The Cost of Living in New Zealand has Gone Up!

There is nothing more valuable than local knowledge when you’re thinking about going to live abroad – as we all know, things change in our own home country so quickly that what’s written today can be out of date by next week.  Therefore in this report we’re going to prove to you how important useful knowledge is - using the example of New Zealand…

…what’s more, we’ll explain how you can get your hands on the invaluable facts and the support you need when planning your new life abroad.

So yes, as the title suggests, the cost of living in New Zealand has gone up – but did you know that?  No: unless you’ve got a friend living in New Zealand who recently came and shopped in British supermarkets and was shocked at how cheap everything was, you wouldn’t necessarily have a clue!

New Zealand is always cited as one of the most liveable nations for expatriating Britons – after all, they speak English in New Zealand!  What’s more, the nation is often compared to a Great Britain of yesteryear – before the current labour government, before knife crime, rising unemployment, the living to work culture that stemmed from people realising that freely available credit actually has to be paid back – that sort of thing.  However, New Zealand has seemingly caught up and over taken Britain in many bad ways.

An expatriate Brit friend of mine who has been living and working in New Zealand for the past four years recently took a trip back home to the UK.  She was so shocked to find how relatively affordable everything was in the supermarket, and how many more jobs were potentially available to her in the UK than in New Zealand at the moment.  I found it hard to believe what she was saying and so began to dig a little deeper – mainly because I feared for her sanity.

However, she’s wholly right.  The cost of living in New Zealand has shot up and is truly affecting the average household which has not seen a rise in wages – and which in many cases has faced unemployment because of the recession.  Things in New Zealand are not rosy.  The cost of living increased 1.3 % in the September quarter, with essentials from vegetables to utilities such as electricity now more significantly and noticeably expensive for Kiwi families.  This is compounded – if that’s even possible – by rising unemployment, rising repatriation levels and falling numbers of new jobs becoming available.

Kiwis, who were living and working abroad in countries such as the UK, are returning home in high numbers.  They are swallowing up any jobs that become available so that those who are falling out of employment because of the ongoing recession are finding it harder than ever to gain another job.  Add the inflation hike and the cost of living increase and families in New Zealand are not having a good time.  But I would not have been alerted to this for some time had it not been for my friend brining it to my attention – proving that local knowledge is so important if you want to go and live abroad.

However, it’s not always the case that we already know someone living overseas in the nation we want to move to – and even if we do, they may be a local as opposed to a migrant who can explain the differences between the two countries to help you prepare for better integration.  Therefore, there are two ways that you can properly prepare for a relocation abroad.  The first is, you need to spend some extended time living in your new chosen nation before you actually relocate there!  This is the ideal – if you can flit back and forth between your old life and your proposed new life and make the comparisons important for you to know whether you can afford your new life, and whether your new life is actually wholly right for you.

The second suggestion is to use forums and tap in to local expat knowledge abroad by asking all the important questions.  Ask about how things have changed since they have moved there, ask about what expectations and beliefs they had that were actually untrue - chances are you’re harbouring the same thoughts and you need to know if they’re not real.  Find out about the cost of commodities - from fuel for your car to fuel for your radiators and even fuel for your stomach!  And use this knowledge to compare and contrast with your current standing.  In other words, do all you can to make sure you know what your new life abroad is really going to be like!