New Zealanders are freezing their spending as soaring bills bite, but here's the tension: while households cut back everywhere else, grocery bills in the rest of the South Island climbed $383 last year alone. (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-regional)

That's the story the food price data tells. In 2024, the average household outside Christchurch and Canterbury spent $15,380 on groceries. The year before? $15,132. The year before that? $13,795.

This is the cost you can't defer. You can postpone the new couch, skip the holiday, drive the car another year. But you still need to eat. And in regional South Island towns, from Timaru to Invercargill to Queenstown, that bill just keeps climbing.

Here's what makes this number sting: 2024 was supposed to be the year things eased. The Reserve Bank cut interest rates three times. Inflation fell. Petrol prices dropped. Yet grocery bills in these regions rose faster than they did the year before.

Between 2023 and 2024, the increase was $248. Between 2022 and 2023, it was $1,337. The pace varies, but the direction never changes. Up.

Wind the clock back to 2020, and households in these regions spent $12,464 on groceries. Four years later, they're spending $2,916 more. That's an extra $56 a week, every week, for four years straight.

This is why New Zealanders are putting spending on ice. When your non-negotiable costs climb by nearly three thousand dollars in four years, something else has to give. The discretionary budget gets squeezed until there's nothing left to cut.

The numbers also reveal something about regional inequality. Auckland households now spend $15,553 on groceries annually. The rest of the South Island? $15,380. The gap is just $173. Regional New Zealand is paying nearly as much as the country's largest, most expensive city, but without the wage premium that comes with living there.

Every region tells a version of this story, but the South Island's smaller towns and cities face a particular bind. Fewer supermarkets. Less competition. Higher transport costs for goods. And now, grocery bills that rival the big centres without the economic engine to absorb them.

So yes, households are freezing their spending. They're holding off on everything they can. But groceries? That bill arrives every week, and it's $383 higher than it was twelve months ago. No amount of interest rate cuts changes that.