Monthly Cost of Living New Zealand 2023 | What to budget for New Zealand | Moving to New Zealand

hello and welcome back to my channel for anybody who doesn't already know me my name is Kat I have been traveling around the world a lot recently but for the last nine months I have been settled in Auckland New Zealand and today we're going to be talking about the cost of living here in New Zealand and I'm going to give you a full open honest insight into everything that I spend all of my monthly expenses and at the end of the video I will discuss my earnings and income with you but it's not that straightforward so I'm Gonna Save that till the end just so you know all of the figures that I'm going to give you in this video are exact figures from my last month of spending which was July 2023 and it's worth noting that I currently live in a small one-bedroom flat in Auckland about a 10 minute walk to the CBD so very Central and I also split all of my rent and bills equally with my boyfriend right I think that's all you need to know here we go we are starting with the big dog the rent for most of us rent is the largest amount of like the biggest sum of money that we spend in one go every single month in New Zealand it's actually billed weekly so I'm gonna base this figure on a four week month so my share of the monthly rent for this small one bed flat in Auckland city is one thousand I'm so sorry about Barbie 1040 New Zealand dollars per month which to be honest is quite a reasonable rate also worth mentioning we don't pay council tax here that is a big difference to the UK moving on to car park we do own a car here in New Zealand we share it between the two of us and unfortunately convenient parking in Auckland city is pretty hard to come by so we have actually been really lucky in the last few months we managed to find a space in our building for only 65 a week which is incredibly cheap before that when we first moved here we were paying more like 80 a week for a car park space that was a five minute walk away which is a real pain actually quite often if you're renting an apartment in the center of the city you are not going to have parking included with your apartment so my share of the parking per month is 130 next up is my phone bill hello a lot of things in New Zealand are more expensive than in the UK and I think that that's partly to do with the fact that the population is so much smaller here and therefore they're a lot less companies that are selling things to you and there is less competition amongst companies to keep the prices down and phone contracts is one of those things where there is not that much competition so it's a bit pricey I personally pay 52 per month for a fairly basic Sim only contract which is a little bit painful and it also doesn't include any international calls and occasionally I call my Grandad because he doesn't have internet so I can't call him on WhatsApp or anything and that does cost per minute it had expensive so yeah 52 a month added to the total for my phone bill moving on to Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is another cost that me and my boyfriend Ollie split completely equally so my share of the Wi-Fi is 40 per month I must say we don't pay for the cheapest I would definitely cheaper options but in order to get good speed because we've both been working from home a lot this was what we had to pay household bills so in our flat we don't actually have any gas most accommodation in New Zealand doesn't have Central Heating and so yeah there's not a lot of gas used so all we pay for bills wise is electricity and water and these costs vary month and month depending on our usage but how we manage it is every month we put 70 each for water and seventy dollars each for electricity into our joints account and usually one month the electricity will be up with the waters down so it balances out and then the other month it'll be the other way around so generally we spend about 140 each per month on water and electricity and it doesn't really go over that okay groceries now I'm really upset about this topic this has got to be the hardest pill to swallow here food in the supermarkets is just horribly expensive again I do think this is down to there being less competitions between Brands so they can keep their prices higher but also New Zealand is pretty far away from the rest of the world where they might improve improve where they might import food products from so there is that added cost on top as well despite this I would say we don't actually have a very stringent Budget on food quite unlike me I am queen of budgeting but we were previously paying for hello fresh and so when we stopped doing that because it was so salty they kiwi people put so much salt in everything and we just couldn't deal with the amount of salt anymore so we stopped telling fresh when we stop selling fresh we based our new groceries Budget on what we've been spending already which is why it's a little bit higher but it does mean we don't have to be too stringent on what we buy each week we mostly buy what we want but we do still have to watch what we're buying and make the most of deals and sometimes we have to sacrifice some things because they are just not within budget like I went to buy some peppers okay we usually get a few Peppers each week because we use them a lot in the foods that we're cooking and I went to pick up some red peppers and no joke they were 4.19 per pepper that is that is over two pounds for one pepper and they weren't like extra big or anything you know just two pounds for an average little bell pepper what the heck so anyway I only bought one because I just I couldn't do that but we only did want Peppers so he got one so the number you've been waiting for we budget around 480 a month each on our groceries it does include things like alcohol we always get free-range chicken which shoots the price up and we also buy all of our toiletries and things in the supermarket so shampoo deodorant try and justify it I'm not sure that's justifiable and just to caveat that I did say like we buy basically whatever we want but like if we want apples we're gonna have apples but we're gonna have the cheapest apples they have you know I also have been sacrificing the Biscoff Spread because it's like ten dollars which is five pounds it just feels a lot ten dollars just feels like a lot for a jar of Biscoff all right next up we're hopping back to the car and talking about car insurance we pay our car insurance monthly here there aren't a lot of choices when it comes to ensuring your car there aren't many companies so it's not very competitively priced we are with AA and we pay 50 a month each for our car insurance which I think is a pretty good deal to be honest we do only have a very small car it's a little hybrid it's not very powerful engine that is probably why the cost is quite low and adding in how much we spend on petrol a full tank is probably about eighty dollars at a more expensive pump and we probably only top the car up once a month sometimes maybe once every three weeks so I'm gonna call it a hundred dollars per month and that would definitely cover us next up gym membership I found the cheapest gym in Auckland and what a dream I literally walk past it on my way to and from the office and it costs 17 New Zealand dollars per month that is all of my monthly payments covered so those are the fixed things that I have to pay every single month and the total is on the screen right now but my friends we have not finished this is not everything I spend of course there are other expenses in my life other things I spend money on so in July which I must say was a slightly outlier month because we are soon to be leaving New Zealand and therefore we're trying to make the most of it trying to get to the places that we haven't been yet so we did actually go on two weekends away and one of those was a long weekend so we did actually spend a little bit more last month than we normally do but I'm gonna talk you through it anyway because if you're here in New Zealand to explore and travel you might be doing that monthly anyway so including two weekend trips away plus going out for dinners some exercise classes a few takeaways luxuries like clothes makeup and also buying lunch a couple of times for work when I've forgotten to prep my total expenses for the month for all of those things come to 1178 so that is everything that I spent in the month of July and now I did promise you that I would talk a little bit about my income but I did also say that it's a little bit complex so bear with me the reason it's a little bit complicated is because I don't just have one job and just earn one salary I actually have four different income sources at the moment so I'm going to talk you through them and let you know where I am with that firstly I am employed by a New Zealand company in the city and I work as a receptionist for them I earn 33 dollars per hour and I work Monday to Friday from half 12 till 6 every week secondly I also have a very small business of my own where I work with clients to improve their social media I have two clients I charge 25 pound an hour and I'm currently working six hours a week thirdly I also work for my boyfriend's company I work for him nine hours a week for a rate of 20 pounds per hour and then finally I also [Applause] have just started earning money from my YouTube videos so thank you for watching this please give the video a thumbs up give me a comment down below if you are new here say hi I'm really grateful I'm really excited to let you know that the grand total of my earnings on YouTube so far is a whopping 25 US dollars so it's looking like for these next few months I'll be earning around 30 a month through my YouTube on top of my other earnings so it's probably not an average person's work week but it's just what I've decided to do whilst I'm here I'm making the most of a quiet life where I can focus on work and also build back up my savings which I lost when I was traveling so in total my weekly earnings come to 1640 so that's 6562 a month which is 3156 pounds a month before tax and that ladies and gentlemen is my whole financial life on display for you all to pick out for anyone thinking of moving to New Zealand I hope this has been helpful for you to try and get an idea of how much you might have to spend when you're here obviously for me splitting everything with my boyfriend makes it a lot cheaper than it could do for a single person if you are a single person I would recommend looking into getting a flat share as always if you have any questions please leave them Below in the comments because I will always do my best to answer them as well as I can click the thumbs up if you are my friend my mom or someone who found something in this video really interesting I will see you next week with another video and thank you very much for watching

Channel: Kat Turner

Views: 47,096

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Id: pO8IKfX7SYA

Length: 12min 19sec (739 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2023