High cost of a singular lifestyle

"You're lucky, you don't have any responsibilities. You can do what you want and spend your money however you want."

It's the oft-heard lament of the married-with-children to their singleton friends. And there is no doubt, the married or coupled state generates demand on the participants' time, resources and self control in ways they could have never imagined when love was first in the air.

But these days it also usually brings with it two incomes and, by the sheer laws of arithmetic, a halving of the bills and doubling of the assets. There will be many a single person out there who would love to say to their curmudgeonly coupled mates, "sure, have my freedom, but take my bills while you're at it".

The likes of city councils, power retailers, internet service providers and insurance companies do not have singles rates. The cost of utilities connections and buying a new washing machine when the old one packs up are all the same.

A 38-year-old single friend looked at her gas and electricity bills this time last winter - when her ex was not only living in the house but running a business out of the spare room - to discover that her energy costs had reduced by a mere 20 per cent, despite the number of users halving.

"It's definitely harder to get ahead when you're by yourself," says Joy Scandlyn of New Zealand Financial Planning Company. "You have the same living costs that simply don't change. You actually have to focus very hard on getting ahead."

Scandlyn says everyone should be putting their spending under the microscope, but "if you're by yourself and there's not much of a surplus at the end of the month, you need to be looking much harder."

It's familiar territory to 36-year-old radio promotions manager Emma Freeman. Her townhouse is one of eight in a leafy complex in Auckland's St Heliers which she and her mostly single neighbours like to call "Melrose Place". She says they pay the price of living in such pleasant surrounds - their half-yearly body corporate fee has just gone up from $515 to $1800.

"If you want to live in a decent area on your own you're going to have to take into account things like body corporate fees and living in close proximity to others," Freeman says. She had returned from England to the eastern suburbs, full of hope about what she would be able to buy. "I had visions of a nice little ex-state, solid as." Then she started house-hunting. "You look around, and some of the crap they wanted $300,000 for - and these were units! I soon realised I wasn't going to get a stand-alone house."

Sibling share

Cabinet-maker Brian Gunn, 32, does own a stand-alone house, a stylish Mt Albert bungalow in fact, but he owns it with his brother Michael because that makes it "a truckload easier. I wouldn't have been able to do it by myself." The brothers have a 35 per cent/65 per cent split on the property - "because he earns a heap more than me" - and pay the mortgage accordingly. "I was comfortable with that proportion. I felt I could pay the mortgage and still do the bits and pieces that I like doing," says Gunn, a keen fisher and hunter.

He works a fairly standard two hours a day overtime. "I do the hours to try to pay for things. The way I look at it is, I love going out and doing my fishing and hunting, and I keep doing the overtime so I can afford to go out and do these things."

Freeman knows what he means. "When I bought my place I wasn't going to stretch myself to the limit, because I want to be able to say, yes, I'll come out to that movie," she says. "You like that freedom of not having to live on a shoestring."

It's also a familiar feeling for 35-year-old Robyn Hooper, who now works four days a week doing accounts for a retirement village. She's about to get married, but owned her home on her own for many years and had the high-powered job to pay for it. She bought her first unit at age 24 with significant family help, and says she wouldn't have been able to even get on the ladder that early without it. "It's hard sometimes to have a good social life because your income's going into your mortgage." She says at end-of-the-month bill time, "there wasn't as much disposable cash".

Coupledom has allowed her the freedom to drop the stressful job and make a career change. "The household still has a higher income than my high-paying job. I wouldn't be able to do what I'm doing now if we weren't living as a couple."

Family help is something Spicers senior manager Jeff Matthews is not shy about advocating.

He says he's just been doing some financial planning for his 21-year-old niece. "My advice to her was, stay at home as long as possible and let my brother pay for things."

In all seriousness, he says couples tell him they can live on one wage and save the other, and that's how they get a deposit for a house together. Often they'll also treat student loans as a joint debt. "When you're down to one income, it's not like your living expenses are half. Unless you're on an above average income it's going to be extremely difficult."

Matthews advises the young to live at home or go flatting to keep costs down, and to "save like buggery. It's a bit like being an athlete - if you're aiming for the next Olympics you set that timeline and work backwards. You need that kind of focus."

Saving is one side of the equation, but costs are the other. Impossible as it is to halve the insurance premiums or the vehicle registration, there are other quirky expenses single people identify. As a single gal, Emma Freeman says it's DIY that gets her. It's either ask her long-suffering father to come around yet again, or pay a tradesman. She recalls coming back from two weeks overseas to hear what sounded like a tap running somewhere. "It took me a week to work out what it was and it was the overflow to outside. This is the hot water and it had been running like a tap for a week."

The hidden costs for blokes apparently arise in different categories. Brian Gunn, who has been married, says he comes unstuck over sartorial matters. He says this unwillingness to maintain clothing ends up costing him money. He recently found himself needing to dress smartly for a Saturday night function. "I'm not overly hot on ironing. So I went down the road and spent $60 on a shirt."

The one cost area all singletons bemoan equally is travel. Travel agents agree the industry isn't catering to the needs of the solo traveller. House of Travel retail director Brent Thomas says accommodation is usually based on a twin-share price, cruises charge single supplements that can range up to 100 per cent, and car rental is car rental no matter how many people are riding. "That's where we get a number of inquiries from customers wanting to know if there's someone who wants to go with them."

A cursory look at the statistics shows singletons are a growing bunch, and the travel industry is behind the times. Statistics New Zealand says the number of one-person households will increase from 333,000 in 2001 to 488,000 in 2021. This is due to an ageing population and, to a lesser extent, a lower marriage rate. Last year, the marriage rate was 13.2 per 1000 unmarried adults - in 1971 that figure was 45.5 per 1000.

Flight Centre communications manager John McGuinness says while the industry is not yet doing an adequate job of meeting singles' needs, it is starting to happen. "There are definitely ways to cater for it. You just need to be a bit smarter about it."

He says that in the United States and Europe, reasonably priced accommodation in university halls of residence is an option. John McGuinness says there are singles cruises, package tours and resorts - Beachcomber Island in Fiji is an obvious example. "It's knowing the particular accommodation places and tour groups."