In 2020, as New Zealand locked down for the first time, families in the Rest of South Island. everywhere from Timaru to Oamaru, from Ashburton to Greymouth. spent $12,464 on groceries for the year. That's $240 a week. Nobody thought much of it at the time. We had bigger problems.

Then 2021 arrived. Borders stayed shut. Supply chains buckled. The grocery bill crept up to $12,775. An extra $311 for the year. Annoying, but manageable. You adjusted. Bought homebrand. Skipped the treats.

2022 was different. That's when things accelerated. $13,795. A thousand-dollar jump in a single year. Every shop felt more expensive because it was. Global inflation hit. Shipping costs exploded. Fruit and vegetables that used to come from Australia suddenly cost twice as much. You started noticing the price of cheese, of mince, of bread.

By 2023, the bill hit $15,132. Another $1,337 on top. Two years of price rises that felt relentless. Checkout totals that made you double-check the receipt. Weeks where you put things back because the trolley total was already too high.

This year? $15,380. The increase finally slowed. just $248 more than last year. But here's what matters: that $15,380 is 23% higher than 2020. Over those five years, New Zealand's inflation ran at roughly 20-25%. (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-regional)

Which means in real terms, families in rural South Island are spending almost exactly what they spent five years ago. The number got bigger. Your buying power didn't.

But that's not how it feels, is it? Because your wages didn't jump 23% in lockstep with food prices. Because rates went up. Because power bills climbed faster than inflation. Because mortgage rates doubled. The grocery bill is just one line item, but it's the one you see every week, the one that reminds you how much tighter everything got.

The story these five years tell isn't complicated. 2020 to 2021: slow burn. 2022: acceleration. 2023: the peak pain. 2024: stabilisation, but at a permanently higher level. And all those adjustments you made. the cheaper cuts, the homebrand staples, the meals stretched across two nights. they became permanent too.

Because even if prices stop rising tomorrow, they're not coming back down. $15,380 is the new baseline. That's $296 a week. Every week. For the rest of your life, unless something fundamental changes about how food gets to rural New Zealand.

Five years. Three thousand dollars. And the feeling that your money doesn't buy what it used to, because it doesn't.