An Extensive New Zealanalysis
Greetings from a blurry view in Sydney!
We’ve come to the end of our stay in New Zealand and we’re on a short layover to our next destination: Shanghai. Friends in China, HK, and Vietnam or will come to these places in Q2 hit us up!
As time goes on, our purpose have become more structured, turning into set quarterly and monthly goals. Each quarter we have an overarching goal and every month we choose a topic to learn about. For Q1, Owen wanted to experience farm life and Ivy wanted to experience van life. Ivy made an effort to learn about meditation, the economics of cryptocurrency, and how to be a better negotiator. Owen recipe tested for his cook book, learned about the technical aspects of cryptocurrency, and how to be a not-terrible negotiator (his last used strategy was starting a salary discussion with "I don't care about money").
Negotiation studies paid off as we managed to negotiate Owen's contracting salary up $35/hour! It also failed when Owen blurt out our other offer is for $2000 when the price on the table with the potential buyer for Red Rover was for $5500.
In Q2, Ivy wants to immerse in Asian work and life culture as well as explore the manufacturing space. Owen wants to see what life as a freelance developer is like, with the freedom to set his own schedule and projects. For April, Ivy will interview westerners who have built successful careers in Asia and Owen will work on his Chinese fluency.
In our last newsletter we talked about our personal reflections from our time in New Zealand. As we head out, we wanted to spend this one talking about our reflections on New Zealand itself.
Kiwis are very trusting (boy are we going to have culture shock in China)
We’ve heard people compare New Zealand to Canada in terms of the niceness of people, but I think the people here may have taken it even one step further.
A few weeks ago, we went on multi-day hike where the start and the finish were in different locations so we used a car relocation service. Sometimes, when there are not cars on both sides of the track to relocate, the owners of the business who are fit AF relocate on one side, then run the 33km mountainous hike (which took us 3 days to complete) in 3-5 hours to get back home. We forgot to fill up full on gas as requested, so when we ran into the business owner (well, we were walking, she was running) on the trail one day, she told us that she would send an email with a paypal link so we can pay later, not taking anything as deposit. A week after the transfer, she invoiced us for gas... we paid.
After this hike, the hinge to the back door of Red Rover broke off. When we tried to pay the mechanic who fixed it up, he did not take credit card, only cash. As we had none, we drove off with our fixed car... to the ATM and came back to actually pay him. We didn't have exact change and he didn't either, so he also nonchalantly took a price cut to match our cash.
Even many gas stations in NZ let you fill up first and then go to the cashier inside with your pump number to pay. Also many homes we stayed at don’t lock their doors at night.
Kiwis are very environmentally conscious
Not only do grocery stores label where the food comes from, most packaged foods have a health star rating from 0-5 highlighted. This made it very easy to make conscious decisions on what to eat and made it feel extra bad when we chose to indulge on a snack, often prompting us to choose a slightly less unhealthy 1.5 star snack over a 0.5 one (RIP Tim Tams).
Similarly, appliances had a water and energy rating, along with the explanation of the energy and water usage to justify it, so you know exactly how environmental you are with what you use.
Kiwis both in and out of the cities love to have their own garden and be as self sustaining as possible. Many households compost and use it directly for their home garden. There are power switches in all houses so that all appliances such as stoves, toasters, and TVs are fully off when unused. Dryers are uncommon as most homes use clothing lines instead.
Language(s)
Of course English is the primary language of New Zealand. Maori, the language of the indigenous, is technically also a first language ("moana" is from it and it means "ocean"). Some schools do teach it, but very few people we met actually spoke it fluently, like French for Canadians.
Aside from these two languages, others appeared sporadically through our stay. Auckland had Chinese prominently everywhere, from signs at the Airport to street signs in some areas of town, which was especially shocking since we first landed there. One particularly bizarre cautionary sign we saw included Japanese and German.
Makes you wonder what people from those two countries specifically did to earn that.
As far as English goes, it's the same as British English (chips is fries, crisps is chips, etc etc). The one common slang we heard often was "sweet as", used as a simple acknowledgement, like "sick" or "dope". Some people spun variations of it - "easy as", "cool as". As what? I don't know.
Macro Economics of New Zealand
We came in knowing that New Zealand was a first world country with high standard of living, still fairly untouched by mass tourism, and had a big agriculture and viticulture industry. Prices were expensive, but minimum wage was high. We had great respect for Prime Minister Jacinda Arden who pushed glass ceilings as she gave birth during her term. After the Christchurch shooting and the immediate change in gun laws and support for the Muslim community we love her even more.
However, via our interactions with Kiwis, we learned that the great majority of corporations that operate within New Zealand are foreign owned. The largest grocery chains, the PG&E companies, and infrastructure are mostly outsourced by the government. This means that the money made in the country does not stay in the country so kiwis are employees of foreign companies making income and spending it back into foreign companies with profits being taken by companies.
Although New Zealand on the surface is a first world country with first world consumer expectations and demands, it has poor production capacity in country and cannot meet the demands. The high trade deficit is a result of importing all finished products (from basic condiments to car parts to electronics) and exporting low margin products like wool, lamb, and honey. In addition, it is very expensive for New Zealand to trade as it is so far out - and so price of goods adjust for that.
What this meant for the people we met was they often were not making all that much money beyond the minimum wage. Even though that amount was livable, they weren't able to break the ceiling of ownership of the businesses they worked for. Many people we talked to didn't seem to upset by this though, to them there's nothing to be done about it, it's just how things are.
In terms of government services, New Zealand is amazing - guess the high tax rates do go somewhere. Playgrounds here are out of this world! The jungle gyms are all fantastically unique and big enough for adults to play on - no wonder children here grow up to be so fit. The libraries here also function as community centers, the one in Christchurch that was built after the earthquake has a Audio Visual studio, makerspace with 3D printing, sewing machinese, and laser cutting, VR studio, video and boardgames, imagination studio for children, and multiple daily events from ESL help to movie making workshops to board game nights. It’s basically the facilities big tech companies offer to employees, but actually available to the entire public!
Micro Economics of New Zealand
To get a closer look at the cost of living here, we rigorously tracked our spending data from the beginning. We’ve done an audit of our expenses and here’s some numbers for all you stats nerds. The below are all based on personal data so it reflects people living exactly like us here and not to be extrapolated to the whole NZ population:
In total we spent a total of $16,631.57 (USD) together across 3 months which averages out to $2.77k per person per month. Food was by far our largest expense. We did not hold back in how we ate compared to SF. An average meal out cost $14.98/pp while cooking at home from groceries was $4.63/pp (we cooked 66% of the time).
Our van was the next largest expense -- we were trying to sell during low season and on top of that pre-buy mechanic checks exposed many issues we weren’t aware of, so we ended up selling at a steep discount. We spent 50.5% of nights living out of it though! A night spent in our van cost just $6.97 per person, averaging the free and paid campsites. If you average in the cost of the van itself as well, it’d be $24.93 per person per night.
How does that compare with other living situations? At the more luxurious end of our stay, an average night in a hotel was $46.58 (still cheaper than our SF rent would’ve been). An average Airbnb was $32.18. An average hostel was $21.74 -- just a bit better than our van life but let’s not kid ourselves, we wouldn’t have lasted 3 months in shared dorms. So even if you sell poorly like us, van life is still very very cost effective here!
Of course, not all working holiday goers and van-lifers lived like us. Our friend who we met at Hanna Berry Farm started the is trip with only money to buy a car and $2000 USD. His usual meals consist of a can of beans and rice with a splurge on a case of grocery store beer once in a while. He lives in the back of his car with a sleeping bag by hiding out on side streets hoping he wouldn’t get caught on not designated campsites. It wasn’t until he was down to $200 that he decided to stop and pick up a job.
In Nelson, NZ he went through one of the many agencies that help find working holiday youth work on high churn, temporary positions. His first job that started immediately was on an industrial fish cargo ship. From 5am to 5pm, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, he went into the cold containers filled with giant ice blocks of frozen fish from Japan and carved out individual ones and tossed the fish (the average size being 2-4 ft) into nets that were pulled up to the deck. He described the locals working there as all rough rednecks. For a day’s hard labor, he made about 210 NZD or $144 USD.
During his time there, a British guy got his foot impaled by a fish fin that went through his rubber boot. This resulted in him getting blood poisoning. After that, our friend decided to quit and took the next job in line with the agency. This job involved sorting decapitated chickens fresh off the assembly line into a “normal looking” pile and a distorted pile. After a week of work at these two jobs, he had a bit over $1000 NZD in the bank and moved on with his travels.
We listened jaw dropped at his stories and in disbelief how he was not squirming with so little buffer in the bank until we met another girl through our friends we met at the permaculture farm. She had just started a waitressing job and told us she only had $40 in the bank now so she probably shouldn’t buy a coffee.
Our friends here on working holiday reinforced the idea that we can live with very little. Their views of money, or rather their comfort with having so little of it, inspired us to believe that money really does come and go and we can always figure it out.
We're a bit behind on writing newsletters since we were closing up accounts in NZ, selling Red Rover, and dealing with internet in China. Thanks for bearing with us! We will do a South Island summary of all the beautiful places we went to along with a Day in the Life of video we are procrastinating to create. Q1 was full of reflections, discovery, love and learnings for us, we are so excited to see what Q2 brings.
Onwards,
Ivy & Owen