Couple finds it's cheaper to live in Barcelona than take on a 'huge debt' to buy a house in NZ & More News Here – Upjobsnews

A Wellington-based couple in their 30s facing the prospect of taking on a “huge debt” to buy a house in this country, are about to head overseas after finding it would be cheaper for them to live in Barcelona.

At first writer Alie Benge and mental health worker David Coffey were just looking at having an overseas trip and staying in Airbnb accommodation in Barcelona.

“We realised that we would be paying significantly less in Barcelona than we would here, so it’s really just the logical next step for us as a couple. If we wanted to live together, it’s cheaper to move to Spain,” Benge told Breakfast on Tuesday.

They had weighed up their options between “staying here, taking on a million dollar debt, or … Barcelona and London”.

READ MORE:
* Bleak pay and opportunities pushing young people overseas
* Brain drain: Officials estimate 50,000 Kiwis could leave over the next year, but number could surge to 125,000
* Young people feeling financial pressure: ‘I should be doing okay’

“It was just that our options were so limited. It was either take on that huge debt, or spend all our savings on paying rent.

“And if we wanted to travel then staying any longer in New Zealand would use up all the money that we could have spent travelling,” Benge said.

“It was either leave now, or be trapped here with a huge debt that would be really difficult to pay off.”

Coffey agreed that it was difficult for many people to build a life in New Zealand now, and said he and Benge had full time jobs and were lucky to have options.

It’s expected tens of thousands of other New Zealanders will be heading overseas to live as travel restrictions introduced to slow the spread of Covid ease around the world.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Grant Robertson was asked later on Breakfast about the situation Benge and Coffey found themselves in.

It was put to him that their reasons for leaving included being unable to buy a house in this country, the high cost of living, and that it was less expensive to live in Barcelona.

Robertson said there were “massive” inflation increases around the world. For decades Kiwis had been leaving the country on their OE, and the vast bulk of them returned. Now there was some pent-up demand after the Covid restrictions of the past two years, he said.

He said it was important to make sure there were good quality jobs for people to come back to in New Zealand, and good quality housing.

Too few houses had been built during the 15 years or so when the population grew from 4 million to 5 million, Robertson said.

“We’re now building those houses, but it takes time to catch up with the deficit that we’ve got there,” he said.

“On the jobs side, we really are pushing into how we can get higher wage jobs here. That means investing in research and development, and skills, and all the trade agreements that we do.

“These things don’t have easy answers, but we are pushing in to make sure there’s a reason for them to come back to New Zealand and make their lives here,” Robertson said.

A large part of the reason for the rise in food prices, was that people paid export prices for their food, while large fuel increases were also feeding through into the cost of producing and transporting food, he said.

With imports there were also shipping issues, “then the war in Ukraine came along and just propelled that to an even worse situation”.

There had been a “one in 100-year economic shock out of Covid”. It was “inevitable we were going to be affected by it”.

I have tried to give all kinds of news to all of you latest news today 2022 through this website and you are going to like all this news very much because all the news we always give in this news is always there. It is on trending topic and whatever the latest news was

it was always our effort to reach you that you keep getting the latest news and you always keep getting the information of news through us for free and also tell you people. Give that whatever information related to other types of news will be 

made available to all of you so that you are always connected with the news, stay ahead in the matter and keep getting today news all types of news for free till today so that you can get the news by getting it. Always take two steps forward