‘‘It’s not how we thought it was going to be.’’
After 17 years in London, it was time to come home. The city so appealing to Emily Swan when she’d arrived in her 20s wasn’t the place she wanted to raise a child.
So, in 2010, Emily , her Dutch-born partner and their daughter, Belle, crossed the globe to set up home in Auckland.
The clean air, the beaches, the family support – all have been just as expected. What was unexpected was that the antipodean good life would be so pricey.
‘‘We were delighted to be home. But we’ve been really taken aback by how expensive it is,’’ Emily says.
Emily, 38 works in media and her partner is in hospitality. They earn $130,000 a year between them. They have a mortgage on a two-bedroom house in central Freemans Bay, which costs them more than their London rent (and which they bought only with help from Emily’s mother).
Emily’s salary is 33 per cent lower than in the UK, but she find utilities extremely dear. ‘‘Gas, water, electricity – we pay each month what we paid for each quarter in London.’’
In London, broadband was free with her cellphone contract. Food was cheap: last week own-brand supermarket milk was priced 70 per cent higher here than in the UK, and bread 50 per cent higher. Cheaper petrol and childcare don’t balance the extra costs.
Emily is paid monthly, her partner weekly, and ‘‘three out of four weeks we get down to cents in the bank before payday. My daughter was doing swimming lessons, but we’ve stopped – we haven’t the funds’’.
Belle is 3, but tall for her age, and has almost outgrown a cot-bed meant to last until she was 5. ‘‘I’m thinking, shit – I’m going to have to buy her a new bed. I’ll have to do it on hire purchase.’’ Luxuries Emily had grown used to – especially dining out – are out of the question. ‘‘Sometimes I look at my peers, and feel like poor relations. We don’t measure our happiness by our things. It’s very much about our child and her quality of life, and we have that. But it’s not how we thought it was going to be.’’
Does Emily appreciate that with that income and a house, many Kiwis would see her as well-off?
‘‘Yes. The average household income is what, $30,000? Crazy. But then a lot of people are sending their kids to school without breakfast. We are grateful for what we’ve got.’’
And yet . . . ‘‘I look at my age and think, I’m nearly 40 and I’m still living from pay-cheque to pay-cheque. What do I pass on to the next generation? Will I ever pay my mortgage off?’’
While she wasn’t always sensible with money in the past, she had a ‘‘bloody good time’’, and she has the mortgage now. ‘‘I’m happy with the way round I did it.’’
Emily and her partner would like to have another child, but don’t feel they could afford to live on one income, and ‘‘I don’t feel anyone else should have to pay for that in terms of state support.’’
She doesn’t regret leaving London. The other day she had a do in town. Two minutes after leaving she was picking up her daughter from her mum’s house, and Belle was in bed 15 minutes later. ‘‘I love that. Life here is much easier. That’s worth it. We probably should have done it a lot sooner.’’