Hi Lucile - I've been reading the blog and lurking on the boards for a long time, and your thread prompted me to make my first post. Everyone else's advice has been great!
My husband and I are also NZers, currently living in West Auckland, but we're in the process of building an off-grid home on four acres of land up on South Head. Even just that close to Auckland house and land prices drop off significantly.
I've always been extremely frugal - I'm the only person I know who came out of university WITH savings instead of debt. My husband worked low-paying factory jobs for 8 years before attending university, and he always spent everything he earned, but didn't go into debt (apart from student loan, which is interest free - one of the few financial bonuses of living in NZ!) so when we got married after university we had a positive net worth. I've always saved approx 50% of what I earned, but with my husband and his expensive hobbies on board, we're more like 30% now - still a lot better than many of our friends, hopefully going up a bit in future years as our earning potential increases and expenses go down.
The mortgage makes me a bit nervous, but because we bought smart I think (the land hadn't sold for 6 years, so we offered something ridiculously low and got it - for nearly $100k under value) and we are building the house ourselves (with help from my dad, who is a builder), our housing costs are significantly less than what we WOULD pay if we'd wanted to buy a fully-established lifestyle block closer to the city. The mortgage will be gone in 15 years, even accounting for the extension we plan on building (It's about the price of a "first home" in Auckland).
I am a writer and work from home, but my husband will still have to commute to the city. After the house is finished, he plans to look for other work options outside of the city. We are establishing an orchard and will grow and raise our own produce, lambs, chickens (eggs!) and other things. And being off grid we don't have a lot of household bills.
What do we do to save money?
- I pay the savings account FIRST whenever I receive money from salary or clients.
- we have an allocated budget each week (It's $100 each, but what happens is that I have $50 and husband has $80 (he pays a fee for studio practice room for his band) and the rest goes into savings. This pays for clothing, going out, occasional lunch out with colleagues, etc.
- I pay $50 every fortnight for a box of organic fruit and vege to be delivered. The box is 12kg and chocka full. That does the two of us nicely.
- I avoid processed food and make a lot of things from scratch. We do online shopping with countdown every 2 weeks (I can't drive - blind - and supermarkets make husband angry) and find we save money even with the delivery fee because it forces us to plan ahead. We always have food in the house so if we're driving past some takeaway place and husband says, "damn, I really want a burger," or whatever we can just go home and make one. I used to make a meal plan for every night, but now I find I can just look in the cupboard and understand what we need.
- I have a deep freeze - we buy organic meat from a friend with a farm up north - much cheaper and tastier than supermarket.
- Also, husband is one of those "must have meat every night" people, so I make a lot of stews and curries and things where the meat is more of an accessory to the veges. A big roast will feed us lunch and dinner for 3 days, so they're a great cost-effective treat.
- We have a huge group of close friends and spend a lot of our time with them, going to the beach or on bushwalks, having parties at each other's houses, BBQs, movie nights, etc. We all rarely go out to town together, unless it's to watch live music, and in our scene a live show is $10 on the door. So our entertainment is pretty cheap. We don't eat out much, either. With our move to the country we will see our friends less, but will be hosting lots of weekend camping trips on our land, so it'll be just as great.
Good luck with your situation! +1 to the advice to leave Auckland if you can - you won't regret it!
