Article: Things we've ditched since the financial crisis

According to this article, " AUSTRALIANS have taken the financial knife to dry cleaning, expensive dinners and donations to charities – and it’s all thanks to the global financial crisis."

Apparently, shoppers are shopping more in Target than high-end boutiques, they're ditching fine dining restaurants in favour of eating at home, taking domestic holidays rather than international ones, opting for cheaper brands of wine and are foregoing expensive dry-cleaning costs.

Here's my take on all of those (True or False):

1. I've always shopped at Target and K-mart. Although I can drop $300 for a dress, I'm not a shop snob. But now that I have a shopping budget, I'd probably go for more good quality items say a $50 top that I would wear for a year compared to three $15 tops that will probably disintegrate after 3 or more washes. FALSE

2. I don't think I've ever finely dined actually and I'm thinking of restaurants like Tetsuya's ($195 per person for a degustation meal), Aria, Pilu or Quay which would probably be around $150 per person for a three-course meal and not including the wine for which the cheapest bottle would be around $80. So no, I'm not a fine dining person.

J & I don't mind having a good meal out though for about $50-60 per person if there's a special occasion. Lately though, we have eating at home a lot. Just a year ago, we would probably eat out 3 or 4 times a week but that was probably because we didn't have a proper kitchen. We had 2 burners on top of a table where we also ate but now that we have a good kitchen, we cook more and eat out only once a week (around $25 each). TRUE-ish

3. Travelling in Australia is expensive! It's such a big country that is far remote from anywhere else. That being said, if I was going travelling for 2 or more weeks, I'd rather go to Asia or any of the other Pacific Islands. Three weeks in an Asian country (not Japan) would probably be comparable to one week of travelling in Australia. In other words, travelling here is a rip-off! And the service overseas is also a lot better. FALSE

4. We're not big wine drinkers and we only get a bottle when we're going out for dinner with friends or visiting someone else's house for dinner. We do have a friend that can give us a dozen wines for $30 and they are high quality wines worth $25+ each. He gets them from an auction site. FALSE

5. Coats and blazers and sometimes pants are the only things I take to the dry cleaners and that's probably a once a year occurence. After winter, I get all my coats drycleaned so I can store them for another year, that would probably cost around $50. FALSE

I guess we're not the average Australian then! Probably because the average Australian is broke!