Dialogue: Running in rat race costs a lot

By SANDY BURGHAM

I have a mild dose of what was revealed last week as the Madame Bovary syndrome. Like the Duchess of York but on a smaller scale, I love parting with money and coming home with bags of stuff.

To cure me of my addiction, or simply to ease the symptoms, I have discovered the $2 shop. Like many, I now prefer it to other bargain-basement, Warehouse-style stores. Rather than having to wait for a real purpose to go into the shop, you simply walk in and beg it to relieve you of some of your silly old cash in $2 increments.

But what I have found in my $2 spending sprees is that everything in the world actually costs only $2 - toys, drinking glasses, hairbrushes, incense. Impulse stuff that you don't need but always seem to buy has, in fact, the same value. As the saying goes, "Why pay more?"

The first answer to this is that it seems we are either too busy, lazy or tired to search out a bargain.

We seem to prefer just to work a little harder to pay more.

When we were children, our parents would announce we were going for a "drive in the car", and we would make achingly boring trips out west to buy fruit.

We would have to eat our way through boxes of Granny Smiths and red delicious apples, a race against time before they went off.

While my parents' generation would still drive for miles to get a bargain, their offspring have not inherited the same coupon-clipping mentality. We willingly pay more for instant gratification, no questions asked.

As the service station advertisements remind us, "Need food now?" Yes, not in 30 minutes (the time it would take to go somewhere cheaper) but right now. Why wait?

I live close to both a decile 1 and a decile 10 neighbourhood, if they were rated.

In the decile 1 suburb there's a great bakery that sells pies for a dollar and bread for even less. Half a mile away its rich cousin has the same fare for triple the cost and half the quality.

But as the latter is two minutes' travel nearer to my home, I more often than not continue with the expensive and vaguely more convenient option.

But here is the second reason we seem to pay more than we should: most places tax us for the mere fact that they are located in Auckland.

An upwardly mobile Auckland couple I know recently dined in Matamata (just passing through), searching out the most Ponsonby-like cafe they could find (to ease their pain).

After a very satisfactory lunch for two, including a couple of decent lattes, they were chuffed to receive a bill for a modest $11.

On a recent trip to Hastings I went to a much-loved, historic ice-cream parlour, home of New Zealand's most famous hand-made ice cream. It was Sunday and there was a bit of a rush on, as the residents of small-town New Zealand communed under the various awnings, obediently waiting to savour one of their favourite exports to the big smoke.

The earnest ice-cream gals focused heavily on the quality-control aspect of the job, not letting a growing throng pressure them into short-cutting the process of creating elaborate concoctions.

Fifteen minutes, one chocolate macadamia nut sundae and three cones (one of which was painstakingly sculpted into a peak shape) later, I was surprised to get change from a $10 note.

I imagined this scenario occurring in Auckland. Not only would the foot-tappers have interpreted careful and methodical ice-cream sculpting as bad service but there would have been no change out of a $20 note, let alone a $10 note.

We are used to paying Auckland prices for everything from houses to food, and accept it as the norm. Sure, there is nothing wrong with paying a premium if the view, service, general ambience or deliverables demand it. But there are times when simple location, location, location goes too far.

Last week I ordered a milkless, sugarless tea at a Herne Bay cafe.

I thought nothing of the $2.50 I spent until I pondered the teabag floating in water, considered the gross margin and reflected that maybe it was time to start carrying a thermos around, eventually taking the children to Disneyland with the savings.

We live in time-is-money days where the more we work, the more we have to work to pay for the things we buy with the money we work for.

It's called the Auckland rat race.