Leaving UK & Living Abroad...what you need to know (LONG)

[HauntedsandCastle]

OK, as there are so many people making the move to Oz, (or other places) I just wanted to highlight some stuff that we have found out or that has been a bit of pig to sort out. Some of it will only apply for those coming to Oz, but some of it will be applicable to those leaving the UK and going elsewhere. Please, Aussies, feel free to disagree or amend, but this is how I have seen things thus far. Sorry if it's all quite obvious!
Tax Credit Child Benefit Write to them as soon as you have your leaving dates, with your new address. If you are only leaving for a period of time then you will still get CB, but you will have to fill in forms and the like! IIRC, you will not be entitled to TCs AT ALL. We were told, 3 times, by 3 diff members of their (TC & CB) customer service team that we should call the day before we leave and tell them & they will cancel the payments. When I did this they said they needed it in writing! (Which I then couldn't do until we arrived in OZ, therefore resulting in monies being paid to us we weren't entitled to!) We have just paid CB 80GBP and tax credits are threatening to make us pay back ALL they have paid us for 2005-2006! I just sent them a snotty letter stating the facts, if their team had got their info correct then it would have been settled ages ago!
Car Insurance Please get your no claims bonus certificate before you leave. It took my DH 5 phone calls to get his. (Direct Line, furking useless).
Travel Insurance You will of course need some kind of insurance that will cover the usual travel insurance stuff, (cancelled flights, lost luggage etc etc) but not all companies do it. As we found out, most travel insurance is based on the fact you are coming back into the UK after a short period of time. We found one that covered us for all the normal stuff and then 10 (?) days after we arrived. It was from "The Flight Center" and wasn't too expensive.
Bank Alert the bank of your new foreign address as soon as you know it. We didn't tell them & they wouldn't accept it by phone. Ended up sending 2 letters to get it done.
Mail Re-Direction You can re-direct overseas via Royal mail.
Visa We kept a copy of our visa confirmation on us all times (i.e. hand luggage) and one in our suitcase. We didn't need it, but just in case!
Those of you coming to Oz, with Singapore airlines you get 40kg of luggage EACH person. We nearly flew Malaysian, but they charge 17GBP per extra kilo above what you are normally entitled too! Phone up the airline you are flying with and find out what you get. Travel agent wasn't aware that we got extra with Singapore Airlines. (Although you do have to have certain stipulations on your visa to be entitled) If you are flying direct (no stop over) and have a while to wait, if you are in Singapore consider using the transit hotel. We did & it was a godsend with dd (2). We only heard about from a lady on the plane, travel agent didn't tell us about it. Didn't cost a lot either.
Mobile Phone Cancel as soon as you can. Am still trying to cancel mine and have been here since June.
Once in Oz Tax File Numbers Get them as soon as you can (you can apply online). We didn't know about these (honestly you'd think you?d get a "Welcome to Oz" pack to help you through). And we ended up losing $50 dollars interest from the bank as we were down as "with holding tax details". We will get it back, but we have to wait till next year and do it via tax returns. It's more if you are a non-resident. Needed for jobs/centerlink too.
Medicare You pay for doctors here & claim 80% back. You don't have to be a member, if you are not you just pay the full fee for treatment. (My doctors charge $45 for a consult & script).
Ambulance cover Ambulances are not free rides here. You can pay up to $700 per trip. With ambulance cover we paid $140 (covers all 3 of us) for the year. It is, hopefully something we will never use, but on the other hand we don't need a bill of $700. And I don't drive!
Hospital, Dental, Optician cover Am still looking into this! But in SA the company is called Mutual Community.
Banks Take your passport when opening an account. Shop around. You don't pay a monthly bank fee here like the UK, you pay for the services you use. We pay to use the cash point, to pay by card in shops, to pay direct debits. We get 5 of these transactions free per month. We paid $17 in fees last month (not including the $8 for direct debits) but that was ok, when we first got the account we paid $40! (But we did need to buy stuff for the house as our stuff hadn't arrived at that stage!) We got a visa debit card and this only gets charged for the cash point transactions. Our bank didn't tell us about this though, a cousin did! We also get charged for moving money from one account to the other online. Even though the accounts are with the same bank. (We are looking at changing!)
Internet Broadband isn't available everywhere yet! (Not in SA, anyway) I went for dial up just to get me started. I asked about fees etc and was told I?d pay $20 pm for as much Internet as needed 24/7. They didn't tell however, that I would have to pay a local call fee every time I dialed up. Got my phone bill with $50 local call charges (over 1 month). They just said, "That's how it works here" even though they had listened to the call and agreed that the agent was asked about extra fees on telephone bill etc & know that she didn't disclose it! (This was net space, btw) You don't pay it on broadband. So I am canceling net space & going with Broadband!
Bed Sizes Quite trivial I know. We needed to get a new quilt, as we didn't bring ours. No one told us that the double here is smaller than the UK double. If you are looking for quilts, UK double is the equivalent of Oz Queen size, just so you know!
Centerlink As permanent resident we are entitled to Family Tax Benefit (Like UK child benefit) you need your tax file number & your bank details when/if you claim.
Tax: You pay tax through your employer, as in UK. But you do yearly tax returns to claim back for any uniform/items brought for work. SIL wears her own clothes for work and can claim $1 for every washing load to clean them).
Well done if you read all this! Hope it will help someone who hasn't thought of something!

sorry about lack of spaces, they were there when I previewed!

good thread - wish it had been around 2 months ago.

I'd add:

passport photos - you can never have too many to hand
copies - take copies of all important paperwork and leave one set with responsible friend in the UK and travel with one
medicines - check prescriptions with your doctor as in many countries you buy over the counter. especially check strengths
passport - keep a photocopy at all times
embassy - register with your embassy when you arrive, and if in the ME then make sure you are assigned a warden who looks after you if evacuation is needed
container - don't try to do this yourself, pay the money to get a professional company to do a door to door job and save yourself the hassle. keep all the paperwork with you, don't rely on the shipping agents to have them to hand
Visas - check with the embassy of the country of destinantion before leaving as you can often get a better visa from outside the country
plugs - travel with adaptors, pref multi-region ones...

thanks for adding that meow! Anymor comments welcome! There is just so much to think about!

Haunted - our ambulance cover in QLD is covered through your electricity account ( energex) - you pay a fee and it is covered then. It must be different state by state. Before that I paid the subscription - especially handy when I lived in a small country town which meant anything pretty serious and beyond was an automatic aerial ambulance ride - very expensive.

ANZ bank - do a bank account that has a flat fee of $5 for all transactions.

For medicare - dh just had to go and show his passport and visa and as he was a permanent resident he got his number and card straight away.

At end of financial year - get a tax agent or accountant to do tax return as they know all you can claim and you can claim the next year for the fees spent using a tax agent.

we were lucky as I had done the move to the UK so kind of knew what to do re bank and insurance etc.

extract explaining QLD ambulance cover

Community Ambulance Cover (CAC) replaced the Queensland Ambulance Subscription Scheme and ambulance transport charges on the 1st of July 2003. Quite simply CAC means every all Queensland residents are automatically covered for the cost of ambulance transportation anywhere, anytime, across Australia.

Community Ambulance Cover gives certainty of funding to the Queensland Ambulance Service by spreading the cost across the community. A charge of about 24 cents a day, or $88 a year, will apply to each electricity sale arrangement unless an exemtpion has been obtained.

Community Ambulance Cover is not a ?user-pays? system for ambulance services. No Matter who pays for the electricity supplied to your business or household, every Queenslander is automatically covered for the cost of ambulance services nationwide.

It really is worth paying the subscription - cause if you are in an accident and need to be airlifted or simply road transport - can be very very expensive.

thank eidsvold. I'll look into the bank thigs. Think we are paying WAY too much. SA only has the subscription ambulance cover. We were lucy in the fact that PIL got us some info, medicare etc!

Thanks for adding your comments!

haunted - we pay no transaction fees as our home loan is with the same bank - another consideration I guess.

Great info, thanks. I got a phone call this morning from someone who is interested in renting our house when we go and the sheer scale of what will have to be done is making me feel sick at the moment!

Hi,
Re ambulance/dental/hospital etc cover. There heaps of Private Health Insurance companies and most policies will cover all of these inthe one package.

I actually found the opposite with beds. Find the English Doubles smaller. Def much smaller than an Aus Queen though as our Aus Queen sheets hang of our English double.
The problem can be caused if one of the beds you're talking about is an Ikea bed as they seem to have their own special sizes!

Unless you are in Sweden of course, but then if you are it is nigh on impossible to buy double duvet covers, everything is for single duvets.

Really, really annoying, trivial but annoying.

snowfall, Aussie double quilt got quite lost in UK double quilt cover. The double fiited sheet I brought here barely touches the egdes of my (english, brought from UK bed) queen sizes fit it perfectly!

There really needs to be some sort of international coordination on these vital matters!!

absolutely! Couldn't agree more!

Thank you for starting this thread. We are moving to the US in 4 wks and I have just started to realise that I should be a bit worried.
I never even thought about CB or tax credits - I think I may need a to-do list.

That's why I started it, there's just so much to do and this is a place for helpful reminders/pointers that in amoungst bigger things, get forgotten about. Feel free to add if you cme across something!

Good Luck!

One more, quite important one.

Deeds Although we were coming in on a former resident visa, we had to prove that we could live for 2 years without asking the Government for help. so we had to send our off our house deeds to prove we would have x amount to bring to Oz, from the sale. The Immigration Department don't automatically send them back, they try to keep as much in your files as they possible can.

Please make sure you get them back once your visa is approved, epecially f you re selling your house as they need to be handed to sol. Also, initally we thought they would be a copy from the bank, but alot of banks are now sending them out as they don;t have the storage space, so you can't rely on you bank having a copy!

Really useful, wish I'd had it before we left!

I'd also add - make & keep a very good record of everything you import for the customs declaration if you are sending a container over. Am just filling in ours and man alive, what a chore.

Also make sure you try to sort out work visas/permits etc beforehand for at least one of you - friends who have also just moved to NZ did so before their work permits were properly through and have been clobbered with horrendous import duty/customs fees. Check all the customs stuff really carefully before you go and comply in a thoroughly anal fashion.

For transferring money, try to do most of this before you go. I stupidly believed my bank when they said the branch here would be able to do things for me. Of course they couldn't, and transferring my money has been the most monumental hassle, involving vast amounts of money being spent to courier a letter back to the UK authorising the transfer as it was over 10,000 GBP and countless infuriating phone calls at odd times of the day because of the time difference. Open bank accounts and sort out transfers before you go. And look into using a broker to do the exchange to avoid your bank giving you a crap exchange rate (check what you can get elsewhere) and charging you oodles of cash for the privilege.

Interesting MrsJC - can you elaborate on 'using a broker' to transfer money? What, exactly do you mean, and can you give some specific examples/names of brokers? A stockbroker? Thanks.

We used Ozforex brokers when exchanging our money. We dealt with the London office when in UK then with the Sydney offices here in Oz. They were quick and easy - but the bonus was that we left our money in their Sydney Account whilst we got our Westpac account opened. No money transfer fees, it's all part of the service (you'll pay fees with all banks and travel agents).

One tip I can add - Prescription glasses / Contact Lenses and Sunglasses....BUY THEM IN THE UK!! Much cheaper. Focus dailies are 10 pounds per pack in UK, here about three times the price.

Also, stock up on any Tesco / Asda homebranded stuff, espcially medicines and paracetomol. Can't beat Tesco's 18p ibuprofen, it's just sooo expensive here.

Sorry, hope I'm not taking this thread off track. I just wasn't prepared for the cost of certain items when we got over here and had to pay almost 10 quid for a bottle of Clarityn allergy (for the Chickenpox my son was incubating on the plane ).

CorpseBrideOfJohnCusack, blimey, your money transfere was a nightmare. We rang barclays international and they transfered 5k at a time for us. We paid 20gpb each time for the priviallge! We rang, told them the details and they did it, funds cleared in 24 hours or less!

sydneygirl, add what you like. Wish I'd thought of that tho!

sorry, missed this
Earlybird, I used WorldFirst to transfer our money but others include Osforex, Tranzfers etc. - all from a google search. Also when googling I found a Guardian article about it all. Basically shop around to get the best exchange rate and least fees.
Hauntedsandcastle, thing is if I'd done it like you it would have cost me around 280 pounds and I'd have had the bank's crappy exchange rate on top of that - hence my eagerness to NOT do it in dribs and drabs! It cost me 20 GBP total in the end and I got quite a good exchange rate which was fixed for 2 weeks whilst I got the money into their account - again good as the rate changed during those 2 weeks and not in my favour.