Feeling the pinch?

[LesleyS]

Any others out there struggling to budget effectively here?
The price of food and other goods seems to have kicked in, and upset our carefully planned budget somewhat.

Anyone want to share cost saving tips? Our local paper recently highlighted a family who managed to feed 5 on a food budget of $100 a week - we are only 3 and I can't get any where near that.......

I suppose grow your own produce is the way to go if you can.

We need to figure a way to not spend more than we earn here somehow - not an easy task, and we're not extravagant by any means!

How are others coping?

[nippa&pippa]

http://www.enz.org/forum/showthread....ght=money+diet

For me, it is harder to budget with foods as there are limits when I can buy for my family because of multi-allergies, mean can't buy what in sale, usually stick to "safe" foods. However, when the "safe" foods are in sale, then I tend to stockpiling to max I am allowed, then return back next day or so to get more...like I got 10 carton of soya milks, 10-15 tin of tomatoes (sugar and salt free) in cupboard etc

[Familyofmonkeys]

We read alot of posts about other struggling with grocery shopping before we left UK, so we have made a big effort to budget right from the beginning and keep going back over our old receipts too see where we can try and make changes. It really does require you to change your buying habits, compared to shopping at Tesco when the price of stuff varied very little from week to week.

For us we now only buy fruit/veg when it is in season.....big change for us, but it works so well. We also buy say 10 tins of beans or 10 boxes of nappy sacs if they happen to be on offer. We cook completely from scratch, apart from the occasional pack of veggie sausages or box of veggie burgers. We are also very careful about adding little treats into our weekly shop....something we never had to think about in UK. We decide what treat we want that week and don't buy anything else.....dips & chips, cheese & crackers etc. We try and buy wine when it is on offer.....if we want to try something new, we wait until it is on offer and inevitably it will be at some point. We no longer buy stuff like ice cream unless it is a special occasion, and also never buy cake/puddings/biscuits in supermarket anymore either.....we always bake anything if we want it. We got one of the easiyo yoghurt makers and we save quite a bit by making our own yoghurts.....especially the way our kids eat the stuff. We try and use pulses a lot more as they are very cheap to buy from the scoop section of the supermarket and a healthy way to bulk out meals. We make more of our own pasta sauces and stuff as we realised that they were pushing our food bill up. We now bulk buy some of our basic cleaning products/washing liquid etc from http://www.ecostore.co.nz/ as we worked out they were a considerable proportion of our weekly shopping bill.....saves us a fortune. We also avoid doing more than one shop a week....all those smaller shopping trips add up because it is hard not to buy little extras.

In all we spend somewhere around $200-$230 per week for 5 of us including nappies for 2 youngest children, cleaning products etc. We still have the very odd week where our food bill is higher...and that prompts us to have a good look at the receipts again. Mind you this week we spent $124...so it evens out. Another benefit of our changed shopping habits is that our children are less fussy and they eat the same meals we do.....we do not prepare anything different for them (even our 17 month old), unless we are having spicy curry etc. We don't buy special breakfast cereals for them either.....they have muesli, porridge, weetabix etc....whatever we have in.

[BigRod]

A few tips that may or may not work for you, and may have been echoed above:
1. Only buy in-season fruit and veg.
2. Where posible buy your fruit and veg at the market gardeners with stalls / or the farmers markets (can be half the cost at these for fresher)
3. Relearn the art of dried goods cooking; we found Davis Trading here in Hutt excellent for dried goods (pulses, beans, rice, mushrooms e.t.c.) - plus they take up less shelf space and cost far less.
4. Find a good quality butcher and get take advantage of their offers (e.g. we have just had Sunday meal which was excellent corned silverside at $5.99 Kilo special). Get the best of both worlds - good quality but lower prices. Beware of 'cut price' butchers who load the meat with water and don't trim the fat or bones.
5. Keep your eye out for the bargains!

HTH

Rod

[shakyle2906]

We are certainly feeling it too, with 2 wages coming in! Everything seems to have gone up, except the wages! We are by no means counting the pennys but dont feel like we get much for our money especially at the supermarkets.

We are by no means extravagant with our food shopping, yet always its about $180..... then i go and spend a further $30 or so in week for fresh bread, milk, etc.

We used to have a takeaway once a week, thats now stopped.

We have even started using the coupons of the food bills for 12c off petrol!

We used to like to go out for a run in the car for a few hours on a sunday, but just stick local lately.

I wish we could cut down on food, as i work full time, i dont get a chance to 'cook from scratch' like most mums do.

So, yes, any ideas..........bring it on!

Sharon
x

[Kea]

In the UK I found that shopping online cut my food bills- it's easier to plan meals and you can avoid extras. Even paying for delivery I usually spent about £60 a week and we had a fair amount of luxurys. We were both working so £5 not to go to the supermarket which seemed to take me 2 hours was reasonable. I often got freebies from the drivers too.

Will give it a shot here when we're a bit more familiar with the ranges.

[thewoodies]

This is a realy helpful thread for those of us not there yet!

I actually hate tescos shopping and so it all sounds very exciting from this side of the world. A proper butchers and greengrocers oh nostalgia !!!!

[melly]

This is a very relevant thread for us right now and we haven't even made the move yet. OH has been offered a job that is $25 a fortnight less than he is currently earning, yet all the everyday things in NZ seem to cost that little bit more than what we pay now (I'm not meaning because of the exchange rate, just the number of $ things cost).

Eg. Petrol we pay approx $1.5/L at the moment whereas NZ is more $2/L; phone we pay approx $36/mnth which includes line rental and calls whereas we have found that this will cost a minimum $45; we currently pay $280/wk rent for 3bdrm house, but it looks like we will have to pay at least $300/wk rent to live where OH has been offered a job.

So whereas we were leaning towards the move, I am now concerned that we aren't financially able to do it (2 adults and 2 kids) and that is just thinking about the basics of rent, food, petrol, telephone.
Can anybody put any silver lining on the cloud that will make the move seem more viable??

[mish&al]

I don't know Melly, I live in Sydney, the most expensive city in Oz!

We both have to take pay cuts by almost a half, but we have enough cash when we sell our house to be able to not take a big mortgage, which makes all the difference.

And I paid $1.70 for petrol last week...

[Moorf]

Yes, we've definitely been feeling the pinch over the last month or two - mostly with petrol as we're rural. My car is rarely filled these days - I can get quite far on fumes now and for the first time ever we think twice about a day out just driving around and getting lost....

Plus, I'm paid in U.S. dollars and the exchange rate means my income is erratic.

I'm glad that we've been here long enough to have shed our U.K. lifestyle and that I'm cooking from scratch, amended menus to seasonal and don't feel deprived if I can't have certain little luxuries like the usual Sunday afternoon cheese and cracker fest.... I just remind myself where I am