Any Sydney mums around?

[thatsnotmymonster]

I am getting pretty excited as it is looking increasingly likely that dh is about to be offered a job in Sydney (should know by next week). However, whether we are able to accept or not all depends on the salary package, particularly with th school fee issue- has anyone else moved and had the company pay the school fees?

We live in Scotland and so ds is in P1 but he will be 6 in March and dd1 is due to start school after the summer as she will be 5 in July. I don't know whether they should go into Yr 1 and 2 in Oz from when we move or whether they shoud go into Yr 1 and kindergarten. Do most people wait until the year the dc turns 6 or send them the year they turn 5?

The office is in Pyrmont and we are hoping to rent in a nearby suburb- I have been looking at Lilyfield, Five Dock, Drummoyne...can anyone recommend any other nice suburbs in that area or tell me if there are any to avoid?

Anything else I should know? If this happens we will be moving around April.

Thanks!

And on a most important note, don't be 40 weeks pregnant when the weather decides that it is going to do the heatwave thing - it's just not pretty! (On the plus side, I've never had washing dry as quickly as it did yesterday - it was faster than the tumble dryer would have been!)

Am so looking forward to tomorrow - I might actually be able to get some stuff done rather than having to be glued to the sofa with the air con on, and a fan on full blast!

Hope you get some news about some of the jobs soon. I agree with Lula though - things do sometimes seem to take forever to happen here - good in some ways, but highly frustrating in others!

Hooray! This weather is much better (it's dropped from 35 degrees this morning, to 20(ish) this afternoon). Much more pleasant and now all the windows are open as it's way cooler outside than inside.

I don't think I'll ever get used to the mad weather here though - I can't believe how quickly it's cooled down!

Pleased the weather is cooling down a bit for you 20C is usually about as hot as it gets in Scotland in the summer- that's all out paddling pool and bbq weather!

Not comfortable at all when you are 40wks pregnant Eralc! I was quite unlucky when I was 40wks pg with dd1 it was the hottest summer in Scotland for years- 33C the day she was born, which for Scotland is pretty rare!! Didn't get to enjoy it at all- what with being so pg and then having a newborn. I am definitely not planning on being pg ever again so should not, at least, have to deal with 40C AND 40wk pg

Thumb- I'll remember to stay near the coast if we ever get there. Hope you get a better sleep tonight.

So...for all of you who have been hanging around this thread and giving me all the good advice...

we opened the email this morning to find a JOB OFFER !!!!!

We are a bit shocked as we had almost given up hope!

However once again I am asking for advice-
the salary is less than we had hoped £110k + super and we will get Lafha too. I will not be working and we will have to get a loan for a car and things like that. So do you mums think this is manageable?? It's Newcastle by the way. I am thinking we could get a nice rental in/around Newcastle for $500/week? Am I right or way out?

Only thing is we would definitely have to get company to agree to cover school costs on top of this as no way could we afford them!

I'd really appreciate your thoughts!! Thanks again and maybe I really will see some of you soon!!!!

Congratulations to your DH! Yay!

I'm probably not best placed to answer the rental costs as I don't know what's "normal" for anywhere - but the pay doesn't sound too bad to me. DH is on about $65k (plus commission bonus depending on sales achieved) but we have no rent to pay (his mum owns our house). However, based on the $500pw you suggest, that would be about $26,000 a year, which would mean that DH woudl need to be earning $91k (plus bonuses) to match where we are now - which is actually pretty comfortable. But then we don't have school costs.

We bought a decent secondhand car for $14k when we arrived; that's the sort of figure, or possibly a few k more, that you'd be looking at - but does the company not give you a company car? I guess if your DH isn't in an "on the road" job, they wouldn't feel the need to.

Presumably the company will also contribute to/pay your relocation costs?

I assume you've already looked at www.realestate.com.au for rentals etc.; one thing I would say is do NOT be put off by the external look of a house (ugly-wise, if it looks scruffy that's more of an issue but not necessarily!) - they're not big on building beautiful exteriors here! (except older properties) Our house looks like absolute shite from the road but is quite nice inside, for e.g. . Also, having just done a quick search on Newcastle I would stay out of central Newcastle - go for the surrounding suburbs instead - much cheaper. But not Jesmond. Don't go there.

Thamks Thumb, great advice as usual!! Good to know about the salary- just want to make sure we have enough to cover our place at home in case we have periods where it is not let out- but hopefully that won't happen. The school thing is the real issue though!! It's a pain! Are there any small private schools in newcastle- I've heard they can be cheaper than $4500/year which the state school will cost?

Yes they will cover relocation costs and 4 weeks accommodation when we arrive but they have said $5k for shipping which will no way cover it and the same company are giving dh's colleague $12k shipping to move to Brisbane so we are obviously going to try to get that!!

The company offer salary sacrifice for a novated car lease so we will probably do that, I guess.

I have done plenty of searches on realestate.com and domain.au and I think $500 a week is reasonable.

We will only have ds at school this year and it will only be part of the year but come next year it will be 2 kids!!! That's $9k eeeek- pray the company will stump up the cash!!

Still excited though

Yay yay yay !!!!
We might go to Adelaide now as Dh doesn't seem to be able to get a job in melbourne and he earns way more than I do!! His company have a vacancy in Adelaide so we will see.
Congrats again and that salary would be enough. Dh earned that in melbourne and I didn't really work and we were ok.

Goodness - £12k for shipping?! What are they moving, a mansion?? My 3bed house cost around £3.8k to move over here, part-container so took 11weeks (although an acquaintance who used the same company says it took 4months for her stuff to arrive, also part-container - it took a while to fill the rest of the container!)

I don't know anything about schools in Newcastle or surrounds, sorry. But I wouldn't bank on private fees being cheaper any more - they're experiencing sharp increases of around 50% in some places at the moment!

Try to get the company to at least contribute to the school fees if you can. Or you could always try home-ed!

lulalullabye that's great news! hope it all works out for you. :)

Lula- am a bit jealous of Adelaide as I have friends there who are trying to tempt me there and we would have if the offer was there! However, if you are there that's another reason to come and visit

Thumb- do you stay up all night??? and the 12k is dollars not pounds and so is the 5k. I would expect it to be somewhere in between the two, though it is meant to cover storage in the uk and some other stuff like that too.

I will def try to get the company to pay/part pay school fees. I would home-ed but the kids LOVE school and I feel it would really help them settle in and also help me to get into a routine and meet people!

Whoops! Silly me for not reading the currency signs properly!

No, I'm not up all night, but if I go to bed too early, I tend to wake up at stupid o'clock and be unable to go back to sleep. Or I stay up until 1am-ish

Congratulation TNMM!!! I'm so pleased this has come through for you!

My DH earns the same as your DH will (although he usually gets a bonus of around $4-8K as well). We pay $600/week rent. One Kid at public school (so negligable fees for us), and one at pre school 3 days a week, approx 40 weeks a year (=$120/week so, approx $5000/year).

We have 2 cars - one we own (be aware that new and 2nd hand cars are more expensive here than UK), and one we lease/buy on a Novated lease. Get your DH to ask his new employer if they do these - many big firms do. Its a way of paying the loan pre tax - so like salary sacrificing - and is very cost effective. I think ours costs us $600-700 per month - can't remember exactly, for a little mazda 2 that DH drives to work - was new when we got it.

I think you'll be ok on the amount you mention, but TBH we do stress a bit about it at the moment. We always save DH's bonus and any tax we get back etc, and so manage to have about 15K in savings, but we are very often drawing down on this for month to month expenses, so its doesn't really get saved yswim. Not having DH's car would help a lot with cutting costs but I'm not willing to spare him for the 4 hours a day it would take him to commute!

We always have enought o eat and wear, and the kids do swimming lessons and activities, but we don't have spare for eating out, shopping sprees or anything like that, and try to budget fairly carefully for food, make cupcakes for school lunches instead of buying anything pre packaged, fill drink bottles rather than buy packaged drinks etc. We are by no means on the bread line, but can't spend with abandon either.

Oh, also DH is paying off student load still, at rate of about $650/month, so thats an expense you wont have.

I do hope that helps with your planning.

Oh fantastic news TNMM, that's brilliant! If you can manage $500 rent you should be ok financially, especially if you can get the company to stump up the school fees. One of DH's guys came to him the other day looking for an increase, they moved here a few months ago and he says he just can't manage to save anything at the end of the month (they have three kids, pay NSW school fees for two). He is on $130,000 incl super (so around $117k), plus LAHFA. DH had to point out nicely that maybe he shouldn't have taken on a rental at $1,100 a week!

Can you stomach Catholic schools? The Catholic systemic schools (and not all Catholic schools are part of the systemic system just to confuse you...) charge around $3,000 a year. TECHNICALLY you are supposed to pay your $4,500 to the government as well - please don't ask me why - but I have never heard of that being enforced.

I homeschooled two of mine here for a bit which was fun, and there is a good community (especially with younger kids). I met a few people doing it because of the school fee situation. My top tip (if you're interested ) would be to not rush to get your son into school the second you arrive. We did this with DS1 because he was high school age and made a bad choice. We moved him after 7 weeks which was a bit traumatic for him (yet another move), and expensive for us (another set of school uniform).

Thanks everyone !! We are working on our negotiating tactics! Thinking of asking for 120 + school fees and hoping that at the least we could meet in the middle. We do feel that 110 may be a squeeze as we are paying uk debt off too and it will probably be around what your paying for the student loan, Astrophe, if not a bit more plus transfer charges!

The company does offer novated car lease so we will try and get that- still seems quite expensive to me though and we will need a family car I know that cars do cost a lot more over there though.

As for the Catholic schools- I suppose it would just depend on the school. It may be worth looking into when we get there.

I will certainly not be in any rush to get ds into school. For a start he will be due a summer holiday and if he goes straight into school he won't get a long holiday till December. Secondly, I want to be sure of where we will be living and get a feel for the different schools etc. If he did end up having to wait till January it wouldnt be the end of the world.

I may end up home schooling if it comes to that- preferable to paying the fees ourselves!

Time to wait again- see what the outcome of our negotiations will be!!

TNMM - my brother and his wife and family have just moved to Newcastle from Bondi. They absolutely love it. They reckon it has all the things that they loved about Bondi but less crowded and less expensive.

Some lovely areas around Newcastle - it is really up and coming. From what I understand you are going to have to work hard on the rental as it is in great demand.

In case you were wondering it is about 2 - 2.5 hrs from Sydney on the motorway.

Lovely sea baths and beaches too.

That all sounds lovely Potoroo- exactly what we were hoping for. I think the rental will be difficult- the main issue is there are just not that many on the market! May have to find a short term let if we don't find what we are looking for in the first 4 weeks...

I hope we can get the contract sorted ASAP

Hi TNMM - bear in mind that you can claim back the cost of school fees against your LAFHA, which means that the cost will be deducted from your DH's salary pre-tax. It makes a big difference.

The LAFHA also means that the cost of your rent will be deducted pre-tax, which means that it can sometimes work to your benefit to go for higher rate rentals.

I've had a novated lease for the last 3 years, and as Apostrophe says, it's very tax efficient too.

Hey TNMM, it wouldn't work for a novated lease (as I think the car has to be less than 6 years old by end of 3+ year lease?), but we will be selling our 2007 (I think! Will ask DH) Holden Commodore (equiv of Vauxhall Omega) in the next few months to buy a people mover for 4th baby...

Astrophe- what wouldn't work on a novated lease? Sorry not following you must have a slow brain today.

I don't know what a Vauxhall Omega is!!

TNMM - Astrophe is offering to sell you her car, I think, rather than you take the novated lease option - because she believes her car is too old to qualify for novated lease. Her car is like these but not sure if it'd be an estate version or not.

oh I see- I knew she was offering but wasn't sure why she had said the first bit but I geddit now silly me!

Astrophe- is the car an estate and how much would be? I doubt we could afford it anyway and we would need to get a loan so we may be just as well getting the novated lease option? And there is the other small issue that DH hates vauxhalls !!

Pity we couldn't just swap cars as we will be selling our 2005 VW Touran (7 seater) to move over there! Unfortunately in the UK car market we will be lucky to get 2-3k for it

thanks for clarifying my confusing message, thumb :)

Its not an estate - it looks the same as this (same colour and model) but I think its a year newer. I guess the price will be similar to their asking price - would have to look into it and check how many Kms on our clock etc etc.

2nd hand cars here hold their value fairly well (good for me, bad for you!) which is why we hed to get a lease on DHs car as we couldn't afford the up front price of another car. Think for our people mover we will have to get another lease and will put the cash from the sale of the Holden on our mortgage instead.

Anyway, I'll assume you wont want it as you've got lots of options and things to consider at the moment. we wont sell it until we have another car anyway, so not for a few months. Just ask if you want more info later though - we could probably even deliver to Newcastle as we could visit friends whilst there :)

How are you feeling now TNMM? Has the news sunk in yet? How have your family and friends and DC reacted?

Thanks for the offer- we will definitely bear it in mind. As you say we have lots to consider so we won't really be able to make any decisions till we get there and see what's what!!

The news hasn't really sunk in yet. We haven't accepted yet as we are still waiting to see if we can get the school fees covered etc and the guy we were corresponding with had taken Thurs/Fri off as holiday so more waiting!!!

However, we are pretty much thinking we will go whatever and just Home School if it comes to that- would only be for a couple of years max so I can handle that though it's not ideal!!

Family have had varied reactions- all the parents are being very supportive and all looking forward to visiting, though of course they'll miss us I think they understand why we are doing it. My sister not that happy about it though she said they would probably do the same in our shoes...she's a doctor so I'm hoping they will visit and then decide to move over too . DH's sister didn't seem that happy either but they can afford to visit too. We are lucky actually that most of our family who we see regularly can afford to come out and have a holiday with us and I think they will...it makes it easier knowing that!

I think once we accept the offer (prob mid next week) I will feel overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I need to do!! It's daunting.

just popping in to say congrats to thatsnotmymonster

Thank you HFD Hopefully we will have the deal done by mid week and then I will be really excited!

So looks like the company are not budging on salary, however they are being quite generous with relocation and if we can minimise costs they will give us the remainder as a taxable 'bonus' which we could basically put towards school fees.

I think flights are seperate to this as well and they will book them for us once we have found a suitable route.

So I was wondering what routes you would recommend when flying to Newcastle? I understand that you basically have to fly to Brisbane or Melbourne and then get a connection?
Bearing in mind that we will be flying from Glasgow can you recommend a route/airline?
We are allowed to quote for a 24hr stopover if we like- would you do this or is it better to just get there and maybe do night flights?
I am thinking maybe flying Glasgow-Singapore/Singapore-Brisbane with Singapore Airlines...

Any travel tips- MUCH appreciated