Oh sweetheart, I hear you! You have your 'home' back 'home', and know how you feel. Im born bred here, but after 16yrs in UK, feel I'm from there, and coming back here was a mistake! I'd love to up and go, and like you, sucked down the plughole with the rat-race of all that is keeping up with cafe society & kids education and extra curricular stuff. even just insurance is crippling - but worse if you don't have it. It's really hard. I think you are doing the right thing clearing your debts, makes that fresh start back home so inviting & you'll not have the past hanging over you with debts to clear and paying exchange rates to send money over, and you don't want to leave the country as a bad debter, it may follow you when you travel later. Also if you can ebay stuff to just get rid of things you don't need, to add to the 'savings piggy bank' for moving home. Car finance...yup we were the same - couldn't get credit so got a dealer car second hand and finance has us stuck in - & a lemon to boot! Lucky tho' the extra warranty has paid for a lot! I hear you on a lot of levels. We are sinking and I miss our house, tho' I don't miss the area it's in, we'd prob live somewhere else. But just glad we have our place there. We're even talking about retirement - that we'd move back to Europe, can't afford to retire here (just had 4th babe - unexpected/unplanned, and already finances are tight) so retirement a long way off, and unattainable like it was in UK. My gorgeous 1st boy misses UK too. We don't talk of missing UK, but he obviously hasn't taken to Aus like we'd hoped. Then neither have I, and hubby is finding it a real struggle emotionally, and financially too.
We're travelling to South Africa and UK in June/July, and it's taken all our savings - when we could have just up and gone back - just too hard to relocate with 4 kids right now. An Irish friend whose hubby is FIFO in Perth - so she sees him 1 week in 4, is flying home for good with her kids. Due to the cost of travelling back there for a family anniversary, it's so expensive, she may as well go back permanently, and hubby can 'fly home' while she's got the support of family there, here she's got no one. (ie not family, old friends). I completely understand.
Even just the creepy crawlies get me, leeches, ticks, spiders. Got bitten by a spider and had a bad reaction - called the health line, they called an ambulance, travelled 16kms to the hosp and was charged almost $400 for the priviledge... the reaction from opening the 'invoice' was as scary as the reaction to the darn spider bite! sheesh... I'll get over my phobia of frogs and move back in a flash!
Good luck and know there are people who are wishing you well, just think every day is one day closer... and smile (fake it till you make it) thru those tears!
