Talk to me about moving to / living in New Zealand..

[Furrykoala]

We are considering moving to NZ. I can get visas there with my healthcare job and my husband should be able to get a fairly well paid professional job too once there. I am in contact with an agency who can support with the process, visas etc and help me find a job.
We have 2 children DD 10 and DS 8. We have visited before when travelling pre kids and were struck by the natural beauty and emphasis on outdoor pursuits as I guess is everyone. This was over a decade ago however.
We have mulled over such a move several times in the past (Aus too) but, predminantly me has not been brave enough to make the change. It seems like it's now getting a bit now or never with respect to the childrens ages and I've started to think what's the worse that can happen - we could always come back. We are ready for a change and very dispondant with our current UK lifestyle (although we are fundamentally very lucky - financially secure etc). We would like to give the children the opportunity to experience a more outdoor / less consumerist led childhood before they get to teenagers. Are we being naive?
What are costs of living like?
What have you found to be the challenges as an expat of adapting to life?
What are the positives and negatives?
What's the lifestyle really like for children etc
Thanks in advance

The biggest difficulty at the moment will be securing a visa and being able to travel to NZ with Borders still closed and very few able to secure exemptions. Most people don't need to use an agency and can navigate the application process quite easily themselves saving a lot of money. NZ is a great place to live, but can be quite expensive.

Spent a lot of time in NZ and loved it. But you can do outdoor stuff and shop less in the UK, just get out of London if that's the problem.

Thanks. We can get visas and have been advised of / are aware about about the COVID border procedure. I do a job that's in the high demand catergory and requires professional registration etc so the agency support with that. It's the employers paying them not employees for their service.
We don't live in London. We just feel we would like a bew challenge, a more free upbringing for the children etc. Wondering if anyone can paint a picture as to what life's really like?

It sounds like you have a job offer already if the employer is paying the agency? Where is this (or if not where are you looking at settling) as can make a big difference to what life is like here.

Sorry posted too soon!!. Check out the new announcements about the complete overhall of the Healthcare system in NZ including scrapping all the DHB's.

The trouble is that if your children want to stay there when they're adults but you want to return, then that'll be a huge problem. If you have parents and siblings you may well want to be nearer to them in the next couple of decades.

Thank you for your replies. I don't have a specific job offer but there are lots of opportunities for me role in numerous locations (healthcare professional) which the agency can connect me with / I can apply for once I am more specific with location /needs etc. Chicken and egg I guess in terms of consideraing options / what's possible where us possible.
Extended family not a major issue HallowTalk. What are your experiences of younger ones returning and what age?

My sister has done it with similar age kid. They love it and have no regrets. You have to cope with old fashioned furniture etc she says and the journey is a killer but the lifestyle is amazing. She is a doctor and her quality of life is so much better.

They looked at Aus as well but the blistering heat was a factor in going to NZ instead.

I am in NZ. The border is open to health care workers and their families as you have been told.

The main problem in NZ is the cost of housing. We have had mass migration here for the last decade and there have not been enough houses built to meet demand. Prices are eye watering, though the government has made recent changes to taxation that should hopefully stop the bubble expanding any further. The cost of living is high here as well.

The most affordable city to buy a house is Christchurch, and also the wider Christchurch area known as Selwyn. www.trademe.co.nz is where you will find house listings for NZ. Canterbury is the least diverse part of NZ, Auckland is the most diverse.

There are plenty of people from the UK in NZ, and the ones I know are happy and settled here.

I’m a Kiwi and moved back here 10 years ago with my Irish (with British citizenship) DH, and our two London-born DC, aged 2 years and 8 months, respectively.

We got in before house prices went nuts. House prices are now, as a pp has, absolutely crazy. There is such huge demand and little stock, that you’re paying $2M+ to live in our city, and that’s just for a pretty much standard 4-bed.

House prices aside, if you’re a middle-class professional, life is really good.

Nice communities, good schools, lots of after school options, and so many different things to do around the country over summer and school hols. Yes, the borders are closed and it’s shit we can’t get to see DH’s family. It really is. But there’s so much going on here, and so many things on our list to do, that we’re going to run out of years with the DC still at home, before we do them all.

We were talking about this today, as DH was definitely home-sick for a while (we lived in London before we moved out, with lots of his old friends nearby). Would we move back?

And it was a resounding ‘no’. The life, and freedoms, we can give our DC (now 12 and nearly 11) is just incomparable.

The life we have, both as adults, and as a family, is just really good.

The downside is that it is expensive, and you need either a very good salary or two good salaries to be comfortable.

Happy to answer any questions offline, if you have any.

Second Apples comments about housing. It’s insanely expensive, and the cost of living is very high in general. Really crunch your numbers first as whilst NZ is lovely it can also be a real struggle on average incomes (I say this as a Kiwi on a good income that had a serious drop in my standard of living when I returned from the UK, despite already owning a house here).

I am a kiwi with an English DH and English born children. We moved here 4 years ago, when our daughters were 4yo and 6yo and we love it. We have the benefit of lots of NZ family though. It is true that house prices here are crazy at the moment and the cost of living can be higher. We don't live in a main centre though so it is more affordable.

Our quality of life is so much better than in the UK. Our kids are heavily involved in sport and outdoor activities and there are so many more opportunities available to them here. They have no trace of an English accent left now and well and truly consider themselves kiwis, although the fact that I am a NZer as are their extended family probably contributes to that.

There are so many British people living here - we were surprised at how many. It is a very long way away though and I am not sure how easy international travel will be in the next few years. We are proud of our hard won covid free (mostly) status but the exit strategy isn't yet clear which worries us with UK family we are desperate to see.

As someone who has spent years in both the UK and NZ, I think you can have a good life in either place and you can have a more outdoorsy life in the UK depending on where you live. My quality of life is personally better in NZ because I didn’t earn much in the UK. The financial aspect is totally dependent on individual circumstance though. Overall I did find when I was in the UK that people do idealise living in NZ/Aus, I personally wouldn’t make such a huge move with children from the UK lightly.

You don't give specifics as to jobs or location so it's really hard to answer.

Are you completely sure the agency isn't painting a glossy picture? Since lets face it they only get their commission if they can persuade you to come as to reality we have daily headlines about healthcare workers being separated from their families for years (yes we're being worked by interests to achieve what they want but the stories are still heart wrenching) try here www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/123933511/im-a-nurse-i-need-to-help-people-immigration-plea-from-couple-19000km-apart www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/124754540/miq-vacancies-a-measure-of-how-unwanted-we-are-migrants-separated-from-family-for-more-than-a-year-protest-at-parliament
this was this mornings
www.stuff.co.nz/national/immigration/124957500/still-no-clear-path-to-unite-immigrant-families-separated-by-closed-borders
this is another
www.stuff.co.nz/national/124038040/its-breaking-me-down-mums-13month-separation-from-her-family-in-south-africa

South Africans seem to be affected a lot, we know 1 person who came from America with his family but without giving too many details he has a very high level manager/Dr position so more than skilled they would have been desperate to get someone in the post. It was also a year ago. I'm not sure there have been many coming over recently.

NZ is a low wage high cost economy a family house in Wellington now is well over a million (my SIL just paid 2 million for 3 beds but she was desperate) and used parental help in her late 40's. Auckland is worse, Christchurch, Napier, Nelson etc better in that respect.

NZ children are as consumerist as children everywhere else (depending on upbringing) there probably is more outdoor life in NZ but it is expensive and again upbringing dependent, holidaying expensive within or outside NZ, the UK will be so far away and your family/cousins/parents/siblings aren't getting any younger, you will almost certainly not travel overseas for years if you do come.

Consider costs you wouldn't expect once your children are 13 you need to pay to take them to the GP, you would need to pay for all the healthcare for adults in your family. Our kids got lots of 'outdoors' in the UK and variety since lots of it was overseas. In NZ we are totally dependent on the car for everything, in the UK we used to joke about how we really needed to drive the car this weekend because otherwise it wouldn't start. This helps to explain why Wellington traffic jams/driving time are the 4th worst in OZ/NZ (Wellington prides itself on being a small city with great public transport.)

I seriously think you should not underestimate the cost of living check out www.newworld.co.nz/ for prices (that's not the cheapest supermarket but it is across the whole country)

Finally I offer you this
www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-coronavirus-australians-exploit-tasman-bubble-to-use-new-zealand-to-get-to-other-countries/EARTDLDAKNO2OXCAV7JQRDT3HY/

Oh I forgot to mention the quality of housing!! It's notoriously awful, my friend described it as like living in a garden shed, not so bad if you live in Auckland, which is almost tropical in terms of heat and downpours but pretty shit if you are in Invercargill (or lots of Dunedin which is apparently poorly orientated to the sun in the cheaper areas!!)

You also asked what the lifestyle is like for children honestly it's the same they get up go to school and come home again via afterschool care or some kind of swimming lesson etc sometimes. They eat the food you cook and go to parties and everything just the same. The difference is they don't see/know their grandparents, cousins etc in the same way (the last UK expat I met had moved here specifically for that reason lol!) & they don't travel overseas with the same frequency. My feeling is there is less homework in the schools here. Otherwise you get dressed, empty the dishwasher, practice your recorder, do your reading homework etc etc (oh Jolly phonics isn't a thing here they used to do a method based on the idea that learning to read should be as natural as learning to talk, and if you put children in a "book rich" environment, they will learn to read in their own time, taking their cues from pictures and context but literacy rates are falling so they are just bringing in a change to phonics etc.

Don’t underestimate the cost of living short term and long term say in 20years when your children are fully settled can’t imagine living anywhere else kiwis and you and your husband realise you’d feel more ‘at home’ back in the UK.
Would you consider a move within the IK - Northern Ireland? Wales? Rural Scotland? with the knowledge your standard of living would be better not worse and taking up a UK based hobby?

I moved from the UK to NZ with my parents when I was 10 and my siblings were 8 and 5. I settled in really quickly and made new friends easily. This despite being a shy child who usually hated change. My siblings found the same, though of course every child is different. It was important to my parents that all of us be happy with the move before we went, and if one of us hadn't wanted to go, we wouldn't have. Have you broached the idea with your children at all?

My garden gets lots of native birds because of the native bush around the house and the ecosanctuary nearby, but I can walk into the CBD for work. The views in NZ are stunning as you've seen, and on the walk to work I get a beautiful view of the harbour. My friends go hiking, mountain biking and skiing (in winter) regularly, school trips can involve outdoor pursuits like mountain climbing , kayaking, walking through caves etc. Depending on where you live, you can be close to the city, hills, sea and mountains. My immediate family are all still in NZ and I've married a kiwi.

There are definitely downsides though. As pp have said, houses are very expensive, as is the cost of living in general. Some of the housing stock is pretty bad, especially in regards to heating. You have to pay for trips to the GP. Dentists and orthodontists are very expensive. You're far away from everywhere else in the world, and it's a long way to travel back to the UK. There's also the concern that's often brought up on MN: what happens if, after you move, your husband wants to stay but you want to move back? There could be issues with taking the children with you in that situation.

There's always going to be pros and cons to moving anywhere, and you'll hear of people who loved it, who hated it or somewhere in between. I think asking people in NZ what it's like is a good idea, as you've done here, in addition to your own research. I hope that helps somewhat!