Fisher1

Hi. I have no experience of moving my kid at that age, but just wanted to say that I moved schools as a fourteen year old many years ago and was really worried about making friends. The second day I was there I met someone who has been a close friend now for nearly sixty years, and was incredibly happy in my new location, which I still call home. It isn’t a good age to be moving but it isn’t the end of the world either. As a retired teacher who worked in an international school with lots of comings and goings, I would echo the comments of others on this page - try for year nine if you can. Good luck with it all, it’s a nerve wracking time.

Not much help, but I can tell you that when we sold a rental property in the UK five years ago, as very new arrivals here, we didn’t have to pay Capital gains on the UK property (which we had never lived in) because contracts were exchanged after we left the country. We did have to pay C.G. here jn Australia but I can’t remember what percentage it was.

Hi. Don’t know if this is any help but we were on the 103 list for two years from 2013 and when we switched to the 143 in 2015 they counted the two years we had already been waiting. We were lucky, the wait was aproximately two years for a 143 back then so we got our visa almost immediately after we swapped. I have a friend who didn’t want to wait the four or five years (six even?) that the 143 now takes, so she came over on a visitors visa and applied for an onshore aged parents visa from here. She risks being deported if she (eventually) fails her medical, but feels the risk is worth being able to be here with her family and be part of her grandchildren’s lives.

I agree! When we were waiting we were in a different position as we knew it would be about two years (this was in 2014). We had the additional complication that even when we got our visa we might have to wait another year or more because we couldn’t leave my very elderly mum - who didn’t have long to live. So we decided to try and forget about the visa (difficult when our new born grandson in Sydney was growing bigger every day). We concentrated on spending time with old friends, particularly those who didn’t live close by. We made budget trips to our favourite places in Europe. We also formulated a ‘Plan B’ - to be activated if we failed our medicals. We made plan B so attractive that by the time we got our visas in 2016 we were almost disappointed not to be going to live near friends in Spain! In short, we got on with our lives. We had a long holiday in Oz in 2016 when our visas were issued, and visited several places outside Sydney so that we knew exactly where we wanted to live - that was a massive help later. I joined the FB community page for our future home to get the feel of the place, and trawled Realestate.com to get an idea of property prices. My mum died early in 2017 and we arrived here in August that year. Our grand daughter was born the week we arrived. The wait is a pain, but it passed - and it was a great opportunity to plan.

haha I used to do that - I used to write each spend in the back of my cheque book as though I'd written a cheque, and work out the running total at the end of the day.

Exactly. I was saying airmiles but I'd be equally happy to have points - just a bonus on the shopping I'd be doing anyway. I'm not that desperate, I was just gobsmacked at the idea that I could be refused a credit card before they even got round to asking details of my income! I was also annoyed because Mr Zoom also made it clear that he found it amusing that I was applying for a credit card and my husband would be the second card holder.

I was thinking more about being able to upgrade to a different class using airmiles.

I’m going to give it a go.

Yes, I can see that would be difficult, but the bank's issue with me was that the income did not arise in Australia.

My original comment wasn't about having a low income - it was about being refused a credit card because the income arose outside Australia. It means that if you move to live in Australia, you are forever banned from having a credit card, no matter what your credit score or how long you have lived here?

It's ridiculous! If they are so concerned about their miserable few thousand dollars, they could surely ask for surety - like cash to be kept on deposit for the first year or something? I really wanted those air miles

I hadn't considered that possibility - it's not very comfortable to think about people being in that situation but yes, in extremis I can see that a credit card could be a life saver.

It can encourage overspending. However, having previously had a credit card for thirty one years without once failing to pay the entire balance at the end of the month, we're quietly confident that we could cope. Thanks for the concern though - some people do get into a right mess.

Can hugely recommend Alan Collet - he saved us a small fortune in tax when we moved here five years ago.

Yes. We were once refused a 20% mortgage on a flat in the UK by the UK bank to which my salary had been paid for seventeen years by the same employer, no overdrafts, no loans, one credit card. The reason? Although I was employed by the dept of Education in the UK, I was on a seconded post and living outside the UK! We closed our account and borrowed elsewhere. Infuriating though. My husband was laughing about our current situation afterwards - he pointed out that we could win squillions of pounds on the lottery and - theoretically - they wouldn’t give us a credit card. Daft.