That\u2019s quite the contradiction to last month\u2019s column, and you may be thinking: \u201cLillie, didn\u2019t you tell us a brunch for two people was $101?\u201d Yes, you are right, it was a sore point for a while. Thanks for bringing it up again. Fortunately, London redeemed itself with my first supermarket trip. <\/p>\n
For almost a full week of food (I\u2019m talking six days\u2019 worth of breakfast, lunch and dinner), the total came to $114.55. It\u2019s even more impressive when I tell you my trolley load included gluten-free products, eight New Zealand lamb chops, and eggs, all of which are notoriously expensive here. <\/p>\n
Why is it so cheap? Well, it helps to have 17 major supermarket chains and unlike Foodstuffs and Woolworths, they actually fight for your money. <\/p>\n
These days, we get our groceries delivered and live a bit more adventurously, so it\u2019s around $150 a week for two people. That\u2019s three meals a day in London for less than my $70-a-week Auckland shop that didn\u2019t even cover breakfast or lunch because I couldn\u2019t bring myself to splurge on the obscene prices for granola and fruit.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just groceries that are cheap. You can grab a lush bouquet of flowers for around $18, which had me doing a double-take, especially when just last week I bought my Auckland-based cousin flowers for her 21st, plus cupcakes and wine. Altogether it came to $250 plus $19 delivery despite the fact that she lived just two suburbs over from the florist. <\/p>\n
You can\u2019t even blame it on the extras, either, because the wine came to $90, while the cupcakes were free, which means the flowers alone were $160. At that point, I wondered if I should have just bought her a one-way ticket over here. <\/p>\n
Other perks of London are that you get free shipping on most online orders, and if you want a bargain on your clothes, ASOS, Primark, and Zara have unreal prices that have you buying a bright purple and orange shirt despite never wearing those colours before in your life, just because it\u2019s $9.20. And skincare and pharmaceuticals are relatively cheap. <\/p>\n
Pints sit around $15 but, if you\u2019re really savvy, $5 thanks to a pub chain called Wetherspoons. It may be the best and worst place in the world, but if you\u2019re visiting the UK or moving here and want to save some money, it\u2019s your best bet for cheap pints, food and people watching. <\/p>\n
Lillie Rohan, seen here at the premiere of Wednesday, Netflix’s supernatural TV series, is making the most of life in London.<\/p>\n
There are also events every night. Some are free pop-ups, some are stadium or arena shows with tickets costing the same as in New Zealand, while some big names play at random venues and cost anywhere between $80.6 and$115. <\/p>\n
Travel is also outrageously affordable here. Not only is Europe close by but there are between 70 and 90 airlines flying in and out of London every day. And much like the supermarkets, they are fighting for your money. <\/p>\n
I scored return flights to Paris for $230, Albania for $115 and Copenhagen for $110. It\u2019s why one random Wednesday, you and your pals can joke about going to New York because flights are \u00a3350 ($806) return and a couple of weeks later, actually go. <\/p>\n
Expat Kiwi Lillie Rohan, seen here in New York, is making the most of cheap airfares from London. <\/p>\n
I\u2019ll be honest, I am very excited at the thought of returning to New Zealand one day to get my hands on some overpriced Whittaker\u2019s chocolate and Vogels bread, but I will miss the cheap London essentials. Long live bigger markets, more competition, and imports that aren\u2019t priced like they\u2019ve been hand-delivered on a velvet cushion by the King.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That\u2019s quite the contradiction to last month\u2019s column, and you may be thinking: \u201cLillie, didn\u2019t you tell us…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6433,95,1558,138,6434,4596,6435,6440,6437,4745,296,302,1619,6431,111,139,69,5970,6439,6432,131,3179,684,4468,1960,61,274,6436,6438,4512],"class_list":["post-4819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-affordability","tag-and","tag-been","tag-business","tag-cheaper","tag-competition","tag-does","tag-ever","tag-gaslighting","tag-groceries","tag-into","tag-its","tag-london","tag-londons","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-really","tag-richer","tag-surprising","tag-than","tag-thanks","tag-there","tag-thing","tag-thinking","tag-to","tag-travel","tag-well","tag-youre","tag-youve"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}