Is life really more expensive for my whānau of three at the moment? I honestly wasn’t 100% sure. So, I decided to find out - in detail. Why? Economically speaking, it feels incredibly gloomy at the moment. It would be easy to fall into that mindset, which, as an optimist, I am loath to do. So, the best option is to find some facts. Managing personal finances is a delicate art of pulling various income and spending levers, and I wondered if all that I’m doing is working. To calculate what our life currently costs, I pulled up two full years of spending and earning data and compared them; the results were interesting.