Monthly Costs

[Ash]

I am trying to look at how much we can expect to pay out monthly or weekly
Rent - howick
Water/elec
Groceries
and any other that I have left out, just so that I can roughly look at what is needed

[Carl]

Hiya,
here is a link that might help. It will give you the average rent for some areas in NZ.... hope it helps:

MarketRent - Department of Building and Housing

Carl

[MotherBear]

This is a government statistics site where you are supposed to be able to look at such things as cost of living, salaries etc. but I must say I haven't managed to find this particular area yet. Perhaps you will have more success.

This is another site where they show various cost of living expenses but it's more for consumables only. Perhaps it will help you to build up the picture if nothing else.

This little toy might help you calculate how much electricity and gas you'd have to pay.

[KiwiHopeful]

The best way to get a sense of rents is to have a look at TradeMe.co.nz's rental property listings for the area. Most of the rental agencies list there, as well as independent landlords.

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.)

Electricity for a small 3 BR house runs us about $150-$300 per month--obviously more in winter than now.

Petrol is currently $1.74/litre.

[LilAmy]

You may want to look at www.woolworths.co.nz (you may have to register first)which allows you to see what grocery prices are like.

We actually find them more expensive than the UK on most things especially fresh fruit and veg. Although it is cheaper than Oz!

We've found that most weeks on bills, including fully furnished rental in Wellington ($480) that we are spending around $550-600 a week then around $80-100 on food.

Eating out is fairly inexpensive as long as you dont go for posh nosh and you'll probably look at about $60-80 for two to eat out in a decent place at the moment.

You mentioned water costs and if you rent in NZ the Landlord covers this not the tenants which is pretty cool.

Another expenditure to look out for is if you do rent through an agency some of them charge you a fee. In the UK this fee is paid for by the Landlord but here it's us poor tenants who get stung. This is usually one weeks rent plus GST!!!

[macfod]

Having worked with the likes of ASDA and Tesco in the Uk and understanding their margins I have been shocked by profit margins supermarkets and wholesalers are making....

Now having run our busy cafe for the past year we have seen all food prices rise dramaticly.
We used to buy butter for $1.20 now its $3.59 from Countdown the cheapest...
Milk, milk cheese and yoghurts have shot up into double figures with more rises planned as there appears not control from central...

But, even flour and frozen goods and most other prices have shot up...
Sorry, but these are facts that are just hitting the consumers....

Food is expensive here and produce such as meat and poultry not the best quality!


This along with high bank charges and being charged to put money into your bank account hurts the consumers and busness's.

Its tough so be prepared!

[Dawn]

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.)

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!!

[Dawn]

Originally Posted by LilAmy

You mentioned water costs and if you rent in NZ the Landlord covers this not the tenants which is pretty cool.

But not if you live rurally and have a rain-filled water tank. We've had to have ours filled three times this summer at $140 a time. $420 - I don't know how that compares to a years water rates but I bet it's not far off.

Don't forget mobile phones. They're ridiculously expensive - I have a pre-pay but Garys Telecom mobile costs us about $250 a month and he hardly uses it!

[Welshgirl]

Jeepers, I think you need to get Gazza onto a different payment plan then! What about that one they're advertising on the tv at the mo - I think it's 4 nominated numbers have unlimited calls and texts for $20 per month......

[KiwiHopeful]

Has anyone else noticed the prices going up over the past couple of weeks, again?

It seems that it's not just the dairy--I haven't bought real butter in at least two months--but the meat, too. Chicken breast is 'on-sale' for $13.95/kilo, when it used to be $9.99 on sale. I wanted to make a nice dinner for my mother-in-law before she left, but the lamb racks were $30.99 per kilo! I know I was paying much less than that before, since a rack used to set me back about $10, and now a similarly sized one is $14 or so. Even the chips and soda and stuff like that all seem to be more expensive lately.

What gives?