rikyuu

phew, thank you so much for that information.

hi all, We were hoping someone could advise please; were in Australia and have to renew our children's UK passports for a trip back to the UK later this year. This is now done partly online and then the forms printed to be completed and sent to the UK with the old passports. One thing we're stuck on however is the counter signatories, which are required for children. It has to be someone in Australia, with a British passport, who is professional and has known us personally for 2 years. The passport office can check up and there are heavy penalties for lying. Well, we just don't know anyone like that. I know 1 British person who I met twice and drives a truck. Has anyone else had this problem? Are we the only people without close, professional British friends? What happens if you've only been here 18 months, it would not be possible to have known someone here for 2 years! Any advice would be most welcome. Thanks!

isn't a majority of that 'personal worth' tied up in housing? Seeing as though the houses here are amongst the most expensive in the world, it's no great surprise that many people's money is sunk directly into keeping a roof over their heads, whilst having to cut back on items which don't add to ones wealth. Where-as in countries with reasonable housing costs, people have more money to spend on non-physical items that don't directly add to people's wealth. It's a bit misleading, just because people spend all their income on a stupidly expensive house, doesn't mean they are wealthy. In fact, in another recent survey this week, it was revealed that the average amount of cash Aussies have saved is barely $20k. So what's more wealthy; to have fully paid off a $100k house with another $100k cash in the bank, or to have paid off $250k of a $500k mortgage with only $20k in the bank?

you should be able to manage. I support a family of 4 on $70k pa, renting a 4 bedroom house in Melbourne, although it has no pool.

ah, in that case, I think you need the one which clamps onto the supply cable. If it's not visible, it's probably hidden behind a panel, which you will probably need to be qualified to remove. Or you can get the ones which plug into the mains socket, but that will only tell you the usage from that socket. Good news is though, if you connect a few solar panels you can get the meter to spin backwards, so you effectively sell the solar power back at the rate you paid eg 25c/kwh, as oppose to 8c/kwh which is what they now pay you with a smart meter (in Vic).

If you have a smart meter, you can monitor your usage online, down to each hour if need be. I use; https://electricityoutlook.jemena.com.au but other supplies have similar facilities.

I never shopped their, got all the car seats from BigW as much cheaper. Decent clothes come from M&S or Next (very reasonable prices with the exchange rate and often free delivery), crappy ones from k-mart/target

no idea. It's like a lot of other goods and services, advertising prices on the internet is still not widely practised, you have to phone around. For my first job application, prior to the interview, they phoned me and asked how much I was expecting for the role, I said a figure and they went on to say I'd have to take on some extra repsonsiblity for that salary, so why bother asking me I thought, just tell me what you are paying for that role. I was also asked in my second application during the interview, again I guessed based on what I was paid in the UK and used $2/1GBP, they offered me slightly less, but I wanted to secure my first job so accepted. It's very low pay for what I do and about 30% below the avergae for my experience. I get 2% pay rises if I'm lucky. Needless to say, someone leaves the company every month or so.

Just need to manage until 9am tomorrow, when the cool change finally comes.....

you're not alone, I couldn't understand them either. None of the costs seem tied down and it's hard to tell exactly what's covered and how much you'll be out of pocket. I think people just pay as much as they can for the premium, then pay how ever many $1000's their out of pocket.

yep a 4l turbo's gonna do that! And if you have a family then just get the sedan instead of the Ute. If you want some decent sound too, there's plenty of V8s to be had and with LPG only about 30p/l, cheap to run too!

I think anything without aircon should be an immediate NO (apart from exceptional circumstances) unless you are comfortable sitting in a 50 degree oven in traffic. Even outside of peak summer, the strength of the sun alone through the windows heats the car rapidly.

and they won't want to risk all those ponzie scheme housing investors losing out by putting up interest rates.

my colleague who earns 50k pa on a temporariy contract, borrowed 440k from the bank, so that's about 9x, and he owes 60k hex (from Uni). Aparantly that's fine as it's an investment and will get rent, which won't actually cover the interest payments, but that's fine too as the government will give him tax back on his loss making investment. As long as he stays living with his parents, the bank will let him buy as many investment properties as he wants. However, I've heard there's no debt problem here, and the banks have done so well over their foreign counterparts because the don't do high risk lending.