Sticker Shock

We knew before we got here that some things were going to be more expensive than in the States just based on the location of New Zealand and the market size. We were nowhere near prepared for just how much more expensive some random things were. Take for example, our $100 toaster and $149 kettle.

A pretty similar looking Black and Decker toaster is about $18.99 on Amazon, while a Hamilton Beach glass kettle is $28.02. Even taking the exchange rate into account, that's about a 400% mark up on each. We didn't bring any small kitchen appliances like these because 1) they would have taken too much space and 2) the electricity is 220 V here and even with an adapter, we'd  probably blow out the internal workings pretty swiftly. Which means we are beholden to NZ prices...

Except... sales. Kiwis LOVE sales. While there are only a handful of big store brands here (So far we've tried Briscoes, Farmers, Harvey Norman, The Warehouse and Noel Leeming) there seems to be some kind of sale on pretty much all of the time. We stumbled across Briscoes pretty early on and thanks to a VERY helpful person there, we discovered that they have 30-60% off sales pretty much every time you turn around. Then there are the catalog sales which have even bigger discounts which means we ended up paying $29 for our toaster and $49 for our kettle - or only about a 25% mark up which is slightly less nauseating.

Food is a bit more expensive than the States, but the quality of general day to day stuff is much higher it seems, so it pretty much evens out. Eggs for example. OMG, New Zealand eggs. They are amazing.

The most randomly expensive things have been plastic things like trash cans, storage bins or anything that is molded plastic. When we were packing up our life in the States we bought dozens of these huge black plastic bins to store our things in. Costco has then for about $8 per bin, a comparable bin at The Warehouse (which is New Zealand's answer to Walmart it seems) was $70. SEVENTY DOLLARS. For a molded plastic bin. What?? I even checked two different stores to make sure they didn't just accidentally add a zero... Meanwhile, our trash can. We didn't want to pay the hundreds of dollars a metal trash can would surely cost, so we thought we'd go with a nice cheap plastic one. Except the nice cheap plastic ones still cost about $40 BUT they all assure us, they are Made in Italy. Hmm... Italian leather, sure. Italian molded plastic??