You can't put a price on life! Oh wait, you can.

Now that we're nearing the departure date, it starts to make sense to investigate what our cost of living will be as we will be unemployed but in need of lots of things.  Go on any blog and people will tell you that Australia is ridiculously expensive and for tourists that's probably true, but the same can be said about Paris, Rome, London, Moscow, New York and so on. We have to agree, there's some pretty interesting differences between what 100 EUR will get you here and what the same 100 EUR (135 AUD) will get you there. An Australian Dollar is about 0.65 Euro cents, but let's say it's 2/3's, to keep it simple. We started with supermarkets and other life essentials. Furniture and housing stuff will follow later. Gil promised to not make PowerPoints and Excel sheets for as long as he is unemployed, so we'll just categorize into four categories: (1) cheaper, (2) more expensive, (3) about the same and (4) holy-hell-are you for-real-more expensive.

As stated before, our savings will comfortably last us about 15-18 months of living in splendor as we do now. If Gil decides not to buy the Bentley, take flying and rock climbing lessons, learn how to ride a Ducati Monster and go whale diving in the first month, that might just go up to 24 months. Apparently sometimes you have to make sacrifices and be boring... All in all, we're pretty confident that we'll be alright, budgeting our way to new found riches and we'll keep you posted on our adventurous expeditions into the realms of:

1) Cheaper

• Haircuts are more expensive for Yuum in general, but she rarely goes and they're about 30% cheaper for Gil. The average prices go from 26$ all the way up to 70$ but that might include all sorts of touching in inappropriate places, so 26$ it is every four weeks (yeah, looking this good has its price).
• Taxes are much less than in the Netherlands. Goods tax (BTW) is a 10% flat rate and income tax is 10% to 75k, 20% for 75-150k and after 150k, well, who cares...
• Carrots are cheaper by about 30% and we eat lots of those, same as tomatoes.
• Any frozen vegetable (except for mushrooms) are about 20-40% cheaper, so helloooo mr. Freezer!
• Fuel for our to be car is 40% cheaper at 1,50$/ltr, so that's why everyone has a 4.0 liter engine.
• Apple TV is 25% cheaper (sorry Just, the laptops are still crazy expensive, but also very shiny).
• Health care is free (well, most of it) and it doesn't get any cheaper than that.
• Pizza delivery is 20% cheaper than over here, so we'll just have to sample every single one of them to see which one is good...

2) More expensive

• Housing is about 40% more expensive than in the Netherlands, which is what happens when you don't have "hypotheerente aftrek". Remember those low taxes? This is how they can do that.
• Visiting the cinema on any other day then Tuesday is 18$ vs 13$ here.
• Diet Coke tastes yuck and is about 30% more pricey than in Holland, but Gil might as well stop drinking it all together and then it doesn't matter if it's 3,30 or 300% more expensive, right?
• Any pre-cut and pre-packed food is about 100% more expensive, but that makes sense as it is the same in the Netherlands and everywhere else we've been. We'll just bring our fancy knives and dice and julienne the crap out of everything ourselves as long as we have the time.
• Toothpaste of any brand is about 20% more expensive, but the measured content and brands are so different that we'll just have to shop around anyway. For now Gil bought 6 packs of Elmex that should last him a while to span that testing phase.

3) About the same (and therefore boring so summarized)
Milk, bread, onions, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, monthly phone plans, internet, home appliances, kung fu training, toilet paper and computers. Incredible but true, Australians are still waiting for fair-use policy on their internet connections, so they actually have monthly 10, 50 or 100Gb or more data  plans. Wow, how "welcome to the dark ages of the internet".

4) Holy-hell-are-you-for real?!

• Mushrooms are 300% as expensive as in the Netherlands, not because they're imported, probably just because Ozzies hate mushrooms and you can't blame 'em right? right?! Then again, we're talking dollars, not 100's of 'em and haters will hate.
• Barbeques are about 100% more expensive. For everyone who does not understand that, think back to middle school and the law of demand and supply. High demand means high price and where moms in Holland show of their jewelry, designer clothing and other luxury items, Yuum will show of her Premium Beefmaster 6 Burner BBQ and/or BeefEater Signature 3000e. How's that for seamless integration, huh?!
• Eggs are 60% more expensive and that's when you buy them in 30's at a time. Now, Gil loves eggs, but 30 a week is a bit much even for his taste. Hopefully the chickens have a 8 bedroom villa with a private garden, a spa and fitness facilities where they can relax, kick back and every once in a while lay an egg, but only if they feel like it, no pressure. Yeah, not very likely.
• Cheese of any sort is 40-70%  more expensive and the variety is approximately 55 of what you can get in any corner shop in the Netherlands, so yeah, Gil's screwed.
• 'Real' Yogurt is about  300% more expensive and the variety is just silly restricted. Unless you want sugared or flavored yogurt, then you can have 1,000,000 different types. They have a 'Greek style' that is about as Greek as Macedonia, but if this is the worst they can do, Gil says: Bring.It.