cathandtone
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You could also check out Transferwise, that's who my daughter uses for smallish amounts and she rates them very highly. For larger amounts try OFX.
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Hi Suzie Pm me nearer the time and we will gladly arrange a meet for your parents. Cath
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Hi Suzie I won't try and pretend it's easy settling here, I'm sure you've had a few hiccups along the way and I don't suppose your parents will be any different. But no regrets overall. We use Ozforex/Ukforex as other people have already mentioned here. We have found them good and very helpful. Our UK bank will only let us transfer £10,000 per day so that can cause a few issues. I wonder whether Dad is already drawing his private pension since you say he is in his late 60s. I'm not sure on the position if he is, it might be a little more tricky. We have no pension pot here, all our money is coming from the UK so we are at the mercy of the exchange rates but we have had few problems getting our pension providers to pay our pensions direct to our Aus bank account. After a lot of thought we decided to settle in the Perth northern suburbs (Clarkson) and we like it up here, the local shopping centre is excellent and we are close to the beaches and Joondalup. The railway runs from Currambine directly to Perth and we travel for free using our Seniors Card, after 9 and before 3 I think the times are. I never cease to be amazed at how helpful people can be in the shops and our local library in particular. Our medical care has been second to none and most of our GP visits are bulk billed so no direct costs to us. Any referrals we have had have been sorted out really quickly. Prescriptions can be expensive but will get cheaper when we can apply for our Commonwealth Seniors Cards. The biggest downside has been the fall out from the awful exchange rate, when we began the process it was $2.5 to the £1, heady days! We have just had to get on with it. We've made some lovely friends here and I think that's a very important aspect of the move. Good luck to your parents. Cath
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Hi Cath It will come as a bit of a shock to you I expect when you see the cost of prescriptions particularly if, like us, you were entitled to free prescriptions in the UK. The first month we were here I nearly keeled over when we had to pay $170 for our regurlar scripts. So that was the first lesson learnt, not to use the pharmacy right by the doctor's surgery. We now use Chemist Wharehouse which brought the cost right down. www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/aboutus/storelocations.asp I can't help with what your medicare entitlements are with on a 173 as we are here on the 143. Perhaps Linday can help with this one. Best wishes Cath
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I'll answer this one if I may. Your state pension is paid gross regardless of whether you are here or in the UK. Your current tax code will be applied to all other pensions until such time as you apply to have your UK income exempt of tax. We finally received the magic NT code a couple of weeks ago and the refunds are drifting in to our accounts. It took about 5 months from sending off the forms. Most of our pensions are paid direct to our Australian bank account by our pensions providers; this is our only income so sadly we are not in a position to pick and choose when to bring the funds across ourselves. In practice it works for us, we are subject to the vagaries of the exchange rate but it's the price we have to pay. Best wishes Cath
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If your parents case is straightforward I would recommend you or they do it yourself. Even if you used a migration agent you would have to gather all the information anyway so cut out the middle man I say and save yourself/them the added cost. It is a question of being very methodical but otherwise straightforward. There are always plenty of people on here to ask if you do become stuck. Best wishes Cath
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Hi Linda You can get your Eligibility for Lifetime Health cover by calling in at a Medicare office, this is what we did. As for getting quotes I used a comparison website to find the cheapest cover I could find with a view to upgrading at a later date if necessary. I'm pretty sure that the quotes we had made the assumption that we were entitled to the discount and we subsequently had to send off the letter to our chosen company. The cover we have chosen means that we have quite a 'gap' on things like optical and dental but I feel that at the moment that the cheaper premiums cover this. Cath
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I don't think you will be able to ship your furniture until you actually have a visa so it will probably mean putting it all into storage, a small sacrifice compared to the bigger picture! Good luck with the house sale. We were certainly agreeably surprised when ours went under offer 10 days after we listed it last year. There are still buyers around and I hope you will be equally fortunate. Agree about the camping, we have met some wonderful people on our brief travels and mostly very friendly and helpful. Just as well really as our reversing a van does not improve with practice! It's nice to know that we give so many people a good laugh over their late afternoon drinkies.
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Today is a bit of a special day for us since it is the first anniversary of our arrival in Australia on our 143 visa. So what has this year been like for us? It's fair to say that there have been a few ups and downs but by far more ups I'm pleased to say. I have found it more difficult than Tony, the first few weeks were quite hard for me, I felt so out of my comfort zone. It quickly became clear that we could not possibly buy our own home and the thought of renting for the rest of our days has been hard to come to terms with, particularly as it is so expensive. The cost of living is high but we no longer convert prices to pounds, there is absolutely no point, it's dollars in our bank account after all. It is wonderful to be so close to our children, although having said that, one daughter and her family have relocated to Broome. Nothing daunted, we bought a camper and hit the road north and had 5 weeks away seeing the sights and spending time with our family, doing 6000 kms in the process. What a wonderful way to see Australia. Today we have come back from a trip south to Esperance, Albany and Bridgetown. We have met so many people whilst camping who have spent years on the road that it is very tempting to do the same. Amongst the pluses of being here is the first class medical care we have received, no waiting to see our GP and always the same one, he's a bit keen on blood tests though but that seems to be the same with all GPs here. This compares to our poor daughter we left behind in the UK, she is so poorly yet has barely been able to see the same doctor twice. Each one says something different and she has had to beg to be referred. Guess who her employer is, yep, the good ole NHS. I have to say a big thank you to the PIPs (Parents in Perth) who have been very supportive. All in all, it's been a big year and a big move but one we don't regret. Cath & Tony
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one other thing, they are both too young to qualify for the aged parents visa.
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Hi there, sorry to say that your parents cannot currently apply for a CPV as until your sister has her de facto status confirmed they do not meet the balance of family test. We had very similar issues ourselves. I can only comment on this part of your question as I'm not that familiar with tourist visas and how your parents wish to use them. On a more upbeat note, one of my daughters was in a similar position and her de facto status was confirmed pretty quickly. They did need to gather a lot of evidence to show that they were in a settled relationship but once they had that it was pretty straightforward. Cath
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I know there's definately a lot of money at stake but we scraped in by the skin of our teeth and purchased insurance on the last possible date.
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As sure as I can be since the letter we received from Medicare to pass on to our chosen insurance company gave the date exactly 1 year from when we registered.
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Just a little word of warning about registering for Medicare when you are validating your visa. Do make sure that you are registering as a tourist and not as a soon to be resident. You have just a year from registering with Medicare as a resident to take out private medical insurance at a discounted rate. We very nearly fell into this trap. Cath
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I seem to recall that Gollywobbler's mum had this same issue with step children but it was resolved in her favour and she is now happily settled here in Perth. I don't know any more of the details than that. Anyone know where Gollywobbler has gone? She would be the most perfect person to answer this query with her expertise. Cath
