You've read the headlines: households are putting spending on ice because bills keep climbing. Power, rates, insurance. Everything costs more.

But here's what those stories miss: not every bill is accelerating at the same rate. And in one region, the grocery bill that was spiralling out of control has suddenly hit the brakes.

The Rest of South Island, a statistical region covering everywhere outside the main centres, saw annual grocery costs rise by $248 in 2024, reaching $15,380 per household. (Source: Stats NZ, food-price-index-regional)

That's still an increase. But compare it to the previous year: 2023 saw costs jump by $1,337. The year before that? Another $1,020. In 2024, the increase was barely a fifth of what it was in 2023.

This is the tension nobody's talking about. Yes, groceries cost more than ever. A household in rural Canterbury or coastal Otago is spending over $15,000 a year on food. That's brutal. But the rate at which it's getting worse has collapsed.

Go back five years. In 2020, during the first COVID lockdowns, the average Rest of South Island household spent $12,464 on groceries. By 2022, that had jumped to $13,795. Then 2023 hit, and suddenly it was $15,132. Year after year, hundreds of dollars vanishing into the supermarket checkout.

But 2024 broke the pattern. The $248 increase is the smallest annual jump since 2020, when the entire country was in lockdown and inflation hadn't yet kicked in.

So why are people still feeling crushed? Because even though grocery inflation slowed, everything else didn't. Power bills, insurance premiums, council rates. Those are the costs driving households to freeze discretionary spending, exactly as RNZ reported. Groceries might have eased off, but the overall cost-of-living squeeze is tighter than ever.

And here's the other side of the tension: $248 is still $248. For a household already stretched thin, finding an extra five dollars a week is the difference between buying fresh vegetables or reaching for the cheapest carbs. Even the slowest price growth in four years doesn't mean relief. It just means the pain is arriving more slowly.

The Rest of South Island isn't an outlier, either. This region has historically tracked close to the national average. If grocery price growth is slowing here, it's slowing elsewhere too. But that won't show up in your power bill. It won't show up when your insurance renews. And it definitely won't show up in the headlines about households cutting back.

The story isn't that groceries got cheaper. They didn't. The story is that one massive cost finally stopped accelerating, just as every other bill in your life started climbing faster.