#14: Money

Let's face it - we all think about money as a New Year begins! I loved NZ money. It's very attractive and sensible. There are no 1 cent or 5 cent coins and they make use of the $1 and $2 coins. (They don't have "fun" names for these coins - I mistakenly asked someone for a 'twonnie' and got a pretty weird look.) They use something called 'Swedish rounding' to avoid all those extra coins. It means that if something is $0.6 above the decimal, it goes to the next 10. Otherwise, it is rounded down. The 'change' coins in use are a 50 cent, 20 cent, and 10 cent (which looks just like a Canadian penny).

Dave and I constantly have this argument about whether it's good to have the tax added on to items. In NZ a 12.5% GST exists. It's on everything, apparently, and is included in the cost. I really like knowing what something is going to cost in total BEFORE I go to the cashier. I like the cost being the cost. I can probably attribute that to my Alberta upbringing.

Tipping is not encouraged in NZ and that is another practice I really liked.

Getting our Visa bills these days is actually kinda fun - everything costs LESS than we expected. For us, the cost of doing things in NZ, with our 20% gain on the dollar, ended up being very similar to Canadian costs. We love kiwi dollars!