Inspired by an AskUK reddit post, what is cheaper to buy in Australia than overseas?
First thing off the top of my head is our artificially stasis-locked Coles/Woolies milk prices.
Edit: Since the genuine answer in real $ is going to be.. nothing, I'll rephrase the question to what is cheaper relative to our mean/median income than in other countries?
We have too many sentient peanuts.
Alcohol in the UK is half the price. 9pounds for a 12 pack of 500ml strongbow. So $16. There cans are all 500ml not the 2 mouthful 375 here in Oz.
Omega-3 fish oils is the only thing I can think of haha
One thing that really struck me when I moved here from the UK was how cheap it was to go out for food. My wife and I were bony-arse broke before we found jobs here, but we could still go out to our local Vietnamese for a bowl of pho each, pick up an $8 bottle of wine along the way and the total spend for our night out would be about $25. And it was good food! Miles better than what you'd get from some greasy spoon in London.
Pho / Bun cha / Com tam for $2-3aud at my local (living in Vietnam). $8 seems really cheap for Aus though, my local pho joint in Sydney would charge 14.95!
Pho now is like $16 for a decent bowl, just a few years ago, the same place was $11 (SE Melbourne)
Yeah this was a few years ago now…
Agreed, dining out, wine and coffee are way cheaper in Aus than London
Pub meal outside of London is like £10-12. The rest of the UK isn't so bad
Clean, organic food. Try buying the same in China. Even the locals are still afraid of milk powder, well over a decade after the melamine contamination disaster.
Concrete is cheaper to buy in Australia for Australians than buying in and importing from overseas….
Technology on sale - ie. PC Parts, Console game day 1 releases
Perfume
Fresh Fruit and Vegetables
Mobile plans relative to Canada/US (you can get 45GB for $25/month on Kogan)
Anything that isn't a white sniffable substance
This made me chuckle. Especially after doing a working holiday in Canada…
A Tesla?
In the UK the Model 3 SR+ is 40,990 GBP drive away which google says is around: $76,435.08 AUD today.
Model 3 SR+ in oz atm is around $64,000 AUD drive away depending on the state before government subsidies. Add the subsidies in and you can get one for under $60k in NSW.
In the US, they're $39,990 which is around $54,122 AUD, so ours are still not quite as cheap as the US.
Coffee .
The coffee in Asia is 2x more expensive and they taste bad.
Which part of Asia did you go? "Cafe sua da" in Vietnam only like 50c
Coffee is expensive as hell, would rather drink coal
Drinking coal might be the only use for it pretty soon, with the way the global coal market is going…
Voss water?
Meat is quite cheap in Aus
Pork and chicken is cheap. Beef is at record high prices atm - still affordable but not cheap depending on the cut. Lamb sorta pricey for what it is.
Property, really. This is Australia , ranked 97 in 111 countries
https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count…
I think people saying property is cheap mean relative to local wages.
Experienced electricians are only taking home $25,000=$40,000 in Eastern Europe our apprentice sparkies get paid more.
Maybe Breville coffee machines.
Antivaxxers and all kinds of Karens are a dime a dozen here
With the exception of first party Sony games on PS5, console video games on launch are actually pretty cheap.
LPG.
Petrol (compares to Europe, not everywhere).
Kangaroo meat.
Avocados (at the moment).
Second hand things like furniture (because we're a wealthy and materialistic society people give a lot of stuff away or sell for nearly nothing).
Slang.
Kias - for some reason they were cheapest in the world for a while when they were trying to get their reputation up. A few years ago you could buy a Cerato for 20k, which was cheaper than in the US. They have put prices up slightly now.
Lobsters.
Home loans.
I'll second time petrol and second hand and even new furniture and homewares (my comparison is smaller island countries)
Our lobster prices are not cheap, even with the china debacle making it better. In the US the prices can be below $10 a Kilo off the docks, even now they are below $20AU a kilo.
When I lived in Toronto for a few months, I found that rent, milk, butter, decent lattes, bread and eating out in general was more expensive there compared to here when you compare it to how much you earn… (we were earning like $12p/h CAD and having tax and then tips added to the price you saw advertised sucked. I would be pissed if Australia tried to implement this).
I’m comparing it with The Netherlands. I’m from and has a fairly comparable economy and “Euro for Dollar” median and average income.
From my experience some cheaper products are:
Definitely petrol and cars with larger, more polluting engines.
Certain more expensive clothing brands that I like to buy. Mostly from sites like Matches fashion and MrPorter. Interetingly often shipped from the UK.
Electronics in general, higher priced premium products like Apple products in particular.
Candy, anything with lots of sugar, and fast food are a lot cheaper here.
Going out for diner, especially mid tier restaurants. (Not to mention the quality is so much better here.)
I think that’s about it. If we wait a bit longer I could see the exorbitant real estate prices here being surpassed by especially Amsterdam. That’s just just as insane as it is here at the moment.
Most of the loss leaders or break even items that supermarkets sell. I'm not sure if they actually are loss leaders or break evens, but if not they'd be close.
When visiting other countries I've noticed these are more expensive a lot of the time.
Cars in Australia vs Singapore….. actually any where in the world vs Singapore
$25k Toyota costs $100k in Singapore
so what you're saying is , i need to open a car dealership in Singapore and start importing 25k Toyota's
You need to sleep me too
Anything tech related such as PS5, iphone, computer monitor, etc, is cheaper in Switzerland. Media contents like Spotify, Netflix, PS plus subscription is more expensive.
Everything else is more expensive in Switzerland but my taxes are much lower and my take home pay is incredibly higher.
Not something you can buy, but we have free public use gas BBQ's throughout the country.
Pretty much nothing if you compare it to the western world.
Restrooms
1 euro to use any public restroom
Coffee is MUCH cheaper in Australia. $3.50 for a flat white vs. min £2.80 ($5.25) in the UK.
Video games (at least on PC) aren't too bad. The standard release price on a game in USA is $60 USD or higher. I usually pay close to $60 AUD on a new game.
Asian cars and electronics in a lot of cases are cheaper here than Europe
But they are way more expensive than the US.
Ice cream in general is quite cheap in Australia.
Vitamins, fish oil, and general supplementary type health pills are cheap here compare with the same brand in overseas.
Definitely cafe coffee, to anywhere probably except Italy. In South Korea it's generally double the price and the quality is a lot more variable.
Maccas is cheaper here relative to income than some countries like Asia.
I don't know about that. Other high income Asian countries like Singapore, Taiwan, UAE, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong are cheaper than Australian McDonalds.
Cheaper but doesn't mean it has to be significantly cheaper. I can't speak for most that you have mentioned, but certainly not cheaper relative to income in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam. In most of these countries, families go to Maccas/KFC as a family treat.
I woundn't generally label Singapore or Hong Kong high income for everyone. There is still a large demographic who would not be considered 'high income'. With their income, it would be more worthwhile to get a full meal at a hawker centre than a value meal at Maccas.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/274326/big-mac-index-glo…
I'm surprised by the "coffee" answers.
I remember having 2 Euro (AUD 3.30) coffee in Germany, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. It's three years ago though.
I guess everything is relative. We need a particular country to compare to Australia. Coffee is cheaper in developing countries, but electronics are generally cheaper here, but even cheaper in the US.
Look at the price of the iPhone in Brazil:
https://themacindex.com/lines/iphone?currency=USD
The minimum wage there is less than USD 200 a month! You have to work 8 months to pay for the most expensive iPhone on that list.
Same, I drank a lot of coffee while travelling Europe a few years ago and didn't notice high coffee prices. I do remember coffee being very cheap in Italy and excellent everywhere except the Milan Train station. Coffee in Switzerland was almost non-existent. But everywhere else was ok.
Red Meat, poultry and vegetables overall are cheaper here than island countries I've spent time in, especially when you factor median wage. Obviously theres always the exception but we farm a lot more of our own meat and veg whereas island countries often have to import much of their meats and veg from neighbouring countries. Eg Mauritius, fiji, madagascar.
Quality milk. Milk in most other countries overseas is trash.
nope
Agree with this. Fresh mulk as well as milk alternatives are cheaper than island countries. There's a reason powdered milk is still consumed in smaller island countries.
Kitchen appliances - $7 for kettle, toaster, sandwich maker. Almost sound like they are the disposable type!
They basically are
Beef and Lobsters cost double in China
Also Penfolds
hmmm I wonder why that is
stares at all eternal, master of everything CCP government
Pineapples! it costs like x8 more in my country of origin.
Nothing… it is a complete rip off.
I shop as much as possible for OS items and have them shipped in.
What a rip off of a country and here they are crying that they are out of business
This. If you compare with a single country there will be examples of items subject to higher taxes and therefore cheaper in Oz. But even in areas of economic advantage for basic foods, the end consumer is ripped off in Australia (and in every other single market segment).
Prob the only thing we beat other parts of the world in is solar energy. Both from solar irradiance and days of sunshine. Which means you get a great return on solar panels by not being ripped off for electricity (but will still be ripped off by connection charges).
Could you please share some examples of what/where you are buying from OS?
Japanese , Chinese & Korean cars are cheaper here but European cars are cheaper in Europe. But I found Japanese 1 tonne utes are cheaper in Europe.
You also can buy a lot of smaller cars which we do not get here including small commercial cars , vans and utes.
I have a conspiracy theory that they pulled a lot of popular small cars from the Australian market ,like the Pulsar, Jazz and Accent even though they were top 20 sellers because our wages are high enough that we would just buy small SUVs which make more profit for dealers. Its frustrating if you just need a nice little car to drive and park in the inner suburbs.
Too hard to compete with the Korean/Japanese cars, when it comes to price and maintence
I looked at European small car's just too expensive.
Volkswagon Polo is pretty popular.
Mazda is extremely popula here, and their insurance is insiginicant compared to everyone else
Nissan was dumb and killed the Pulsar by renaming it the Tida and then when the Pulsar name came back it had the bad Jatco CVTs i don't blame people for not buying them and i am Nissan fan boy i owned a N14 and N15 pulsar great cars both where SR20s. It seem most car companies have had bad gearboxes at some point but Nissan done a Ford lol.
Its people who wanted the small SUVs i will get negged but they are garbage cars, same engines and drive trains as a small/ medium sedan or hatch only slightly bigger internally they weight a ton more (not literally) , cost more to maintain use more fuel and are slower and handle worse. Could of owned a Commodore or Falcon and used the same amount of fuel had more space and more power. Car companies must be laughing.
Ice
Coffee machines
maybe beef - some years back in Japan I saw a pack of Australian rump steak in a supermarket freezer - 1kg for $10
beside packs of Japanese thin-sliced wagyu beef for $100 per kg - in 100g packs for $10
but in that environment the idea of eating a large lump of steak felt excessive and vaguely disgusting
and I would have bought the 100g of Japanese wagyu beef as convenient and right-sized for that environment
Goon (cask wine)
Dell S2721DGF
What Is Cheaper to Buy in Australia than Overseas? (Relative to Income)
State Premiers apparently. (Just ask Xi Jinping about Dear Leader Dan.)
Solar system in Australia is one of the cheapest due to government subsidy at State and federal level, the downside is that the market is flooded with cheap Chinese inverters and panels. A decent 5K system costs $5000-$7000 in Australia usually costs $11k in the usa (source: Jerry rigs every thing YouTube, micro inverter enphase system)
The Aus market is flooded with dodgy fly by night solar installers promoted by washed up cricketers selling as you mentioned cheap Chinese crap
just wait for the wave of E-waste from all the trash panels and inverters
from American perspective - lattes, breville Espresso Machine and Dell S2721DGF on sale prices. everything else super expensive
Compared to NZ, the below stuff are 'relatively' cheaper here ( 1 AUD buys 1.03 NZD | Almost parity )
- Fuel ( $2 + NZD )
- House prices in Auckland
- Milk
- Eating out
- Bananas ( Mostly mported from S.America )
& many more
I say relatively because the average salary there is much lower for the same trade/job/industry. I still love going there for a holiday :-)
I thought bananas are 'normally' a bit expensive here at around $4/kg. Of course cheaper when on sale though. It's one of the cheapest fruits worldwide.
Carrots. They are never over $1.50/kilo
Not much!
Plumbing and construction costs :D
Carrots, Mobile phone plans, wine, maintainung a car (no antifreeze, no winter tires, no cold startups, )
Meat, especially pork. The other day I casually mentioned to my mum that I bought pork mince for $11/2kg and she remarked that’s cheaper than what she pays (and the difference in our incomes is about 5 times).
Vitamin on half price.
Milk. I don’t have a lot of frames of reference, but good quality full cream milk in my home country, Australia and Japan costs generally the same, however Australia has the highest average wage.
Pizza is the only thing i noticed was a lot more expensive in the states than here. Not uncommon to pay $6 or more per slice there, but id say 2 slices would roughly be about the equivalent of a whole dominos large pizza here.
Little Caesar’s in America have large pizzas for $5(excluding tax) everyday, they’re 30% larger than Dominos here and comparable quality.
I think American Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papas are superior quality than our equivalent chains.
Is that for one topping? The equivalent of dominos $5 value range over here.
Most pizza in America is very basic. Pepperoni and cheese or sausage and cheese, or just cheese are three of the more common ones.
Just checked their supreme is $11 and classic pepperoni is $6. That's for the Fresno California store. That's USD and before sales tax. So yeah the price of pizza here is very competitive.
I use to eat alot of Oportos….this one time i went straight 2 weeks eating Oportos everyday and then felt sick for a few days….
Now i have it everyone 2 or 3 months :)
Wrong thread? I think you meant to post in the “fast food you don’t eat anymore” thread. Lol
I think you're in the wrong thread bro.
Europe random lounge chairs in a park = 8 euros
Australia random lounge chairs in Darling Quarter = FREE
Paracetamol is cheaper (compared to Germany).
Politicans.
My example is of the location where there are plenty of industries, offices and employment. What you have shown are the places where it's struggle find even a minimum wage job. Comparison has to be between apples to apples. Unfortunately, barring Sydney and Melbourne, employment opportunities are no where comparable to the top 30 cities of the US and still their properties are so much cheaper.
@virhlpool: The unemployment rate of Darwin, Perth and Dallas is similar? I can't be bothered to find a source for it, but I suspect the purchasing power parity would be higher for Darwin and Perth too with how Texas treats its bottom class citizens.
They buy properties here because australia is a better place to retire and you get more value for money when purchasing property here. In the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai you’d pay between $1-$2m for a very small 3 bedroom apartment in a very average suburb whereas in Australia you could get a big house in a good suburb.
Another big thing is the education. The Chinese immigrate here so their children have a better chance of attending University as the education here is a lot less competitive than in China and it’s easier to get into their preferred courses.
And also the obvious stuff like better drinking water, less air pollution, and not having to worry about dodgy food items like poisonous baby milk powder.