Getting back on to the subject of the post,

The biggest question is where do you want to live? This mya be dicated by job offers. In Auckland I would say you may struggle UNLESS and this is the second important bit, will you have to pay rent/mortgae out of salary or will you be bringing capital over from UK to pay house cost etc?
Rent/mortgage will be the biggest outgoing if you need to pay.

We are family of 4 and I cook our food ( and freeze) from scratch. We eat very little,if any, processed foods. I have a buf=dget for food of $200 a week out of which I also need to get nappies and baby wipes etc. I manage to get the shopping for between $150 and $200 every week. We then have $300 a week to cover going out and day to day expenses, haircuts,etc.

We manage but, even on a $100+k salary we are not quite living completely off earnings here. We do pay $650 p wk rent for a 4 bed house in a good area of the city and when we are ready to buy we will bring our capital over and use that so, if we have a mortgage here, it will be very small.When that finally happened we will be better off and will be able to live off earnings.

Considering the salaries here, it is quite shocking to see the size of electricity bills, rates etc. I think a lot of kiwis must be struggling. Our electric bill is around $80-100 per month. That is more than we were paying in UK for gas and electric and hubby is earning less than half what he earned there. The phone bill is $100 per month, again more than in the UK. We both wear contact lenses and both the lenses and fluids cost more than in UK. I am on point of ordering my new lenses from UK and have them sent over.

That said, we are happy here athough I do miss M&S and John Lewis - just decent shops really. I am hoping to do a trip home next year and I am sure we will bring home an extra suitcase.