We Thought We’d Save Money

No rent, no electricity bill, no water bill, no car rego, insurance or fuel, no restaurants or cafes, there’s not much to spend money on here. But what we do spend on is groceries.

We were expecting that our groceries would be about the same price as when we were living in the city, as we get them from Darwin and the prices there are the same as other capital cities. What we weren’t expecting is to be spending over $500 a week on groceries.

Whilst it’s only been 4 weeks and we did start with nothing, each time I put the order in I’m surprised at the cost. We’ve just been buying the basics, nothing fancy or extravagant. Bread, rice, oats, soy milk, frozen berries, toilet paper, soap, shampoo and conditioner etc.

To be fair, we started with nothing and it looks like our next grocery shop will only come to just over $200, but still it’s been a shock to know how much we’ve spent.

You might remember one of my first posts was about the frustration of Coles not working. I finally got onto someone who sorted out the correct address and now we can get deliveries from both Coles and Woolworths.

We’ve been trying out buying fruit and veg online and we think we’re going to stop buying that from Darwin and just get it from the local shop. For some reason their fruit and veg looks a lot fresher.

We also hadn’t saved much since moving here because Tim only got his first pay last week. He was back paid for what he didn’t get the first fortnight and it was nice to finally see some money coming in, as we hadn’t been paid since mid December. My pay is still not right either as the Teacher Registration Board is meeting on the 6th March to review my registration.

I had the same problem in South Australia and it took a while to get fixed. At the moment I’m earning what a graduate teacher would earn even though I have almost twenty years of experience. I’ll get back paid as well, but it will be nice to know how much we’re actually earning.

This first month in Wadeye, we’ve also done a lot of online shopping for clothes and shoes and some homewares. Now that we’re here and know what it’s like we’ve had to make some changes to some of the clothes and shoes we wear.

We think now that we’re one month in we can curb the spending a little bit and start to save some of our earnings.