A Math Lesson

I was at the market today to get some things for dinner these next two nights.  Everyone here shops almost daily because they want their produce and meats and fish etc to be fresh.  They do not like frozen meats I guess.  We have kind of gotten into the habit of going often ourselves.  I thought I would give you a math lesson today.

First off, every  price, no matter what it is that you are paying for, includes a tax.  It is called GST.  The receipts (which they pronounce with the p and the t at the end) show what that amount is.  If you go to a restaurant the price that you pay includes GST and Tip!  So it is not as expensive as it first appears.  That having been said, here in the math lesson.

I bought carrots.  They were on sale for $0.75 per kilo.    A kilo is 2.2 US pounds.  The money is $1 NZD to $0.80 USD.  So they were $0.29 per pound, including tax.  I thought that was a pretty good price.  Yellow onions were the same price.  I did not worry about GST on the carrots.

I bought two small steaks.  They are kind of like a ribeye.  They were on sale.  OK...let's do the math.  They are normally $30.99 per kilo.  Of that, $4.46 was GST .  They were on sale for $28.99 per kilo with $4.34 GST.  When you do the conversion into USD it was normally $24.99 less $3.75 GST or $21.99 for the meat per kilo.  So I got .4555 kilos which is 1 pound of meat.  When you divide it all up and subtract the GST I ended up paying $9.99UDS for the two steaks.  Now I am not sure you can really subtract the GST but in the US they would have added it back in so we maybe not as pricy as it first appear.

I also bought two boneless chicken breasts.  They were on sale as well.  They are normally $21.99 NZD less $3.30 equals $18.66 NZD.  They were on sale for $17.99 NZD less $2.70 to equal $15.22 NZD.  That comes to $12.57 USD.  OK, I bought .507 kilos which is just over a pound so I paid about $5.50 USD.  So I guess one can come to the conclusion that it costs a bit of moeny to live and eat here, that is unless it is carrots and onions!

I am sure someone is going to tell me that I have fuzzy math here.  That is certainly a real possibility.  I will not be offended if I am corrected on it but I would think you probably have more important things to do with your time right now....like listening to Anne Romney.