Calling all Melbournians

[bobbyshafter]

DH has recently been offered a job working on St Kilda Road, Melbourne with a total salary of $150,000.

As we would be re-locating from the UK I wanted to ask advice about good areas to live which would lead to us getting Ds into a good school (primary).

I would hope not to work until we are all settled so would we get by on DH's salary alone to begin with or would it not get us very far.

Bump

150K could be an OK salary but it depends on your lifestyle right now.
You will have to pay for your child to go to school, unless his employer is paying for that.
What sort of life do you live now? Is the company giving you a rent allowance.
Do you want to live in a cool (ie expensive) area?

If he is only getting 150k and no extras that is a good wage but not exceptional to support a comfortable and relaxed life. As a rule of thumb (which seems to work OK) wage here should be about 2.2 to 2.5 times higher than UK wage to be comparable.
(and rents here are horrendous. Have a look at realestate.com.au)

Do you want to be close to DH's work? Its all gorgeous around there but very expensive, and school zoning is complex.

You could target the zone for Albert Park Primary which would be a fabulous place to live but you'd be looking at fairly modest accommodation on that income.

Thank you for information. Do you have to pay for school in Melbourne? I thought that was New South Wales only.

Paying for school fees depends on visa type, so you need to look into that.

There are lots of great primary schools around (more divisive at high school) but it depends where you want to live/how you want to live.

Australia has two main types of schools:

• public/state which are essentially free for Australian citizens (but which most foreigners working in Australia will have to pay for)
• private which everybody has to pay for, includes religious and non-religious type schools

$150k is not a lot of income for Melbourne.

Agree with PP - take a look at the cost of your usual supermarket shop at Coles - www.coles.com.au and also look at housing costs.

What visa would you come in on?

You don't have to pay for school in Melbourne you can use public for free a visa
You are right New South Wales is where you pay
I have just moved from Melbourne to Sydney and we are on a visa so I do know
What visa would you be using ?

From experience we found it so much more expensive here than expected and we don't have a lavish lifestyle
The rents are very high but where are you moving from to compare ?
Also good etc is higher than we expected

But we love it and would recommend to anyone

We are in Sydney on DH's income which is about $10k more than what you're being offered and we do okay. From my understanding Melbourne is a little cheaper. We live in a nice 2 bed flat very close to the CBD (and therefore DH's work), and run a car but do not have private health. Only one small DC right now. We aren't saving a huge amount every month but we also don't budget at all (and I probably spend a lot on frivolous crap). The big thing to take into account is superannuation is a bit of a mine field if you're thinking of moving back to the UK at some point, we had a bit of a shock when we found out the rules of all of that when we arrived.