Slean Wolfhead

To be fair, when we came 8 years ago it was extremely quiet.we couldn't find anything open the night we arrived from Sydney except a bottle shop and an Indian resturant. The change since then though has been stunning. I think 70,000 more people, with projections of a gradual increase of another 300,000 before i drop dead. A lot of people who haven't been here since a school trip would be shocked. The big change for me, apart from all the change in the North, is the CIty and the economic change. It was already rich, but there weren't enough people living in the middle and so why would any businesses setup and bother to stay open past 9.30pm? In the next 10 years it will be unrecognisable. I probably can't think of anywhere else in Australia that is going to change as radically. Certainly nowhere in the UK.

This is worth a read regarding liveability ratings. https://www.oecdregionalwellbeing.org/AU8.html ANU is a town within itself now, massive investment. You sound as if you're made for Canberra. Lots of outdoors stuff, lots of cultural stuff, almost too many cafes and coffeeshops, and enough pubs and clubs (not like UK nightclubs) now....but you can do as much or as little as you please, it's very relaxed. The City is expanding at a very fast pace, cranes everywhere and they're building higher. Apart from that, it's very spacious and spread out. It'll never be Sydney or Melbourne...but living in a place of 500,000 is more intimate than 7 or 8 million. The good thing about ANU is that there are thousands of new residents every year, so they're well setup for integration.

The Costco wagyu eye fillet is really good, but it's rocketted from about $50 to $78.99 a kilo in the last 2 years. It looks so fatty but it melts away at 300 degrees and we grill 4 mins per side for med rare...pretty much no fat left in it but the taste stays. The Japanese stuff is amazing, but they've banned export of the best bloodlines now, because if Australia and the USA got hold of the sperm they'd take over the market and shut the Japanese down. I think the American version is crossbred with black angus? I even saw they have it in the UK now and tried to get some for Xmas, but the few wagyu farms were restaurant supply only and asking stupid prices.

we had an open home at lunchtime today and one of the split systems packed up at 6.30 last night, so we grabbed a load of fans this morning. Real estate guy looked like a beetroot when we got back about 2pm....he'd had 27 groups through in 45 minutes. Just hoping for a cool change tonight but don't think we'll be getting much of one.

I'd go Vietnam or Cambodia. The Thai baht is very strong right now and it's not a cheap place anymore. Vietnam are spending a fortune on their coastline with new hotels all the time, Cambodia is still quite 3rd world in places, but you have the attraction of Siam Reap and Angkor Wat. If you're set on Thailand and want beaches I'd look at Khao Lak or Samui, some great resorts resorts and lots to do, but not as er,....."busy" as Phuket or Pattaya. If you don't need the beach/snorkelling or diving and can handle a pool, as Whey aye says...Chiang Mai is brilliant. You generally find that food is much better and spicier outside the big hotels, and the luxury resorts tend to be a bit isolated so you're a captive audience for paying their sky high prices for beer and food and excursions. Do some research on Tripadvisor for great quality hotels, but within areas where other businesses thrive or you might be bored senseless. Time of year is also important, monsoon seasons are not at the same time on either side of the gulf of Thailand.

A woman at work who got done the last time in a much smaller storm, said in the end they were transporting cars to Sydney and it was still taking 6 months. It actually boosted the economy because these guys were flooded out with high value work being paid on the insurance, so the tax was pouring in and the premiums pushed up bringing more money into the system. The fires will do the same for the south coast construction industry, but the environmental impact will take a long time to re-create the habitats. I was with a builder watching the hail smashing these cars to pieces on London Circuit and he pointed to his own old Izuzu ute getting bashed, totally unconcerned. He said that's why he has an old heavy one with no sunroof and tough windows, so he doesn't give a f when anything happens and he'll scrap it when the engine packs up in about 20 years.

I think it was into NSW and down the coast...but i think only ACT eventually took it seriously. I don't know if they have a register of what was outside ACT.

It doesn't work well in the neglected South where they have no tram , but then the South is pretty much filled apart from the doubling up on knockdown rebuilds. Much lighter traffic. The better houses in the North are really good but you're paying 1.2 million+ for a good one on the edge of the bush 30mins from work, when you might be better of paying 1.5mill in Hackett/Downer for a good old one and a better location. Civic govvy car parks will all be going around London Circuit. The Wilson one by the QT was shut the other month and is now a massive hole for thousands of apartments, on the other side the new hotel and Govvy block has taken the Assembly car park....and the ones opposite both Sydney/Melbourne are going to be a bus turnaround interchange in the next few years, when the tram comes around the corner off Northbourne. The only way it can work is if they force people out of their cars by removing the parking.....hence living in the City Centre suddenly looks reasonable and why they're forcing the apartment builds. It's a constructed economy all contrived with the builders and pollies.

It works but it's full and is espoecially useful for those living within walking distance of a stop. Those that do, love it. Those that don't have a use for it, bag it. The next stage is starting soon around London Circuit, then should reach Woden in about 5 years. It's more like a proper city since 2012 when i think they allowed them to build higher than 4 storeys, the scale of apartment building is stunning, which has vastly improved the restaurants and small businesses opening up on the ground level. Lots of Chinese students, better Chinese food and a more ethnic feel to the City on the ANU side. The economy is being shaped deliberately to get people out cars, which is a big ask. Jobs are still great with very high pay if you have skillsets. It's the easiest place to live, but not the cheapest.

It was cheap and mined here, and it protects against heat. Non-friable asbestos is a fabulous product and you don't have to remove it if you don't need to. Just don't smash it with hammers. Loose asbestos is a different matter, such as in old roof cavities..

yes, tax free at 60. You can take a lump sum, and then buy your actual regular pension with the remainder. Or you might want to leave it in there a bit longer to grow more, if you're happy at work ! You'll probably want financial advice before then as to how best structure your income.

When you reach Australia and as you're starting work immediately, you can then apply to the UK to make Class 2 NI contributions to make up the shortfall of your UK state pension, up to the 35 years for a full pension. Class 2 is much cheaper than Class 3, and is allowed when you're leaving a UK job immediately before you emigrate, and provide the details of your first job in Australia. I think the contributions are around £2.50 per week, so a few hundred pounds per year, for each extra years entitlement. If you live past about 81, it's a very good investment and a high return on what you paid in as payments in the UK obviously continue until death. That can form part of a safety net as well. You don't have to apply for this immediately on the UK GOV website, but keep the details of your last UK job safe somewhere, and your resignation letter, confirmation from employer, P45, and last P60, just in case you need it one day..

Yes, the employer pays a minimum of 9.5% of your salary and then you can top up yourself to a maximum of 25,000 per annum at 15% tax. As a teacher, you may get a little extra off the employer (10,11,12%) , especially if you contribute some yourself via your pay packet. The employer must set you up with their default superannuation fund on commencement of your job and start paying their own share into it, so it takes a weight off your mind. You don't have to start paying any personal contributions into it immediately...you can take your time and fill a form in when you're ready. The thing you can do with your British pension is ask them to provide you with a "cash transfer value" for information (if you haven't already). As a teacher, I guess you may have been funding this yourself through a LGA scheme at around 6% maybe, with additional contributions from the employers? The value is what you may be able to transfer out as a lump sum, and it may be a decent lump although not enough to sustain you as a life pension. Currently you cannot transfer this to Australia during your working life, but you could transfer it on retirement and purchase a pension annuity in Australia. Transfers were allowed up until a few years ago but the UK blocked it and removed Australian superfunds as "QROPS" registered. This was partly because Australian super funds allow you early access to your fund on the triggering of certain conditions, including illness and financial hardship. This goes against British superannuation rules which do not allow any early access whatsoever. The risk being that British people might move their pension fund to Australia, get early access, spend it, then return to the UK penniless and live off the state....so they have stopped allowing transfers to Australia until you've stopped paying into your superannuation and reached retirement age.

I guess if you're working, you can't go on cruises and too many holidays anyway...we certainly can't. It's about hitting that sweet spot where you can retire early enough and still have the physical mobility to do interesting things. What swung me was looking over the shoulder of a 22yr old trainee at work one lunchtime, and he was looking at his super account online. Still living at his parents, he had over $200,000. At 22? His grandparents had gifted him 100k when he started work, and he'd saved about 80k himself in 4 years. That puts him on course for about $4 million when he retires, but he'll probably be out of the workforce long before then. The free symposiums that Super companies run for members are obviously designed to get you to save more into their funds, but they are still very very useful. We went to a similar one about 3 months after we emigrated when we had joint Aussie super pots with a balance of about zero. No idea about the Aussie super system, not a clue how it worked. I remember them saying that for just a comfortable lifestyle (then $40,000 tax free for a couple), you would need a superannuation pot of $1 million on retirement, as well as a paid-off house.. Bit of jump, from zero to $1 million, when you think you've got F all. They helped us with our UK-funded, defined benefit pension schemes, who were actually unable to tell us what our pension balances were for about 4 months while they worked it out. It was archaic and like walking through treacle, but we got our money out of the UK before they changed the pension rules to prevent overseas transfers. We were surprised at how much we'd got for 20 years of UK payments but it gave us a better starting point than we'd hoped for....re-invested it over here, learned about it, took charge of it, and have ploughed surplus money into it taking every tax concession going. We hit that financial target after 7 years and the house is paid off in another 3, now we have another 15 years to reduce the age we can retire at and try and hit that sweet spot where we have more than enough, but can do it 7/8 years earlier, all self-funded and hopefully never relying on the Aussie state pension as a benefit. The sacrifice is that you work overly hard when they're throwing money at you, but you know you're going to have to cut back one day before you burn out. We also purchased the gap in UK National Insurance payments as Class 2 contributions, a brilliant deal to max out the UK state pension. If we live to 93, then the Aussie state pension is projected to kick in...but realistically, we'll be past caring anyway if we're still alive.

I'm not sure if the chances are slim. It'll just come down to cost, and how much the UK wants a deal with Australia. When Australia issued industry consultation on what they wanted as a national benefit from a potential post-Brexit FTA, this was pretty high on the agenda as a precursor to allowing more UK exports and services inside. Whether that compensation is directly attributable to the pensioners themselves, or the UK makes an ex-gratia payment each year....who knows what will happen? The question to ask would be that would the removal of index-linking pensions prevent people retiring overseas, especially those who rely mainly on a state pension to supplement a fairly cheap life in the Costas or the rural areas of France, and then the Europeans start imposing charges on UK immigrants who are not EU members anymore and are not paying their way into the system. The calculation would be if the UK wants to end up funding the growing age crisis and extra medical/social security costs rather than just the weekly pension payment. As most people are living longer and in the UK especially, don't have adequate super balances on top of the state pension entitlement, they're getting more illnesses that they would previously not have lived long enough to develop. There's a huge ongoing cost attached to this as the rising cost of medical care/social housing is outstripping the value of the existing systems that fund it. Index-linking their pensions abroad might be the cheapest way to ensure that elderly people don't return to the UK which would put more pressure on the UK system. Stopping existing index-linking might exasperate the problem and force pensioners to return to UK when they'd otherwise be happy to retire overseas and remove themselves from the home system altogether. It'll be interesting to witness the overhaul that's coming for the NHS. If Johnson gets in and allows America to start expanding its health industry principles into the UK as part of any FTA requirement, the financial cost will rocket. It's obvious that NI and supplementary grants don't cover the cost of existing treatments being delivered and there is no published plan to say where the extra money will be coming from to cover the existing and expanding aged population, who are also living longer, even before they reform the system and offer more to private companies who need to make a profit for shareholders.