There seems to be a lot of wild opinions and hearsay about what the cost of living in New Zealand really is. Since starting this blog, I have had a lot of questions about what it costs to live here. One person asked me if it was true there was no way you could have any kind of decent life unless you earn over $100,000 per year. Well, I thought I would clear this up with a quick run down of some general costs and daily expenses to give you an idea of what it really costs to live here in NZ.
I would say I am a pretty average spender. I don’t have a particularly lavish lifestyle or a family to pay for, I am working in a 9-5 job and like to enjoy some of the finer things now and then. Of course, everyone differs so you may need more or less, but you can consider that.
Anyway, here we go with the breakdown:
The Real Cost of Living in New Zealand:
COST OF RENT
My boyfriend and I pay $350 in rent per week between the two of us for a one bedroom apartment with a study. We live close to the centre of Wellington but the apartment isn’t particularly special. With bills it adds up to $200 per week each. I would recommend budgeting for about $200 to $300 per week for your rent and bills individually. This may seem expensive to some, but it is so cheap compared to my London rent, its ridiculous!
HOW MUCH ARE BILLS?
We pay $85 per month for unlimited broadband internet. Our gas bill (for our oven) is $25 per month and our electricity can be between $100 to $200 per month. So that means bills come to about $130 per month each depending on how much electricity we are using. (More in winter to get the heaters pumping, with is a need!)
THE COST OF OWNING A CAR
We bought a second hand Subaru for $1500, its a banger but it gets us where we want to go! You can get cars this cheap or you can splash out a little more. Fuel is relatively expensive, between $1.70 and $2 per litre, so I would try and look for a car that doesn’t guzzle lots of fuel. You will need a warrant of fitness for you car which costs around $50-$80 and you will need to re-do this every 6 months if you have an old car like us. This will also cost more depending on what you need doing. Car insurance, 3rd party fire and theft is around $30 per month with Vero. Then, of course, there are maintenance costs but it is hard to quantify that because every car is different.
FOOD PRICES IN NEW ZEALAND
Well this is a big category and differs depending on what you like to buy. I’ll list some of the regular items to give you an idea. Bare in mind the produce here in NZ is generally of a pretty good standard
Milk – $2.99 per litre
Bread – $5 for a decent loaf
A Free Range Whole Chicken – $15
A bottle of wine – $10/$15
Tomatoes – $5.99 per kilo
A bag of spinach – $4
Bananas – $3.99 per kilo
Prices differ for vegetables seasonally. You can actually save a lot of money by heading to farmers markets. We can buy a whole box full of seasonal fruit and veg for about $30 if we head down to the market on the weekend. In total we probably spend about $120 per week between 2 of us on groceries. We don’t buy a lot of meat and eat mainly fresh food and we also eat out a couple of times per week.
FURNITURE AND HOME ‘STUFF’
As with everything you can go big or you can save money. The thing with furniture though is that there are not many of the mega cheap stores like Ikea that do good stuff for cheap. However there is tonnes of second hand decent stuff to be had, if you look on Trade Me, or in charity shops you can get decent pieces of furniture and second hand things. I’d say we decked out our one bed apartment for $1000, including a new TV and a new bed and food processor etc. Check out Briscoes and never buy anything full price because they ALWAYS have a sale! Home things are really only a one of cost, so you would have to do this wherever you move, unless you plan to ship all your things abroad which always seems like a crazy idea to me!
PHONE PLAN PRICES
You can get a decent phone plan for $50 per month that includes unlimited minutes, calls and 6gb of data. If you want more, you pay more of course. Check out Skinny Direct for cheap sim only plans.
EATING OUT
Eating out can be pretty expensive here but you can also find really good cheap eats. If you go out for a meal you will probably pay about $20/$30 for a main and then drinks are more. But the food is generally pretty good, in Wellington at least. There are really interesting and imaginative places to eat here.
If you are grabbing a coffee you will likely pay around $4. Going out for a quick lunch, you will probably pay about $10 for a salad/wrap.
THE COST OF TRAVEL WITHIN NEW ZEALAND
Travelling in and around Wellington costs $3.50 per trip on the bus. Annoyingly there is no daily cap, so you just pay and pay the more you use it. I believe this to be a similar case in Auckland and other places in the country.
If you are travelling inter-city you can get pretty cheap flights. Flights to Auckland from Wellington can be around $100 return and travelling down to the south, between $100 and $300 return depending on how far in advance you book them and where you go. Queenstown is always more expensive. Jet Star have a sale every friday at 4pm on their site where they sell of different destinations every week.
CLOTHING PRICES
This is one dear to my heart! Clothes are pretty expensive here and you don’t have the same kind of options that you do back in the UK or in Australia even. The high street is limited and prices can be crazy. Despite this I have found some beautiful shops and am preferring to buy a few things that I really like from NZ and local designers rather than spending money on lots of things from the high street. Even the Op Shops are quite disappointing here!
To give you an idea of average prices, a new pair of leather boots are about $250 and a new top/skirt, about $70-$150.
You will probably also find when here that you want to spend most of your time in comfortable and element-proof clothing. For that there are LOADS of options. Outdoors shops like Macpac, Kathmandu and loads of others are everywhere and they always have sales so you can get some pretty decent stuff for good prices. Probably still not quite as cheap as back home but there are options here.
You can buy online as well, but again the options are not as great. A lot of places don’t post to NZ but I think its getting better. You can buy things from ASOS and it only takes a few days to get here. Pretty amazing really.
Basically don’t expect great shopping but do expect to spend some money on some really lovely designers; check out Wellington Boutique Good as Gold for some NZ brands. One thing I have noticed as well is that pretty much everywhere always has sales!
COSMETIC PRODUCTS
Cosmetics are kind of expensive in my opinion, compared to in the UK. A large bottle of head and shoulders shampoo probably costs about $10. . You also have to kind of shop around for the things that you want, you cant really get it all in the same place. Toothpaste is about $4, shower gel about $8 and shampoo and conditioner about $5 each.
The thing that New Zealand really does well at in this category is natural/Eco and organic skin care brands. For example Trilogy Antipodes and Essano. These are in most independent pharmacies and are made from non harmful ingredients. For these you pay about $10 per cleanser and $15 for a large shower gel. I think they are well worth it
NZ HOSTELS/HOTELS PRICES
Hostels are pretty much always $30 per night. Hotels can be more. We have stayed in some little holiday parks for about $60 per room a night but we have also stayed in a lovely bnb that was $250 per night. It depends what you want but it can be cheap if you want it to be. Check out Book a Bach for unique New Zealand places to stay.
THE COST OF NZ GYM MEMBERSHIPS
You can get gym membership for as low as $6.99 per week at City Fitness. I pay $20 per week to get the hot yoga as well. Its pretty good value, but some of the flashier gyms cost more. Yoga studios offer classes for about $20 pay as you go, or if you get multi class passes they are often a bit less.
THE BIG QUESTION…
HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO EARN TO BE COMFORTABLE IN NEW ZEALND?
I would say that all in all you would be pretty comfortable with an individual income of around $750 per week upwards. If you want to do/save/spend more then of course you need more. If you have a family, I’m not the best source of information because I don’t have experience with this, sorry about that!
You need to also bare in mind that the minimum wage is low, its around $16, and bar/shop jobs are paid the minimum wage usually. But apart from this, professional jobs/temps/tradies and contractors are pretty well paid just don’t expect the high rates of pay for everything and everyone like our neighbor, Australia.
In my personal experience, things are pretty good here. I have a lot more money now than I did when I was working in London. Make of that what you will.
That was my rough breakdown of the cost of living in New Zealand from here in Wellington. It is general and it varies for personal needs but I think it gives an accurate overview of what things really cost. If you want to know more specific things, please comment or question below and I will add them to the list.
If you found this interesting, check out my post 16 things you might not know about life in New Zealand
Or moving here? You might enjoy my post The 9 Essential Tasks when Moving to New Zealand
Thanks for reading.
Please get in touch, I would love to hear from you.
Peace
Josie x