In the latest in our series, a Wellington couple nearing retirement enjoy good food but feel the burden of other increased costs.
How old are you? I’m 70
And who do you live with? I live with my other half.
Your wife? Kind of, we’re not married.
So de-facto partner? Yeah, that one.
And is it just the two of you? No, we have two [adult] children. One who lives with us, who’s just finished at university and is back with us for… how long is a piece of string? And then another one who's flatting. He’s not entirely left, he tends to turn up with washing on the weekends. So he's still partly attached.
So three adults and you'd take the fourth into account when you shop for groceries? Yes and he's a young adult male who eats like a horse.
How much money would come into the house every week after tax? For me it’s about $4500 per fortnight and for my other half, maybe $2800 per fortnight. [A combined total of $3650 per week].
How much do you spend on groceries each week? Around about $500. We’re creatures of habit so we go to Moore Wilson on a Saturday and we'd spend $300 or $400. And then during the week on my way home, I might drop into the supermarket to pick up some things and that might easily be another $50 or $80.
What are the basics you always buy? My other half is vegetarian, so we tend to get a good stock of various vegetables, and sauces and things because we'll often make pastas or stir-fries or risotto. Breakfast foods, you know, muesli.
What luxuries do you allow yourselves? Whittaker's chocolate.
What about cheeses? Yep.
Wine? We don't drink much wine. I've actually embarked on a bit of a health kick and I’ve not been drinking alcohol for all of this year so far. We were classic wine drinkers, you know, a couple of glasses after work every day. And we've just knocked it on the head. I've been exploring the different zero alcohol beers. There are a few that are bearable, not very many, but a few.
Do you feel better for not drinking? Totally, yeah. It's surprising. It takes a little while [to feel the difference], about a month.
Do you pack lunches for work? We’re trying to go on a bit of a frugality kick for reasons which your questions may or may not identify. And so my wife tends to take her own lunch. I tend to still buy mine, but I'm quite careful about it, and I've discovered the joy of the little coffee pods that you can buy from the supermarket, which honestly, are 90 cents each. You're buying a packet of 10 for $9.90 or whatever. And so that's a hell of a lot better than having to pay $4.50 to $5.50 for a coffee.
Why are you on a frugality kick? The property market. We bought another house, tried to sell our existing one, and couldn't. So we rented one house out and we’re still burdened with quite significant debt.
We're trying to channel as much money into that debt as we can. So we're trying to live – frugally wouldn't be the right word, but modestly. And there are some things that are just outrageously ramping up in price, such as rates, which we're covering now for two houses in the inner city. And then there’s insurance; Wellington has quakes, so rates and insurance both cost [thousands] for each house. There are some very big fixed costs attached to property, which is a problem. We’d like to retire but we’re slaves to the rhythm for the time being.
Have you noticed the cost-of-living crisis? Yeah, yeah. On the face of it we’re living comfortably in the city environment and earning reasonably, but we're carrying big debt and we're not going to be working much longer than another couple of years.
Has the cost-of-living crisis affected the way you shop? I look for reasonableness. I'm a very active scanner of the prices, and I study the sizes of packets and the price per 100g. It’s amazing the anomalies you discover – hello, all of the 90 gram toothpaste tubes are $1.80 and the 200 gram ones are $4.
At our local New World the prices changes like crazy. So we tend to have a bunch of particular brands of things that we like, and I never just randomly buy those things every time I walk down that aisle. Instead I'll buy three or four of them [on a day when the price is low]. We shop in two different places – Moore Wilson and our local New World – and we slide freely from one to the other in terms of which one we source our favourite brands from.
What are some brands you like? Hubbards Muesli, Straight Up Yoghurt. We typically don't buy any of the Pam's products. They just give the impression of being of a lower quality and, you know, we only live once.
Do you go out for dinner or get takeaways? Not much. We would either go out for dinner or get takeaways, say, one night a week.
What about café coffees and breakfasts? Crucial, yes. On the weekend, we absolutely would go to a café for either breakfast, brunch or lunch on one of the days, and that'll easily cost $60, or more if there’s three of us.
We were just talking over the weekend. We really ought to go to the big farmers’ market that happens [in our neighbourhood] every Saturday morning. It’s just that we can't be arsed getting up at eight o'clock on a Saturday.
Did you grow up in a house where money was watched closely? I think, probably no. I'm just trying to recall what it was like as a young one. I mean, I worked the classic job that you did back in the day, a paper round, for my own pocket money. I think my parents would have been cautious. They certainly weren't frivolous.
This interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
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