Seneca21

I think I give up on this, but once more: you cannot get an idea of true living costs until you live in a country. Not by visiting on holiday for sure, and you certainly won't get an idea based on this forum, or any other. There are too many variables. Different parts of Australia vary quite a lot in terms of expense. Different posters have different ideas of what constitutes expensive. Some people spend $500 on a trolley of food at Coles, I fill a trolley for $160. Some people get paid $150,000 a year and complain it's not enough, other earn $40,000 and get by OK. You cannot make an informed decision about a country's SOL or COL until you live there. That's my only point. People on this forum would have had me believe Australia was not viable, but we have a much higher SOL here, with relatively identical income.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

Bread, milk and potato in the Seneca household then?

Pollyana

Polly removes mods hat.......Total codswallop Of course you can get "an idea" based on this forum. That's what its here for A very large number of posters, a cross section of the community, we have seriously high earners, and we have those who scrape to get by, we have posters from every State and Territory and we have so many threads like this that if anyone seriously wants to know about prices they can spend months reading and digesting the info on here.
Your opinion on the subject is as valid as anyone else's so why don't you just let the OP digest it with all the others instead of thinking you are the only one who knows what living in Australia is like?

GeordieGeek

+1

Seneca21

Last week we had Thai chicken curry, Swedish lamb stew, linguine with homemade arrabbiata sauce and pine nut salad, gnocchi with pesto and salad, steak and mashed potato with pepper sauce and asparagus and a prawn and chicken paella.

A friend of mine once gold me he and his wife spent at least £120 a week in the supermarket. Incredulous, I asked what he bought that was so expensive, and he really couldn't tell me. It remains a mystery.

Seneca21

The OP can and will do as he pleases. If he chooses not to move to a foreign country and invest in a new life because of what he reads on an internet forum, then that is up to him. I would suggest anyone who makes a decision based on an internet forum with all its inherent inaccuracies and highly subjective points of view probably isn't suited to emigration anyway.

Dorothy

For the first time in nearly 5 years here I've now put someone on ignore.

Seneca21

And for a totally sensible, justified, and inoffensive opinion. How absurd. And also how vain to post it publicly. Off you go.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

She won't have seen that.

Seneca21

Wanna bet? I don't care if she does or not to befair. I've always been polite to her and my post above is inoffensive and a personal view I am entitled to. Her decision is irrelevant to me, but somewhat irrational.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

check again.

Seneca21

medwaymark

Yep....greengrocer & butchers for sure....a lot fresher than the supermarkets too.

The fruit & veg does vary in price a lot depending on availability....I have seen whole trays of mangos for $5 at the greengrocers, for example.....but not every week!

I also thought on the way home tonight about how cheap public transport is. I pay $50 a week for a 1hr commute each way. The station car park is free too. A similar weekly season ticket in the UK would set me back GBP77 & there would no parking at the station.

iamthecreaturefromuranus

It's an old chesnut and its disputed by many, myself included. I don't find either of them any cheaper and definitely no fresher.


No arguement there. Trains are cheap.

Seneca21

We use two independent greengrocers and we also use a butchers and a fishmonger and all of them offer better and cheaper stuff than the supermarkets, although I feel Coles in particular is catching up to them slowly, which is a shame because when they do they'l put them out of business like happened in Britain many years ago.