Compare two household budgets

Choose two destinations. Enter each person's actual annual salary for the hours they will work, or their take-home payments. Use the same household and housing needs in both budgets. All figures are NZD.

Your comparison

Start with income and rent for a first comparison. Add household costs when you have them.

Destination A

Income and rent
Earner 1

Gross salaries use 2026/27 income tax and ACC for each person. Include applicable KiwiSaver, student loan and other deductions. Credits, benefits, other income and part-year tax assessments are excluded. Enter a person's combined annual salary earnings once; do not split their jobs into two earners.

Choose a dated local rent reference

March–August 2026 suburb observations, checked 28 October. These are local examples rather than city-wide medians. Data remains provisional. Compare the same home type and bedrooms; actual properties can differ.

Household costs

Enter 0 where no cost applies. Leave unknowns blank. Include each car, parking and running costs once, and allow for annual bills. Mark a bill already covered by rent or another entered cost.

Food and household shopping
Power, water, internet and phones
Transport, cars and parking
Insurance
Childcare and school costs
Health and dental
Debt, support and money sent overseas
Personal spending and irregular bills

Destination B

Income and rent
Earner 1

Gross salaries use 2026/27 income tax and ACC for each person. Include applicable KiwiSaver, student loan and other deductions. Credits, benefits, other income and part-year tax assessments are excluded. Enter a person's combined annual salary earnings once; do not split their jobs into two earners.

Choose a dated local rent reference

March–August 2026 suburb observations, checked 28 October. These are local examples rather than city-wide medians. Data remains provisional. Compare the same home type and bedrooms; actual properties can differ.

Household costs

Enter 0 where no cost applies. Leave unknowns blank. Include each car, parking and running costs once, and allow for annual bills. Mark a bill already covered by rent or another entered cost.

Food and household shopping
Power, water, internet and phones
Transport, cars and parking
Insurance
Childcare and school costs
Health and dental
Debt, support and money sent overseas
Personal spending and irregular bills
Save, reopen or print this comparison

Download the editable file to keep your figures. Opening a file asks before replacing this comparison.

Enter income and rent to see a first comparison. Missing household costs will be listed beside each result.

Download the editable comparison to keep your figures. Opening a file asks before replacing this comparison. Temporary work stays in this tab where storage is available. Figures and notes stay out of URLs and analytics.

Make the homes and jobs comparable

Choose the dwelling type and bedrooms your household needs, then check each home’s condition, heating, parking and move-in date. Record the home and workplace areas in the notes. A suburb’s rent figure gives you a starting point; a current property’s asking rent is more useful when you are ready to choose.

For the commute, include fares or each car’s fuel, parking, insurance, registration, maintenance and other running costs. Check whether services run for your working hours. Count shared household costs once. Add childcare and school costs using the provider’s actual booking and fees, and health or insurance using the cover and services you expect.

Use the salary for the hours you will work

Enter each person’s annual gross earnings separately. If an offer quotes a full-time equivalent salary, obtain the actual annual pay for your contracted hours before entering it. Include guaranteed earnings in the main comparison and test uncertain overtime separately. If you know the take-home payment, enter its actual period instead.

The estimate uses 2026/27 income tax and ACC. Other payroll deductions must be entered where they apply; credits, benefits and part-year tax assessments are excluded. The salary and rent calculator explains these assumptions further.

Complete the costs before treating money left as savings

A blank cost remains unknown. Enter zero when none applies or mark an amount already covered by another entered cost. Include annual-bill reserves and personal commitments. The result after entered costs covers only your listed spending; check any costs you have left out before setting a savings target.

The fictional example demonstrates the calculation using invented offers, rents and expenses. It is not a claim that one city is cheaper. Changing a city keeps your entered figures and their notes so you can replace them deliberately.

Continue with the household budget and arrival cash

Use “Continue in household budget” for the destination you prefer. The next page asks before replacing its current income and spending rows. Download existing work first if you want to keep it. Offer, home and source notes remain in your comparison file; keep that file alongside the household budget. The household budget then lets you add more detail and transfer spending into the moving budget alongside your actual payment dates.

Bond, temporary accommodation, setup and a gap before your first pay can require cash before an affordable monthly budget begins. Keep these one-off amounts separate from the recurring city comparison. Estimated annual take-home pay cannot be transferred as a regular pay packet; enter an actual payment and payday in the moving workflow.

Rent references and calculation sources

Rent choices reuse NZI’s March–August 2026 suburb data, checked 28 October. City labels group the recorded suburbs; they do not represent city-wide medians. Match the same dwelling type and bedrooms, and check the suburb’s exact scope. Tenancy Services warns that bond-system migration leaves recent data provisional and potentially incomparable with earlier releases. Do not infer a rent trend from these examples. Rental bond data and migration notice.

Income estimates reuse NZI’s existing individual salary calculation, with IRD income-tax bands and ACC levy and cap checked 29 October 2026. Weekly amounts use 52 weeks and average months use one twelfth of annual totals. Saved comparisons retain entered values and source notes; files using unsupported calculation rules are rejected without replacing your current work.