People most often ask how much should the acceptable salary be if working in Auckland.  Or probably any city.  This is a tricky question.  The best way to answer is to determine the decent living expenditure.

 

Living Expenses

Below is the calculation of expenses for people living in Auckland Central.  This is an actual data so accuracy is 99.99%.

You might be a bit skeptical on the Allowance+Fare of $123 per week. Food needs to be cooked at home and bring it over to work. Discard the unnecessary food spending and concentrate on the essentials. This is a budget for each person on a 3 people sharing environment. These calculations are based on real-life living for the last 5 years. Try to experiment on your cooking. Who knows you might even save more.

 

Salary and Taxation

Now that you’ve determine the expenses, the next step is to calculate your net pay. To calculate the net pay, use the IRD calculator.  This will breakdown the taxes deducted from your salary.  Let’s consider the minimum wage of $15.75/hour. Check for updated minimum wage here.  The illustration below is the actual calculation taken from IRD.

Savings

At the end of the day, it’s not about how much you earn but how much you save.  With the calculations above, the minimum wage gives you a net savings of $11,758.12.  That’s a hefty amount in year.

Unaccounted Expenses

The data presented above are for people who doesn’t have any other liabilities or expenditures.  These may include mortgages, remittances, tithes(be faithful with this aspect), vacation and others.  Now that you know how to calculate, then you can factor in your liabilities.  I’ll leave that to you as each individual has his own liabilities.

Desired Salary

Having been informed of the figures above, you can now determine if the salary offer is worth it or not.  It all boils down to the expenses and the savings.