Cam

Hi Itchy feet,

I really feel for your predicament. Family and friends (in my opinion) is always what makes the move hardest, and I think those who manage it most successfully are those who are able to switch off 'guilt' for leaving people behind. The cost and distance mean that you won't see people from the Uk very often. It's also worth considering how good people are with Skype, I always found Skyping my Dad really hard, there would always be something going wrong with it, although in effect there shouldn't have been but it does depend how technical people are. We also had to Skype/ call three different people regularly and with time differences there were certain golden windows which sometimes effected our evening out or our morning's plans. But that is a by the bye. It's worth considering a '1 year trip' to see how it all goes, relatives take this more kindly than 'I could be emigrating'.

I feel for you boyfriend he sounds like he's desperate to go and it can eat away at you until you do go. Sometimes just having it on your mind all the time makes the whole thing more, he may go and after a year decide he'd rather be back in the UK. It's hard to know until you go whether it will be right, but also timing is key, would it be right to go now or would it be better to go in a year or two?

We wrote long lists of Pro-Uk and Pro-Oz, it helped to think it all through, but I think conversations with everyone will help you understand how they would feel about it and therefore any feelings that you would have.

Good luck, I don't envy your dilemma. :daydreaming:

I'm just doing my Oz tax return and wondering whether you have to pay oz taz on UK NI and pension contributions that you made in that year. It's a slightly unique situation, whilst we were in Australia I was receiving maternity pay and then we returned in March this year so had 4 months of full pay in the tax year. I've entered my income and tax paid but can't see where I could off-set the NI & pension as you don't pay tax on those in the UK. I do have to declare all these and other foreign income as we were resident for tax purposes.

Anyone know any answers I looked around on the internet and can't see anything relevant.

Thanks