'Even fruit is a luxury': What a multi-generation household spends on groceries
A professional couple finds, with pre-schoolers and grandparents in the home, they need to watch their grocery budget closely.
How many people are in your household? Six, my wife and I, two children (aged five and two) and my parents.
What do you do and your wife do? I’m in consulting and she’s a lawyer.
How much money comes into the house each week after tax? About $2,500 every week.
How many people are in your household? Six, my wife and I, two children (aged five and two) and my parents.
How much do you spend on groceries each week? Close to $500.
Do you shop around or always go to the same place? Most of the time we go to the same place because it's just close by. But sometimes when we are looking at doing a bulk buy, then we do try to go to Pak’nSave or even Reduced to Clear.
Do you shop weekly? The big shop is weekly. But then we’ll pick up bits and pieces for the kids, and milk and bread and things about every second day – so you can end up spending another $150.
Who does the shopping in the household? Mainly me and my wife.
What are the essentials you always make sure that you have? Nappies, definitely. Milk, bread, fruit and little yoghurts and other pre-packed stuff for the kids.
Are there any luxuries that you allow yourselves? These days it's pretty much just the necessities. We used to dine out more often, but that’s definitely reduced now. And we used to get more chocolate and, say, Maltesers and things – I’ve always been a Maltesers fan. Different juices. We don't spend as much money on those things now.
Since Covid, everything has gone up drastically. You can cut down on chocolate and soft drinks, but when you have kids, you have to buy fruits and veggies and all those things.
We buy a lot of Indian groceries as well, which is kind of a bulk-buy from an Indian grocery shop. And that used to be generally cheaper, but those price have doubled as well.
Even normal fruit is more like a luxury these days – just the basic bananas and mandarins. I probably eat less grapes now, less dried fruit.
What about other forms of eating out – do you go to cafés on the weekend? Sometimes, but with the kids that can be quite hard. Me and my wife will sometimes go out for lunch together on workdays.
Do you ever take a packed lunch to work? Yeah, most of the time, I do take my lunch, which didn’t used to be the case. Both of us used to eat out for every lunch, but that has definitely changed now.
Do you buy takeout coffees? I'm not a coffee person, no.
What about alcohol? No, that hasn't made any difference, because I hardly drink.
Are there several cooks in the house, or mainly one person? It's mainly my wife and my mum.
And is it a meat-eating household? A bit of both, yeah. Traditional Indian cooking or both, we have our pizzas and our pastas.
Did you grow up in a household where money was tightly watched? Yes, I’ve always been that person who knows the ins and outs of the money.
Was that something that you were taught by your parents? Not so much. It's more my own nature.
Do you have any savings hacks to share? Definitely. I like to use the BNZ Bank's sub [transaction] accounts for things like groceries, and you just chuck a specific amount in there and you know that this week you spent 50 bucks extra on your groceries, so next week you need to cut down by 50 bucks to make up for it.
Brown bread or white? Brown.
Marmite or Vegemite? Marmite.
Beer or wine, or neither if you don’t really drink? Beer.
Chocolate or ice cream? Definitely chocolate.
Two, three, or four ply toilet paper? Two ply.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.