to have deals on things, including household items like crockery, heaters, dining sets etc, which are quite reasonable. Kind of equivalent to Asda I suppose.

New World - We've found that New World tends to have the best selection of food - although it tends to be more expensive than Pak n Save or Countdown. Probably equivalent to Tesco's maybe....

Woolworths/Foodtown - These are the more expensive supermarkets, but I don't think they have as good a range of foods as New World and Countdown. (Well, the ones I've been in haven't anyway...). They're more like Waitrose I suppose.

If you're watching the pennies (or cents!) when you get here, and have different supermarkets close by, it pays to get the offers at each one. Eg - they seem to go for big bottles of proper fruit juice over here rather than fruit squash drinks, and in Countdown last week it was $5 a bottle, but on offer in Woolies for $2.19 a bottle. So keep your eyes peeled for the offers!

Beef mince seems to be really cheap if you buy the massive packs and split them up and freeze, but chicken tends to be quite expensive. I've heard that it's cheaper (and you get better quality) if you buy your fruit & veg from a grocer, and your meat from a butcher, but we've yet to try - it's more convenient to buy it all at the supermarket together at the mo!

You can buy wine and beer at supermarkets quite cheaply (again there's always offers on something), but if you want spirits or alcopops, you need to go to the liquer store.

Hope this helps anyone who's interested. If you want2 know about other shops, give me a shout.

Cheers,
Jod
xx

[LouLou]

Pak and Save sound abit like our old Kwik Save... sadly they have now been taken over by Somerfield, Kwik Save held their own cheapy range, a good selection of quality products, crockery and the like always with some real bargains.

By the sound of it New World will be the place for me (I am such an ASDA girl), I will attempt to try these supermarkets when we come out for our jolly in December.

Thanks for the info.

Loulou

[Milliemoo]

Hi Jodie,

Thanks for l the info :icon_razz:

I've seen people complain on other sites that they struggle to feed their family on $200 per week.... now to me that seems a fortune! Other people also seem to mention how expensive shopping is. Do you think it's because these people rely on processed foods, ready meals etc which are more expensive than here in the UK? Not that there's anything wrong with that (there choice :icon_eek: icon_exclaim.gif ) but surely if your buying fresh vegies, fruit, fish etc it can't be that expensive?

I know there's just the 2 of us here, but to give you an idea of what we spend, we don't have cheap local shops and there's no decent market so we have to pay Tesco's prices. I'm pushed to spend ?50 per week and that's including fresh flowers and vino!

What I'm trying to say/ask is..... if you buy fresh local produce in NZ, surely you can more than 'survive' on $200 a week?

Milliemoo :icon_wink:

Hi Milliemoo,
You might be hard pushed to spend ?50, but convert that to dollars and you're already spending around $130 a week.

When you consider that over here, simple things like a box of cereal is about $6 and 2 pints of milk is around $3, you've spent nearly $10 on breakfast!

Some meat is quite well priced so if you have steak and chips for lunch (for 2 people), you'd get away with spending $6/$7 on steak and about $2 for a bag of spuds, so nearly another $10 for lunch (albeit steak is not your every day kind of lunch!)

A bottle of shampoo will set you back $5/$6 depending on the brand.

When you have kids, things like a bag of sweets will cost you $3.

It's like I said in another post, life here does feel expensive by comparison. I was listening to the radio today, and they were discussing the cost of living. According to what they said, if you want anywhere near a 'comfortable' life, you need to be earning over the $40,000 mark a year. Thats fairly easily acheivable for a family income, especially if you are working in skilled fields (which all of you will/should be!).

[Jodie]

Hi Milliemoo,

We probably used to spend about 60 quid a week on food in the UK (Tescos or Sainsburys were our locals) - if you convert that it's about $160 and that's roughly what we spend a fortnight, plus a few trips in between if we run out of spuds, beans, milk etc. There's 2 of us and that includes a couple of bottles of wine and a pack of beers or 2! (Mixture of buying some 'Basics' range items and other named stuff)

We have tended to make more meals rather than have 'convenience' foods while we've been here, although I AM addicted to mince and cheese pies I have to say! (Have you got the pie thing yet Taffy? I love it! I'll be the size of a house soon I'm sure!!) And as long as you look out for the bargains (ie countdown had 3 big bags of frozen chips for $5 last week - that'll last us about 6 weeks!! :icon_eek: icon_exclaim.gif ) then you can't go far wrong.

Jod

[Milliemoo]

Phew, thanks guys!

I guess when you have kids it can all add up, but it's good to know that a quarter of our wage isn't just going towards food & drink! I always one for a bargain so I think we'll be fine. :icon_biggrin: :icon_biggrin:

Milliemoo :icon_wink:

There is another side to this whole cost of living thing...

I had a bit of a realisation after i'd been here a few days... The fact of the matter is I was looking forward to having a better standard of life here than in the UK. My problem was that I'd based this view from a UK standard.

After a few days of being here, it quickly dawns on you that it doesnt really matter if you have the material things, or the flash car etc. Living in this place is quality of life in itself. Its so clean, beautiful, friendly that it completely makes up for a lack in material posessions. The problem with the UK is that your territory is your house and your car, because theres no room for you elsewhere. Here, there is so much space that your territory could be wherever you stand.

Obviously it's important that you eat, but be realistic, if you have a decent job, you'll have a home, a car and you'll never starve. After that, you should go out and enjoy where you are, and believe me, if you adopt the right attitude, you will.

Thats my view of life here so far. Whether anyone else would agree with me, I dont know.

[Milliemoo]

oooohhhhhhh I feel all warm inside. ::):

That is such a lovely post to read. It's so easy to get caught up with everything when your emigrating, but then you read something like that , it reminds you why your doing it in the first place. :icon_razz:

Thanks Taffy!

Milliemoo :icon_wink:

[Jodie]

Couldn't have said it better myself Taffy! :icon_biggrin:

I agree with you totally - material things don't matter over here - as long as you have a home, car to get around and you can feed yourself, and you can get out and about, eveything else here is about enjoying the country and people. And there's so much of it to enjoy!

Go New Zealand!! We love it.

Jod
:icon_cool:

[netchicken]

Sigh...
One of the drawbacks of a small market is that New Zealand has about 50 shops....

Wherever you go you see the same shops, in different malls, and cities.

BORRRING!!!!!!

oohh look, ANOTHER Hallensteins/whitcoulls/paperplus/foodhall!!