What have you changed about your lifestyle to deal with the cost of living increases?
I was having this conversation with a friend and we both got some useful ideas from each other (cancelling various underused subscription services, making use of libraries, more home vege gardening etc) - curious to know what else people are trying.
We have, but not specifically because of the cost of living. More that we had an expensive holiday, and now need to focus on savings again. So I’ve been pretty insistent that we cut the thoughtless spending and the treats, at least for the rest of the year and then can re-assess.
Most of this has manifested in food budget. I’ve limited us to $15 a day each max on food spending, and that includes going out for dinner or work drinks. So if I’m going to get a few wines on friday night that’s a couple of days of making sure lunch comes from the grocery budget. So on that front I’m cooking up a weeks worth of curry or rice and beans or doing a roast if it’s on special.
I grow spinach/broc in winter and tomato/kale in summer which takes the edge off veggie shopping prices.
My nearest Pizza Hut has always been one of the good ones, so their $5.50 ham and cheese pizza is excellent value. If I wannt pig out I’ll grab one of those and put Baby Ray’s or hot sauce on it.
Petrol is a non-issue for us as we both live in our CBD close to our offices and drive a hybrid anyway. We spend like, 20 bucks a month on gas.
We don’t buy things when we feel that the price has crossed the reasonable threshold. This means we rarely eat out anymore, I’ve stopped buying several food items that I enjoy at the grocery store, and we’ve cancelled all of our streaming services since they’re so fragmented and expensive now. We usually spend a lot on entertainment, but companies have become so greedy that we don’t spend anything with them now. Like Netflix when they decided that they won’t let families share accounts anymore. I’ve had a Netflix subscription for over a decade. The only reason we were keeping it is because my mom and my son use it. Neither of them would subscribe on their own. But since we can’t share with them we cancelled. Great plan, Netflix!
Once we had children I started to understand why some prefer being childfree. I wouldn’t trade them for anything now, but man would life be simpler. I sometimes think of how much more money and freedom we would have.
Sucks, but understandable. I know a couple with a kid and they’re cutting back and taking on debt just to stay above water. My buddy said he’s looking at taking on a second job to make ends meet.
It’s wild to think that a couple decades ago it wasn’t unheard of for one person to be the sole breadwinner for two families.
Learn to fix things. Basic sewing, basic car maintenance, basic home maintenance. I’ve learned a lot over the years just trying to fix things myself. There’s a wealth of information on almost anything on the internet. Yes there will be a small upfront cost if you need to buy tools or supplies, but the ability to extend the life of things is worthwhile. E.g. I’ve managed to get a few more months or years from being able to fix my kids clothes or school shoes.
For me, don’t go to sites like cheapies too often. Too easy to get sucked into buying a deal of something you don’t need or had any intention of ever getting.
I personally enjoy doing DIY projects, and it’s got the added benefit of (hopefully!) saving money compared to buying off the shelf.
Got some plans to spruce up a little outside canopy area at our place, and am planning to make some DIY furniture for it. It’s great in that you still sort of get what you wanted, but at a cheaper cost, and you get to enjoy making it too.
This was a huge one for me. Went from paying about $100/month on t-mobile to paying $180/year on mint Mobile (which uses t-mobile towers so basically the same service).
There are some excellent tips in this thread. At the same time, we are descending into feudalism levels of inequality and we should be absolutely outraged that billionaires are even a thing while others struggle to survive.
This is a really good idea if you’re in a position to be putting any cash savings aside. In a perfect world everyone would have 3 months of expenses in cash savings, obviously that’s not always realistic, but if you combine that with an offset or revolving credit then you have the benefit of having that safety net while still saving the interest cost on that money. Our offset mortgage saves us about 100 bucks a week, a good chunk of that is just my provisional tax sitting aside waiting to pay the IRD.
Another one for us is reviewing our insurance options at least once per year. This has probably saved us at least $1500/year so very worthwhile. Currently have house and contents insurance with AMP, car insurance with cove and tower (as they are cheaper depending on the car), boat insurance also with tower, life insurance with Chubb and health insurance with NIB.
I also find it varies from year to year so I go through and recheck. The multi policy discounts don’t really seem to make up the difference.
This year our old house insurance provider was going to put us up to $320/month from $200/month. I ended up getting the same level of cover through AMP for $190/month.
We have got almost everything with AA, including health, as they were the cheapest for almost all. Life Insurance with Partner Life (previously BNZ Life), especially cheap for income protection.
Only our Nissan Leaf was a tad bit more expensive than an insurer I didn’t know, but was only $100-200 per year; not worth the hassle in my opinion. For some reason AA thinks that a Leaf is more expensive to insure than our Corolla of similar value & age.
Basically what Dave wrote + no more unnecessary purchases (inc. cutting down on junk food), buying in bulk where possible, and keeping an eye out for deals and offers.
I’ve also switched to a cheaper mobile provider + plan (Skinny), turns out that I don’t really use that much data, given how I’m almost always in a place with WiFi. That and halting
Coincidentally, I’ve also stopped drinking alcohol (which was for health reasons), so that’s been saving me a decent bit of money (considering many a regretful monetary decisions were made whilst drunk). On the flip side, I haven’t been to karaoke in a long time, and I’m not sure if sober karaoke would be any fun…
This might overlap a bit with what you’ve said, but:
Just one streaming service at a time. Get netflix, binge watch the shows we want. Cancel netflix, get Disney+, binge watch the shows we want. Etc. Don’t have them all running at once. Or if you want to save even more money, NZ laws are pretty generous for pirates really.
Use Libby to borrow ebooks from the library and read on your phone (I prefer white text on black background - i.e. dark mode).
Normally I would say to sign up to power/internet on 12 month contracts to get good deals, then change company every 12 months. It’s pretty easy to switch. But recently I’ve found it hard to find the really good deals that there have been previously.
We go to the farmers market for fruit, veggies, and eggs every week. But if you buy a doughnut or coffee or fancy bread then you’re undoing your savings 😆.
Use the Grocer app. You put in your shopping list, and it tells you the cheapest places to get things out of the big supermarkets + the warehouse. It also tells you different options, like the cheapest might be to go to 4 different stores, but it will tell you it’s $1 more total if you go to just these two stores, or here’s the cheapest store that has everything you want, and tells you the total so you can compare how much you save vs going to all the shops. My biggest complaint is probably that you can’t just say “Milk”, you’ve got to pick a specific one. So then if you pick a store brand, that’s normally cheapest, it won’t be available at other stores.
Growing veggies is fun but you’ve got to be dedicated to make it financially viable. In general, growing your own veggies is not cheaper than just buying them (some exceptions, e.g. if you buy broccoli seedlings then it’s probably best to just buy broccoli from the store, but if you buy a courgette seedling for a couple of bucks, you’ll probably get a KG of courgettes off of it, worth like $10). The problem is that the times you are growing them also happens to be when they are in season, which is when they are cheapest in the shop. Plus you have to deal with pests and provide nutrition.
If you commute a decent distance to work each day, there’s a good chance an electric Leaf will pay for itself. Best as a second car, where you have another for longer distances (longer distance Leafs exist, but generally there are other cars more recommended when you get up to that price range).
Plan your meals out for the week before going to the supermarket. Cook big, and plan to freeze leftovers when suitable, or plan to eat multiple days of the same thing to save effort and get discounts buying bulk. Planning out your meals helps keep you focused at the supermarket, and helps reduce food waste. Write the date on them so you can use the older ones first. Old stuff from the freezer won’t kill you, but tastes better if it has been frozen months not years.
Also try to plan meals that use fruit or vegetables that are in season. They will be a lot cheaper.
Clean your heat pump to make it work more efficiently (just open the top, pull out the filters, and vaccuum them).
That’s all I can think of right now. Except don’t get a pet. Old pets cost a lot more than young ones 😆
And just to add, apps like grocer and Gaspy are game changers.
Another big saving for us is stocking up on meat when it’s cheap - either chicken (usually at packnsave) or pork ribs (usually at Gilmour’s) - we produce our own beef and lamb. As such we’ve got 3 deep freezers, and I can’t remember the last time we paid even $10/kg for meat
I should really post up a picture of our vegetable garden - we’ve got a couple of hundred square meters of vege garden as well as a 30sqm greenhouse, and we grow everything from seed so we’re quite set up for it. We do live on a lifestyle block though.
I’d also be shocked if we only got 1kg of courgettes from each plant too. Last year we had 3 and couldn’t give them away quickly enough to keep up while also eating them everyday. Some with cucumbers. We’ve also got about 40-50 brassicas in the ground, and are on our 3rd year of our own garlic and onion supply, and aiming to survive on our own potatoes only this year as well - last year harvested about 100kg worth and this year aiming to 3-4x that. We’re definitely keen gardeners though so I know that’s not for everyone.
I should really post up a picture of our vegetable garden - we’ve got a couple of hundred square meters of vege garden as well as a 30sqm greenhouse, and we grow everything from seed so we’re quite set up for it. We do live on a lifestyle block though.
Home gardening at scale can definitely be cheaper than store bought. But as you’ve said, most people don’t have the space.
I’d also be shocked if we only got 1kg of courgettes from each plant too. Last year we had 3 and couldn’t give them away quickly enough to keep up while also eating them everyday.
Yeah you’d probably get more than 1KG per plant. They grow so much so fast.
Some with cucumbers.
I must be doing something wrong. Half the time I only get one cucumber from a plant. Sometimes I’ll get a good plant and get three cucumbers. Never more or faster than we can eat though. But I’m only planting a couple of plants.
We’ve also got about 40-50 brassicas in the ground, and are on our 3rd year of our own garlic and onion supply, and aiming to survive on our own potatoes only this year as well - last year harvested about 100kg worth and this year aiming to 3-4x that. We’re definitely keen gardeners though so I know that’s not for everyone.
Do you manage to stagger or store a lot of it so it can last you through the year?
And do you have a good way to deal with pests? One issue we have is caterpillars in the broccoli, so we tend to only grow it over the winter.
On the pest front my old man (who used to be a commercial market gardener for a few years) recommended derris dust for the brassicas. We haven’t used it (and there is mixed opinions on its health impact online) but that’s potentially an option. Insect netting is the best for us though.
We’re currently planting to build a fully netted area in our garden around 50sqm for that reason.
I think the netting option is best. I’ve heard of people building frames over their gardens for the netting (it sounds like that’s what you’re doing).
To be honest I’m going off growing brassicas, in favour of things you can’t get for dirt cheap. It’s hard to make growing broccoli worthwhile when you can get giant ones for $2 at the right times.
Fair enough too. Probably depends on motivation as well - we grow our own for many reasons including a goal of self sufficiency and a better understanding of what’s in the food we eat so it’s not just economics for us.
We’ve obviously invested a fair bit in getting the garden set up, but once you can grow from seed (and especially saving your own seed) it might be just a few dollars for a few hundred seeds (depending on the crop) and some plants (beans, tomato’s, watermelons etc) that are super easy to save seed from. We’re even self sufficient for things like popcorn (and have a couple of kilos worth of seed left - some which we’ll still eat) so that makes a difference too.
Lastly though we just love gardening, and I really enjoy showing my kids the lifecycle and getting them involved in the process. They get to choose and manage some crops of their own, and always speak with pride when we eat the things they’ve contributed to.
Don’t know how big your garden is, but I’ve always found for a small garden like ours broccoli/cauliflower isn’t worth it for the amount of space they take up. You only ever get 1 or 2 harvests as well.
I agree with you’re take though. I also don’t grow things like carrots, potatoes etc. as they’re almost always cheap
Garlic and onion store super well. We still have some 2 year old garlic which has done fine. Cool dark place and you are good to go. Potatoes can start to root up over time but still perfectly edible. In ground storage for root veg seems to do well for us as well (although some of our carrots end up a bit wonky looking) but wouldn’t leave potatoes in once the ground is getting too wet.
I think cucumbers did particularly well last year due to all the rain and just enough sunshine too. Cucumbers are heavy feeders though so we usually fertilise them every couple of weeks (with homemade fertiliser so it’s cheap).
With our brassicas once it’s white butterfly / caterpillar time we put insect netting over them. Mitre10 had some reasonable insect netting cloches which are fine to start with. We find them quite prone to bolting if they get too much Sun so also recommend planting them in a semi shaded area of your garden. Over summer the area we plant them only gets 3-4 hours of Sun a day and that seems to be plenty.
If the plants I’ve mentioned I find they either stay growing for a long time (cucumber, courgette) or store very well (garlic, onion etc). We do multiple batches of onions and carrots still but the others I mentioned there usually just one. Brassicas, beans etc we do usually stagger though, as well as getting early starts in the greenhouse and with a seedling warming mat.
Haha, I moved from a company with a lot of younger Grad types, into a Team with a lot of more seasoned members, and a lot of them are in the outskirts of the city in “lifestyle blocks”.
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