Experiances of emigrating to Oz please

[sahmtotwo]

DH and I have been talking about our options. He is a teacher so we know that he will have no problems getting a job. At the moment we have his income and my benefits and CB. If we move we will only have his income, which will be on par with what he is earning now. Also if we move to Oz we will have to pay back his students loans of 5 years (when he retrained to be a teacher the gornment undertook to ignore his loans if he was a teacher in a state school for 10 years.) How does the cost of living differ over there compared to the UK? Would we be ok on one wage? We do seem to struggle as we are here.

How much money do we need to get together realisticly to be able to emigrate?

Are there any good websites we should be looking at?

Any other advice.

Thanks very much.

We are doing the same thing this year too. I am Australian but DH is English so we have to sort out his visa.

I have been here in the UK for 10 years now and have really lost touch of things like cost of living too but can ask friends and family.

There is a programme on BBC1 at the moment about families moving to Aust and I have found that to be pretty interesting. It is on every morning at 9:15 but I can't remember what it's called.

Check out property prices to buy or rent on www.realestate.com.au (sorry I can't do links!!) We have found this really helpful. Where are you thinking of moving to? Much like in the UK the cost of living can vary a lot depending on where you move to.

If you rent a house you don't pay council tax or water bills. My brother who is married with 2 kids spends on average $200/wk on food.

From what I can see online cars seem to be roughly the same price as here but the cost of petrol looks to be about 1/2.

This is all I can think of at the moment from my own research but I will add anything else I can think of later. I'm sure there will be more posters along soon!!

I will be looking for ideas ang help here too!!

I can recommend two web sites which have been a huge help to us: www.aussiemove.com and www.pomsinperth.com (obviously only helpful if you decide on Perth!)

There's stacks of info on there which will answer lots of your questions (and more which you haven't yet thought of!)

The BBC programme is "Wanted Down Under" which has been on for the past 3 weeks - last week this week - on BBC1 at 9.15am.

Good luck with making your decision!

NM

we have just moved here (Melbourne) after 8 years away and are surprised at the cost of living. I think people assume Oz is cheaper compared to the UK but don't be fooled into a false sense of security.

Rent and house prices are less but so are the wages. I don't know about teachers wages but my husband is a professional and his salary here is considerably lower than it was in London. Supermarkets are quite pricey but eating out is cheaper. I find the cost of living compared to earnings is quite high.

Finding a family house to rent was difficult and very competitive. We found we were up against lots of other people when we viewed potential properties and had a number of knock backs until we found somewhere. We will buy later this year and if you have pounds to bring with you from the sale of a house in the UK you will probably get a really nice house for your money.

I'm not trying to paint a dim view of life here, the lifestyle is lovely. I just think people have a misconception that it's cheap here and in reality I don't think that's the case. My advice would be to reserch jobs and houses here to ensure your thoughts on wages and rent etc are what you think they will be.

Australia used to be a lot cheaper than the UK, but i think the GST and inflation must have changed all that. I am Australian in London and have been here for about 10 years too, we are planning on going back towards the end of next year. Does any one know how we can find out about good schools.

Also I was trying to find out about suburbs to live in Sydney. I found Wikepedia had lots of useful information.

A very useful website which has lots of differing opinions on it is www.britishexpats.com there is a discussion forum on there which has all sorts of differnet topics and people who are either asking for advice or people who are already there adn loving it, as well as plenty of people who dont love it! (There is a Moving Back to the UK forum where you will get people who want to come back!)

I am on there under the name RachelH so look out for me, especially in the bits about spouse visas!

bumping this for sahmtotwo to make sure she sees it!

Just factor some if these into your thinking

$ 150 for school uniform for the year ( inc a fair amount of second hand stuff)Doesn't include shoes
$100 for stationery and paper levy
$ 50 school contribution
$100 for Joeys membership (Beavers) plus weekly costs
$ 75 for Guides membership plus weekly costs
$ 75 month for swimming

Not huge costs if taken on their own, but be aware that they are different from what we in the UK would expect to pay and if you drop from 2 salaries to 1 it might be tricky.
Also Christmas, main holiday and back to school come very close together!

Thanks for all the replies and the links. What a diffrence to what I expected I must say.

Have managed too catch the program on BBC1 a couple of times but they don't really seem to show the true picture.

Looks like we might have to rethink things.

Thanks again everyone and if anyone else has any views I will be pleased to hear them.

I am able to be a sahm to my two girls with a third babe due in Mar.

I guess it depends where you live:

Our groceries are around $200 a week including nappies for 2!

Swimming cost me 20$ a week term time for both girls.

My dd1 attends kindy term time and it amounts to $14 a day over 2 days a week. Roughly $300 a term - get a rebate of $50 odd dollars from the government BUT you can get more - depends on where they attend kindy.

teachers earn pretty good money as well - you would be entitled to family tax benefit also. Depends on what state you intend to reside in.

The other thing we found useful was rather than doing a straight currency conversion it was more accurate to compare by doing it percentage wise - so we looked at what % of dh's wages were spent of rent, petrol, groceries and then compared that to what % we were spending in the UK - much truer comparison.

I am in brisbane which is one of the cheapest if not the cheapest in terms of basic groceries and petrol compared with other capital cities.

Has your dh researched his options on getting a job as a teacher. There are hundreds if not thousands of unemployed teachers in Australia. They are mostly straight from Uni but there is still not enough jobs.

If you rent a house you WILL have to pay water rates - in Qld anyway. Not sure about other states.

Cost of Living - we are a family of 5 and live not far from eidsvold (hi eidsvold!!) in Brisbane so have based below on Brisbane prices.

groceries - $200 week - no nappies
electricity - $25 week
telephone/broadband - $40 week
car/house insurance - $30 week
health insurance - $40 week hospital/extras(public hospitals in qld are not great at the moment)
petrol - $70 week (we have a 4x4)
swimming - $20 week for two kids
daycare - $50 week 1 child/1 day week but get about $22 off after govt rebate
water rates - $100 for 6 months approx

Panadol/Nurofen $8-$14 bottle

most doctors will bulkbill children but not adults. You will pay around $50 for a short consultation and get $30?? back from Medicare

You have to be on an extremely low wage to have access to the public dentist. A private dentist costs around $60 - $100 for a checkup/clean for a child. Hence the private health insurance.

public transport - trains

Close to the city $25 to $30 week
40mins - 1 hr from city $40 week

entertainment

movies $8.50 child $14 adult
dinner for 5 with 1 drink each $70 approx
amusement park $68 adult $40 child over 4

hope that helps

that info is really useful eidsvold and mymama for me too as we have been trying to work out how much disposable income we would have when we get there. Which part of Brisbane are you in mymama (I know where Eidsvold is!)

Thank you for that, it is extremely useful.

What state do most people recommend to be in.We were hoping to be fairly near to a beach.

We were given to understand that teachers were in short supply. Though I don't think DH will have problems getting work. He has a great ofstead report and his lower ability class got better results last year than the higher ability class above them. He is a very good teacher.

But looking at those figures I have to admit we might have to do a re-think on going.

he would have a better chance of getting a job especially in QLD if he went rural tbh. Nice little country towns crying out for teachers at times.

If you are looking for good beaches Qld has plenty. I can't really comment on the other states but Qld has beautiful Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast beaches. You also have Whitsundays and North Qld, Cairns area etc. tbh you might find the central, northern part of qld far too hot.

Harrogatemum I am in the Narangba area, so about 10 mins down the road from eidsvold.

sahmtotwo

Why not consider doing what we are currently doing which is a teacher exhcnage to Oz? We are here for a year; accomodation sorted- we have even swapped cars. It's an easy way to get a glimpse into life in Australia. Have a look on the LECT website.
your dh needs to research how the education system works here in regards to employing teachers as it is quite different from the uk in some places such as South Australia.