 Welcome back to my channel guys. Today we're going to talk about the cost of groceries in New Zealand compared to the US. Now this is probably the number one question I get for people on social media and just clients of mine that have just asked like it sounds so expensive to live there. Can I afford that? If I get a job am I going to be able to afford to live? Now that's a hard question to answer because everybody's standard of living is a little bit different but today we're going to tackle one of the big costs groceries and you're not going to want to miss it because you're going to be surprised at what I found. Before we dive in let's talk a little bit how I came up with the numbers. So I picked a mid-range grocery store in both countries. New Zealand has nationalized grocery stores so that was easy. I went with countdown. It's the mid-priced one and then in the US it's all over the place depending on which state you're in what they have you know and then I'm not going to use Walmart the most the cheapest and I'm not going to use Whole Foods the most expensive so I just picked the Pigley Wiggly. Yeah there's a grocery store called Pigley Wiggly. Shop the Pig is our tagline like what was going on in that boardroom when they came up. Anyway I never thought that so I did Pigley Wiggly because it's a mid-range and it's also different prices depending on where you live so it's a little bit complicated but I just thought let's pick some and like let's compare it because in my mind when I visited the US I thought man I feel like this food is more expensive than the New Zealand and so I just wanted to compare it a little bit and so I went through some common food items and everything is like I generally used KGs otherwise unless I specified otherwise and then I have the price in US dollars and New Zealand dollars for each store so you can see it and you can kind of see the difference and I think you're going to be surprised so here we go. All right so let's just jump right in. I also want to note that if you're not aware the US dollar is very strong compared to the New Zealand dollar so just keep that in mind as well but I have used the currency exchange formula that's in Google Docs so you could check that out below if you want. Okay so bread I'm going to quote everything in New Zealand dollars so I love for bread and I just didn't do the cheapest cheapest but I did kind of like a little bit nicer like what people probably typically buy and what I would buy in both countries and so the bread at Countdown in New Zealand was $1.50 New Zealand dollars which is equivalent to the Piggly Wiggly version of $5.05 New Zealand. Quite a big difference the bread. Now of course there's variety and there's choices and there's different stores like if you want to go to Walmart or whatever but I found that the US dollar Piggly Wiggly equivalent bread to what I was looking at at Countdown was $2.89 US dollars which is equivalent to $5 New Zealand so that's crazy. Anyway let's go to flour so like a common baking item that we all need I did one kg of flour a $1.47 at Countdown New Zealand and it was $5.15 in the pig at the pig in the US so I was like oh gosh that's quite a bit more. Okay so let me go through these quite quickly so I'm not boring you in this really long video so an apple and I'm just picking things randomly you guys can do this yourselves you can go on you know Piggly Wiggly website Countdown and you can do it yourself and you can pick out the exact items that you buy but this is just an idea in one apple so the price for one apple is a dollar in New Zealand is $2.25 New Zealand in the US for the equivalent same same type of bag at one kg bag of potatoes that's washed so these are like the cheapest one the washed potatoes one kg bag $2.99 in New Zealand $3.79 New Zealand in the US at the pig milk one liter a dollar 96 for one liter in the US the conversion is $3.47 so I just was like I knew the prices were higher in the US but I didn't expect this so so those are a couple of them let's continue and you'll start noticing some differences so let's talk about meat okay so we have ground mince is what they call it here in New Zealand our ground beef in the US so one kg of ground mince is $17 in New Zealand um in the equivalent is $15.31 in the US and so meat is a little bit cheaper although you know how the meat is processed and what their animals eat can be quite different so that all depends this was just I just did like a mid-range like the same two products that I would have bought in each one they're they're not premium they're not organic okay but they're just like the basic level but then a chicken breast one kg of chicken breast $15 as opposed to $19.17 in the US and so so ground beef a little bit more expensive chicken breast a little bit cheaper but roughly the same I mean a couple dollars difference a 12 pack of eggs in New Zealand is $6 and in the US is $7.32 so still a little bit more in the US not a ton more and then rice so there's so many choices of rice I went with jasmine rice so one kg of jasmine rice is $3.30 in New Zealand countdown and $6.44 in the Piggly Wiggly and that was their generic version I am using the generic version when I can um in the pig um and so another thing to note is it's really funny it's hard to find the generic they're definitely trying to sell you the name brands on the first page so I hate you have to do a little bit of digging so that's interesting and it's also interesting to note that in the US when I'm shopping when like I type in simple things like rice or flour and I'm not getting flour I'm getting like you know pre-packaged things like rice cakes there was like pages of rice cakes before I got to rice so it's interesting because I think it's either like what they sell more of or what they want to push or maybe they have a lot of inventory I don't know comment below if you're a grocery person and you know okay so let's move on to a couple other here let me scroll down let's talk cereal okay so there is a lot of the same there's okay there's a lot of cereal in the US and it's a lot of choices but I picked um you'll see what I did okay so I did the special k cereal they have the same size box the same everything although it's really annoying in the US there was like 16 different varieties of the special k like can you just give me the original one because in New Zealand you're only getting one choice so the special k the one 300 grand box is $7.60 New Zealand it is $7.84 in the US so roughly the same price but a little bit more expensive oddly in the US because you know with shipping you'd think it was more here okay and then how about a bag of oats so um like oatmeal you know oats that's like a bag of quick oats one kg of it four dollars and 60 cents here in New Zealand it's 15 dollars and 33 cents in the US when you do the currency difference so that was really surprising and just so you know for the oats it was the quicker oats like that barrel that they sell and you know calculated to a kg with their price you know so I think New Zealand has a little bit of advantage where like they generally will package in a kg and so the quantity enables the price to be a little bit lower whereas you know the US is crazy like there's all different units of measurement on all these items which made it difficult but yeah so 15 dollars for oats and obviously I think you can get it cheaper but that's just what I found doing this if you're looking to get your business in front of new customers I'm telling you the best place to start is with short form video so tiktok video instagram reel a facebook reel or youtube short is your business on any of these platforms already then just start there you do not need fancy equipment and you just need to record and it gets easier with practice comment below if you would like some help on this I had just created a free course and I'll send it to you otherwise I'm happy to answer any questions that you have about creating short form video if you don't know I have been very successful on tiktok under my personal brand Kiwi Americans and on youtube under the same name and you can check those out as well but I am here to help you be successful in addition to that if you are a brand that just is not interested in creating their own videos I do UGC service I basically create content that you can use on your channels if you're interested in that comment below and I'll reach out to you okay I had to wait for a minute because it just down poured here and I was like okay it's really loud okay so let's talk about sweets so we have some sweets that I looked at and so I just looked at some plain m&m's the same size bag in both countries $1.80 in New Zealand and $2.43 in the US and I thought for sure it was going to be more expensive in New Zealand because you got to ship it here but apparently not although sour patch kids $3.50 in New Zealand $2.08 in the US so that's cheaper I don't know what the deal is with m&m's they're probably produced in Australia so anyway I hope that was a fun video for you to think about you know some of the price differences so I know a lot of you are concerned when you're if you're moving here or visiting here especially if you're moving here like how expensive food is and of course you can find it cheaper in New Zealand and you can find it cheaper in the US this is just a mid price I don't even shop at countdown I shop at pack and save and I know that these prices aren't cheaper because I buy it every week with this will give you a good idea so the total for New Zealand for all of those items together was $71.02 the equivalent was $89.95 in the US so interesting isn't it so I know if you're living in New Zealand you think the food is outrageous while the food is outrageous probably around the world including the US and so I hope this was a little bit insightful and helpful and of course you can check this on your own whatever grocery store you go to in the US and in mid-range one would be countdown a high end one would be New World and pack and save would be your lower end and so if you want to check that out if you're thinking about moving here I think that that would be helpful I'll see you guys next week