Cheaper Living in Aotearoa

1. Cheaper Food.

a. supermarkets
People need enough food each day to provide an average of about 8000 kJ of energy, their body weight in grams of protein (an average of about 70 grams) 30 grams of fibre, and about 14 different vitamins and minerals.

Many city people in NZ eat meat, potatoes, milk, butter and eggs each day because these are what their rurals parents or grandparents ate. Their elders' home-grown foods were free, but required time and work. These foods are now instantly available in supermarkets, but require money. If you live in a city, you need to look for the cheapest nutritious food from supermarkets and elsewhere.

Flour is still the cheapest form of food, and our grandparents also mixed lots of it with home-grown...
    -mutton, carrots and onion to make stews,
    -butter and eggs to make home-cooked scones, biscuits, cakes.         -bottled fruit, eggs and butter to make puddings.

Here are the cheapest supermarket foods for providing sufficient energy and other nutrients. About $18 per adult, per week. Notice that most of the items are raw ingredients for simple meals. You pay much more for ready-to-eat food and fancy meals. If you can afford more than $18 a week per person, use it to buy salt, baking powder, seedlings of spinach, parsley or silver beet, fertilizer, tea, sugar, etc.

f. train your children to cook
Give points for low cost of ingredients, high nutritional value, a tidy kitchen when finished, tasty food, original new contents—and reward them with ice cream, chocolate, meat whatever, each time they reach a new goal.

2. Lower Power Bills

Changing your retailer, using less power, and installing solar panels can all reduce the cost of your monthly power bill.

a. I checked the different unit and daily charges of retailers before switching to Ecotricity.

         

b. less hot showering.
A hot shower costs about 1 cent per litre, 10 cents a minute. We limit shower time to 10 minutes ($1) a week per per person. On other days clean body with a basin half filled with hot water (3 cents) and a wet small towel. We have a timer on the hot water cylinder to heat it when power is cheapest (or free).

c. a dry house.
The water in a damp home absorbs a lot of heat. I pull back the curtains on the north and east of the house at sunrise and on sunny winter mornings we open the windows to let dry air in. We have an extractor fan in the kitchen, and sleep with the bedroom window and door open.

d. home heating.
We dress warmly, have a heat pump in the lounge/dining/kitchen area, and electric blankets, thick duvets and pyjamas buttoned up to the neck in the bedrooms. On very cold nights I wear a beanie in bed! We sleep at night with doors open and windows ajar to stop bedrooms getting damp.

e. drying clothes.
We give the clothes a second spin after washing them. We wash them on sunny days when possible, and hang them outside. Even if this gets them only half dry, that cuts the electric drier time in half.

f. cooking.
We use the microwave as much as possible. When baking, we cook several items at once.

g. curtains.
We open them when sun comes up and close them at sunset to capture as much of the sun's heat as possible. We have thick, close-fitting curtains to stop heat loss.

When we lived in an old state house, the curtains moved when the wind blew, so I put sticky foam strips to seal the wooden window frames. A padded ‘snake’ closed the gap under the door. The wood stove in the lounge made it too hot, while the back bedrooms stayed cold and damp. The owner installed extractor pipes above the ceiling to blow hot air from the lounge to the bedrooms. Magic!

h. lights. 
All ours are now LEDs. They use about 1/20th of the power of old bulbs.

i. boiling the jug.
An ordinary 2kW hot water jug takes about 1½ minutes to boil  500mls of cold tap water, at a cost of about 2 cents. Boiling a full 2-litre jug costs 8 cents. Boiling just a bit more than you are going to drink will save a few cents every day.

k. solar panels
When buying a house, chose one with a roof facing the sun. Our roof faces nor-west and our 22 350 watt panels generate about 9,500    kWh of free power each year. We sell it to Ecotricity in summer for about 17 cents a kWh, and that pays for most of the power we buy in winter.

The newest panels are transparent and also generate from reflected light, and so generate 440 watts, giving more power for the same price. Here is financial advice about installing a solar system in NZ.

   HOME - FOOD - POWER - INTERNET - CLOTHING - HOUSE ITEMS - GOOD HABITS

3. lower Internet Costs

a. Public libraries have free wifi for your laptop etc, and also computers that you can use for free.

b. Zero.govt.nz will connect you to NZ government websites without you having to pay for the data, eg, for an online educational course. The data is paid for by the government.

c. Skinny Jump is for those who don't have a broadband connection at home because cost is a barrier: for example, families with children, job seekers, those over 65, people with disabilities,s prison leavers, those in social housing, refugees and migrants.
You get a free modem, and pre-pay only $5 for every 35 GB you use.

d. Free movies
There are many ad-free sites that ignore Hollywood copyrights. Make sure you have your anti-virus app switched on.  But the Russian site ok.ru is the best I have found. Here are some examples.

Utu
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Goodbye Pork Pie
Titanic
Forrest Gump
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Disney’s Pinocchio
The Shawshank Redemption
The Taming of the Shrew
Bridge on the River Kwai
West Side Story

OK.RU also has many English-language movies dubbed in other languages, and foreign movies dubbed in English.

e. Free magazines online
Download the Libby app on iOS/Android.
Or go to Libbyapp.com on your computer.
You only need your library card number and code.
If you haven't got a library card, you can get a free one from your nearest public library. There are hundreds of magazines there, both the latest issues, and old copies.

4.  Clothing

5.  House items

6.  Good Habits