Buying a Life Worth Living

The cost of living is ballooning for many in New Zealand. Now more than ever I have felt the temptation to complain about rates and unexplainable price hikes in food. But how is New Zealand doing compared to the rest of the planet.

Numbeo has compiled their 2024 mid-year Cost of Living Index. New York is set to the baseline of 100, I guess that makes up for it being stomped in every single disaster movie. Only two cities are more expensive than the Big Apple, those are Zurich and Geneva in Switzerland at 100.4 and 101.7 points respectively. As a comparison, renting in Geneva is 88.7% higher than in Auckland. To maintain a $8.8k lifestyle in Auckland would cost $14.2k in Geneva.

On the list Wellington comes 29th with 70.3 points. It’s flanked by Dallas at 28th, and Edinburgh in the UK at 30th.

Auckland comes 43rd at 67.7 points topped just barely by Melbourne at 67.8 and Halifax, Canada at 67.5. Christchurch is much more livable at 63.2 with an overall rank of 67, just below Bologna, Italy, and above Montreal, Canada.

India dominates the bottom of the list but Lahore and Karachi in Pakistan take the bottom two spots ranked #217 and #218. Their points are 19.1 and 19.

Auckland and Wellington’s ranks are inversed for Quality of life, with Auckland at 38th and Wellington at 57. Evidently not enough bucket fountains to raise the score.

According to Stats NZ the 12 months to December 2023 saw a rise of 7% in the cost of living for kiwis, which itself was following a 7.4% increase in the 12 months to the September 2023 quarter.
“Groups with a higher proportion of spending on mortgages had interest payments as the largest annual contributor to their cost of living. For groups that paid less in interest payments, their cost of living was still being driven by food and housing costs,” consumer prices manager James Mitchell said.
Maybe it’s time to start working remotely from Pakistan.