cookiestar

Me and my husband are currently looking at moving to Brisbane, and are trying to compare cost of living in the UK (food shopping etc) with what it would cost us based in a Brisbane suburb. Does anyone know of any resources online which do comparisons of every day essentials such as milk, bread cereal etc?

Thanks

bcworld

Dont know of any online tools but essentials like bread & milk are more expensive here.....especially bread. Overall shopping basket is probably not much different in price these days to the UK.....a lot of produce has gone up a lot since the drought really kicked in.

cookiestar

Thanks. I actually found the online facility on Coles' website, so have priced an average weekly shop. Been pleasantly surprised!

comet555

I can't give you any comparisons but you can have a look at grocery prices here:

http://colaph.colesmyer.com.au/fcgi-...3To0a1&aaa=079

Click on the link on the left that says "Browse Isles". That should give you a good idea of prices.

You can use the online delivery sections to get an idea of the prices, only you have to cheat a little to get it to work. You can't use it unless you specify an post code that has online ordering and delivering. So I've used Sydney, post code 2000 to get it to work. So all of these prices would be relative to that area. I tried Brisbane and it didn't work because they didn't have the online service. But at least you'll get a rough idea.

comet555

Oh yah, and you can pretend shop and put all your regular items in the cart and see what the total is. Obviously you wouldn't complete it and have it delivered though

cookiestar

Thanks Comet. That's what I did in the end

asprilla

in the supermarkets, food is approx the same as the uk, if not slightly more expensive. However- if you steer clear of the major supermarkets, you can get fruit and veg at very low prices. And, if you go to a good butcher, you'll get meat at less than half the price of the supermarket.

Fish - because of the climate in brisbane, you just don't get decent fish in the supermarket. You'll get it in a posh fishmarket, but at a price....and it probably won't be fresh. Having said that, you can get good barramundi here. As far as I'm aware, buying sushi quality fish in a shop is unheard of. Thankfully, the fishing up here is fantastic !! unlike the uk, you can actually eat these fish. and they taste great.

for decent clothes, I would say that Aus/ brisbane is similar/ more expensive than the UK. For cheap clothes, Aus is a bit better...does lots of trade with china.

For cars - petrol is extremely cheap. But there are not as many cars in Aus as in the UK. Hence, buying a second hand car is not as cheap as you'd expect. You will be unpleasantly surprised by the ridiculous prices that people put on their second hand cars....$'000s for a heap of junk.

For housing, brisbane (and australia in general) is far cheaper than the uk. Apart from, of course, the fancy parts of Melbourne and Sydney (and other cities) that people want to live in. !

real Wages in brisbane are lower than in the uk, I reckon.

cartel

If you shop wisely on the everyday bits at Aldi, you can get the luxuries at the other shops and not feel too guilty. But if you are like us, after the Aldi shop, just go the the best butchers you know and buy their wonderful array of produce!!

Only thing we can't find is Crocodile and Ostrich! (had them both in Sydney and will find a way.............).


Try before you knock it.

Good luck

Carol

tictac

I don't think you can compare the price of a loaf of bread in Coles with the price of a loaf of bread in Tescos and use that as the basis for assuming that one country's cost of living is cheaper or more expensive than the other.

For what it's worth, I'd say that the cost of 'real' food is about the same as that in the UK but I'd also suggest that in the main it's of better quality - particularly meat and seafood (for obvious reasons). One other thing I've noticed is that Australia seems to be a little behind the UK in terms of 'healthy eating' and what I mean by that is that there doesn't seem to be the same quantity of 'low sugar', 'low fat, 'no preservative', 'no artificial colours' type stuff available. These are my observations. Others may disagree.

Without knowing how you 'live' though it's impossible to advise you as to whether or not you'll find it easier or more difficult to 'get by' here. For example, how often do you eat out, what do you do for 'entertainment', do you like to have the latest tech/gadgets?

I agree to a certain extent with markallwood in that you tend to get more for your money house wise, but again, people's views may vary depending on the prices of houses in the area that they live currently. There is huge demand for houses in the $400k-$600k bracket meaning that the houses sought by some people may be in short supply which forces them to stretch themselves financially in order to move into the higher priced housing bracket. Whether this equates to houses being less affordable, I'm not sure.

Petrol is cheaper as is take-away food

I'd say clothing is about the same. Target/KMart type places seem to offer good value every day stuff whereas Myer/David Jones is a bit like somewhere like Debenhams in the UK and offers supposedly better quality wares at a higher price.

There seems little incentive to buy second hand cars when you can get a new one with a full manufacturer's warranty for not that much more. This is especially relevant, in my opinion, if you are considering a novated lease due to the vehicle's estimated residual value.

IMO, if you embrace the traditional Aussie lifestyle and take advantage of the (free) great outdoors and not worry too much about having the latest mod-cons and gadgets and try not to get sucked into the consumerism that's as rife here as it was in the UK, then notwithstanding what I've said above, you'll be able to live quite cheaply and happily. It goes without saying that your level of earnings will have a say in this too!

By the way, I'm not trying to rubbish what you have asked or what other posters have suggested. Prior to moving out here I did exactly the same thing in trying to calculate the cost of living but soon realised that it wasn't quite that simple.

I hope the above offers some help and advice in terms of other things you maybe need to consider

Cheers

cookiestar

TicTac - totally appreciate what you're saying. I guess my thinking at this stage (very early in the process) is to compare what my monthly outgoings here are to what they would be in Aus. We're in the lucky position of being able to buy a potential house in Aus cash, so will be better off from the start than we are over in the UK.

I know that in terms of lifestyle we will be much "richer" - but at the same time, I feel the need just now to quantify things at a more practical, everyday financial level too.

Thanks for your advice I'm sure I'll have hundreds of more questions in the weeks and months to come!

beebopaloola

totally disagree about the meat as most is factory farmed.
Butchers are better option than supermarkets but still cannot provide alternatives to mass produced factory farmed produce.

asprilla

Australia exports tonnes of some of the world's finest beef to Japan each week through the Port of Brisbane. It is all "factory farmed" as you put it.

I'm not sure how you can conclude that "factory farmed" is somehow an inferior quality produce to the "alternatives" you mention.

Can you honestly tell me that you could tell the difference between 10 factory farmed steaks and 10 "alternative" steaks ? If you believe you can, I would suggest that you've never eaten a decent steak in your life !

quercus

Personally I try to avoid factory farmed produce as it's produced under stressfull and unnatural conditions for the animals, not because of taste difference, although I do find free range chicken tastes considerably better than factory farmed.
However, are you sure that so much Australian produce is factory farmed? I saw on a statistics site that Australia is the biggest exporter of organic beef in the world. Perhaps organic does not have to be free range, but I don't think intensively farmed animals can be managed without antibiotics etc.

asprilla

ah....good point, I was coming at it from a "taste" perspective....I hadn't considered the farming conditions as being a factor in what people's opinions on what makes a good piece of meat. Apologies.

spartacus

We've been in Brisbane's western subs for about four months now, so starting to get a handle on relative cost of living vs the UK.

Weekly food shop is approximately the same but here's a little list of 'major' outgoings relative to what we were spending in the UK:

Car insurance plus road tax: I think it works out at about $1000 / year, UK 700GBP.
Council tax ‘rates’ (including water): $375/quarter against 420 GBP.
Petrol: $50 / week against 50 GBP (for about the same mileage)
Gas & electric: $400/ quarter against 400 GBP.
Private education: $4500 / year against 4500 GBP (minimum)
Contents insurance: $400 year, can’t remember UK.
Meal followed by cinema with wife and kids: $100 against 80 GBP.

Hope this helps.

All the best

Andy