Curious About Cost Of Living In New Zealand? Here's What I Spend In A Month — Petrina Darrah (2024)

If you’re drawn to New Zealand’s laid back lifestyle and thinking about moving here, you might be curious to know how to the cost of living compares to other countries.

Below, I’ll share with you my main expenses in New Zealand, and how much I typically spend in a month.

I don’t have children or other dependents, so my cost of living is going to look very different to a family’s expense report.

This isn’t supposed to be a statistical analysis of the cost of living in New Zealand, it’s just my personal experience — it will probably be most useful to other single people with similar interests.

Also note that prices of things are subject to change and increase at any time, which in 2024 seems to be all the time.

Key takeaways:

• The cost of living is a hot topic in New Zealand, with food and housing prices in particular having shot up a lot since 2020.

• The cost of living in New Zealand, for one person in Auckland, Wellington or Queenstown is around $3500-4000.

• Smaller towns can be cheaper in rent and more limited in places to spend your money, so might end up being cheaper.

New Zealand currency

New Zealand uses the New Zealand Dollar (NZD) which is weaker than the US Dollar, Australian Dollar, and British Pound.

1 NZD is roughly 0.60 USD.

This means people from wealthy countries will find a good exchange rate here, but for New Zealanders, or anyone earning New Zealand Dollars, travelling overseas is expensive.

Average monthly expenses in New Zealand

• Rent: $1000 if you’re renting a room in a shared flat, twice as much if you want to live alone, and probably three times as much if you have a family. My rent in Auckland was $230 a week before I chose to live more nomadically.

• Transport: ~$200 on petrol. Petrol prices in New Zealand are pretty high, usually around $2.80 per litre of petrol. I spend around $120 each time I fill up my tank. I drive a lot on road trips around New Zealand, so I probably spend a lot more on petrol than most people.

• Insurance: Each month I pay $63.80 for my car insurance. I don’t pay for health insurance as New Zealand has pretty good healthcare.

• Food, drinks, and having fun: $400-$1000

• Groceries: $450-500 for one person

• Phone plan: I pay $17 a month for Skinny’s cheapest pre-pay plan. The data allowance is really bad (1.5G) so I try and use free wifi a lot

Monthly expenses can vary widely, but generally you need around $3000-4000 a month to live in New Zealand.

Rent

We pay rent weekly, instead of monthly.

Before going freelance and living as a digital nomad, I paid $230 a week for a room in a shared house in Grey Lynn. This amount included all expenses, of internet, water, and power.

This is cheap for the area, but — my room didn’t have a door.

It was an attic space.

It was up a separate flight of stairs, so no one could see in, but it was a pretty unconventional set up. It helped me save a lot of money for travel, but it came at a cost.

In other (nicer) houses, I had friends who paid more than $300 a week for a room in a shared flat. To live alone, one friend was paying $400 in a one-bedroom flat in the same area.

So obviously, there is a sliding scale depending on where you want to live and how fancy you like a house to be.

Find out how much the average rent is in an area using the Tenancy Services Market Rent tool.

According to this tool, the median rent for a room in a flat in Grey Lynn is $270 (excluding expenses). The median weekly rent for a 2 bedroom house is $745.

Food

I typically spend around $450-500 a month on groceries

Groceries also vary a lot depending on where you shop and what kinds of things you buy. I don’t eat meat or dairy, but I do buy a lot of organic products, New Zealand grown or produced items, and fresh fruit and vegetables.

I prefer to spend $15 on 500mls of olive oil cold pressed in the Hawke’s Bay, rather than $10 a litre for olive oil imported from Spain.

According to Statistics New Zealand, food prices increased 9.6% between July 2022 and July 2023.

The biggest increases have been in staples like eggs, and fresh produce.

This means shopping for groceries is expensive, considering salaries haven’t adjusted anywhere near that much.

Eating, drinking, and having fun

Eating out can cost a lot in New Zealand, if you like nicer restaurants.

I usually head out to eat along Ponsonby Road or Karangahape Road, and will spend around $40 on a main and a drink, or sometimes $50 if I’m sharing a starter with a friend.

I rarely spend more than $60 on an evening out, but I’m fairly budget conscious.

Here’s how much some things cost me:

• A litre of oat milk: $3 on special, $4 if not

• A flat white with oat milk in a cafe: $5 or sometimes even $6

• A bottle of good New Zealand wine from the supermarket: $15-20

• A glass of wine in a bar: $14 (wine seems to be almost as expensive as co*cktails now)

• A visit to the doctor: $19.50 (this is how much it costs for me at my primary healthcare provider — it would be a lot more to visit a clinic where I’m not enrolled, for example if something happened while I’m away on holiday)

• A 5 minute Uber: $12

Things that are particularly expensive in New Zealand

Food

Food is probably the expense that people in New Zealand agonise over the most, with good reason.

One of the main problems we have is that a duopoly controls most of the supermarkets in New Zealand. This means a lack of meaningful competition, and supermarket brands that unscrupulously suck every spare dollar from our wallets.

It’s a source of constant frustration

Despite producing heaps of dairy products, cheese is astronomically expensive.

Another factor in the price of food is that as an export nation, the international market drives the price we pay at local supermarkets. New Zealand sells the bulk of our beef and dairy to overseas buyers at a premium, which means those items cost more at home as well.

A small population and a long, skinny country with supply chains that are easily disrupted also means it costs more to produce food in New Zealand than it would in a country like Australia, which has a much bigger population.

The trade off is that we have very high quality fresh produce.

Flights

Because New Zealand is so far away from everywhere, international flights are expensive.

Domestic flights are also quite expensive, as there is so little competition.

Air New Zealand is the main airline for domestic flights, with the more budget-friendly Jetstar offering fewer routes and times.

So, if you want to fly from Auckland to Nelson, your only choice is Air New Zealand — which will cost around $150-200 for a one hour flight.

Ferries and trains

Public transport in New Zealand is abysmal.

We have just one bus network to get between towns, and no real train network.

The only trains that exist are for scenic purposes. They are beautiful but they don’t provide a great option for people looking to avoid flying.

To catch the train from Auckland to Wellington costs more than a flight, which is frustrating for anyone trying to keep their carbon emissions down.

The ferries between the North and South Islands also seem very expensive to me.

It costs at least $200, often more, to take a car on the Interislander or Bluebridge ferries, which are the only two options to choose from.

Festivals

Festivals are pretty expensive in New Zealand, for the quality you get.

Don’t get me wrong, I love festivals like Splore, but because of New Zealand’s isolation you don’t get the massive headliners like you do at overseas festivals.

You can expect to pay around $450 for a 3 day festival.

Some things that are actually pretty cheap

It’s not all bad! Even though New Zealand can be a relatively expensive place to live, there are some things that are cheap or free.

• Natural hot springs: There are places you can swim in thermally heated water for free, like Kerosene Creek in Rotorua, or my personal favourite, Welcome Flat Hut in the South Island.

• Free museums and galleries: Many museums and galleries in New Zealand offer free admission or have certain days or times when entry is free.

  The Auckland Art Gallery has free entry to the permanent exhibitions, and the national museum Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington also has free entry.

• Avocados: Because New Zealand grows so many avocados, they are wonderfully cheap in the summer months, often less than $1 an avocado.

• Hiking: There are no fees to enter New Zealand’s national or regional parks, which makes walking and hiking a pretty sweet activity.

• Freedom camping: If you have a self-contained van, you can park for free overnight in certain locations. Even if you only have a tent, there are free DOC campsites around the country, and if you’re adventurous you can camp in the backcountry for free.

• DOC campsites: As well as some free campsites, DOC (the Department of Conservation, a government agency responsible for much of New Zealand’s public lands) provides plenty of cheap camping areas in scenic places. Usually set next to a forest, lake, or beach, DOC campsites typically cost $10-$15. With a DOC camping pass (with 30-day and 365-day options) you can stay for a very low cost at some of the best campgrounds in the country.

• ACC: New Zealand has a system of accident compensation that means you get care for any accidents you experience. It’s not free necessarily, as we pay for it out of our income taxes, but it means you can get great physiotherapy and even acupuncture for anything from a sprained ankle to a broken leg.

The most expensive places to live in New Zealand

As in most countries, the bigger cities in New Zealand are more expensive than smaller towns.

Auckland and Queenstown are the most expensive places to live in terms of rent.

Average salaries in New Zealand (and income tax)

Salaries in New Zealand tend to be a lot lower than those in places like the US, UK, and Australia.

There aren’t extremes in wealth here, although the wealth gap is growing.

According to Stats NZ, median weekly earnings in New Zealand are:

• $1,400 for men

• $1,140 for women

The gender pay gap is at 8.6%.

The unemployment rate in December 2023 was 4%.

My tip: If you’re hunting for jobs in New Zealand, use the Seek website. Then you can drop the URL into this site to see what the salary range is.

It is a major annoyance to me that most employers don’t state the salary range and keep people in the dark, so this tool can help you gauge average salaries and whether or not it’s worth your time applying for a job.

Inland Revenue is the government department that manages tax in New Zealand. You’ll find more information on their website, but in brief, these are New Zealand’s tax rates.

For each dollar of income, you’ll be taxed:

• Up to $14,000 — 10.5%

• Over $14,000 and up to $48,000 — 17.5%

• Over $48,000 and up to $70,000 — 30%

• Over $70,000 and up to $180,000 — 33%

• Remaining income over $180,000 — 39%

What salary do you need to live comfortably in New Zealand?

If you’re living in Auckland, a salary of $80-100k is usually enough to live comfortably. In smaller cities, you might need a little less.

Obviously this depends on many different factors, though.

In my last full time role, I made $100,000 a year and felt comfortable.

However, I don’t have children or dependents, I have already paid off my student loans, and I lived in a cheap shared house paying only $220 a week in rent.

With this in mind, 100k meant I could go out for dinner once or twice a week, buy better quality clothing and products with sustainability in mind, and shop for a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables and organic groceries.

I don’t drink a lot, but I do spend a lot on travel. On weekends away with friends, I will frequently spend $300 or more to cover the cost of petrol, a rented holiday home, and food and wine.

Is it expensive to live in New Zealand? The cost of living on the whole

I have friends from London who spent several years living in Auckland, and they always said that in New Zealand you have more money but less things to spend it on — and in London you have less money but infinite things to spend it on.

Their impression was that salaries were better in New Zealand, so they had more disposable income to play with. But, there’s a limit on what you can spend that money on.

Auckland doesn’t have an endless number of ritzy restaurants. There’s only a handful of places you would actually dress up for.

In London, on the other hand, the sky is the limit. There is no end to the luxury restaurants, bars, and experiences you can blow money on in a global city like that.

So, although New Zealand is a relatively expensive place to live, you might find it cost effective on the whole.

Thanks for reading this far! I hope this has given you some insight into how much it costs to live in New Zealand.

If you’re seriously thinking about moving to New Zealand to live, you might also be interested in reading these articles:

• The average weather in New Zealand month by month

• Why New Zealanders are called Kiwis

• Tips for travelling solo around New Zealand