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. 

On 11/08/2022 at 12:21, scmucyx said:

Hi all, I am wondering if anyone is able to share their experience and thoughts about the question I have for a ceased main applicant during the waiting period for 103.

Q1: If the main applicant ceased, can the secondary applicant become the main by contacting Home affairs? Or a whole new application process?

Q2: Queue date 2012 for 103, if the applicant decides to switch to 143, would it be the same queue date as 103?

Q3: If switching is possible with the original queue date, Is the applicant eligible for any social benefits? Or with a waiting period?

Q4 Is the applicant eligible for any social benefits with 103 at queue date 2012?

Much appreciated!

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.

On 13/08/2022 at 08:32, AmyL said:

All the tips above - decluttering and researching helped me feel in control. I made an Australia folder with areas to live in, quotes etc.  but as someone who has been waiting over 2 years now for a 491 - don’t let the wait consume you. Get on with your life and distract yourself but do allow some time to plan ahead - I drove myself a bit insane and learnt the hard way. Doubt you’ll have a long of a wait as some of us, but just incase! 

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. 
 

On 12/07/2022 at 10:48, Marisawright said:

Speak for yourself. Just because you can't control your spending, doesn't mean other people can't.

For many years, when I first got a credit card, I carried a little notebook where I kept track of my bank balance and deducted my credit card purchases from my balance as I purchased things (even though I knew I didn't have to pay them till later).  Maybe that 'training' is why I still think of my credit card purchases the same way I think about cash purchases. 

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. 

22 hours ago, Marisawright said:

I have a credit card that gives me points, not air miles.  Of course they try to get you to use them for air miles or luxury stuff you don't need, BUT I can also exchange points for gift cards, or for cash paid into my bank account.  That's what I do.  That makes it easy to check that my 'rewards' add up to more than the credit card fee every year (the year they don't, will be the year I cut up the credit card and start using my debit card instead). 

I know there are people who buy stuff they don't need just to get points.  No idea why anyone would be that stupid.  I just buy what I need and the points are a bonus.

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.  

On 12/07/2022 at 09:56, Whey aye said:

If it works great.Rules that applied 10 years ago don't apply now.

Do a simple cost/ benefit analysis.If I spend $60K a year for the next 10 years I'll have 600,000 points and a free ticket ,I'm the winner.I'm last in line on the plane because it's a ' free ticket'.

Just pay for the ticket,less stress, and travel whenever you want,and probably ( I would say definately) cheaper.

The seat you will probably win for your free prize will be the middle seat up against the last bulkhead.Where the plane narrows in towards the tail.Where the kitchen and the toilets are 

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

39 minutes ago, ramot said:

Like you all our income comes from UK, from pensions, and rent. We don’t have superannuation, age late 70’s. My husband had no trouble getting the Qantas credit card, had obviously to answer questions, I assume he met the conditions,  We wanted it for air miles as well. Is it worth a try?

I’m going to give it a go. 

12 hours ago, Cup Final 1973 said:

Yes I know it’s basically about your income.  My point is that if your income is the basic pension from the UK government you are never going to qualify for a credit card, no matter how many hundreds of thousands you have in your bank account.

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

21 hours ago, Tulip1 said:

It’s more about how much your income is.  The banks don’t care whether it’s from a salary or a pension, they have to document affordability when offering lending.  If you only have a low pension, that’s the same as someone with a low paid part to job and they would equally be refused.  If you have a good pension then you would be treated the same as someone with a good salary.  Having money in the bank cannot be used as affordability.  You may spend it all the following week and then you have been given lending that you can’t afford.  Lots of very old people have credit cards with high limits because they have passed the affordability to have them.  Nothing to do with age or having just a pension. 

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?  

23 hours ago, Cup Final 1973 said:

Yes you’re right.  I’ve had a Barclaycard for over 20 years but as soon as I hit 70 the spending limit was reduced to £250.  This is not brilliant but I get round it by paying it off every week.  Like Marisa I always pay the bill to avoid interest and use it for the cash back it gives.  I have applied for other cards but no one is interested in how much money you have in the bank.  If you have just a pension as income it’s an automatic refusal.

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.

On 10/07/2022 at 10:24, Parley said:

Having a credit card usually encourages over spending. Costs you more than any points you get.

Sticking with a debit card for daily spending is best in my opinion, and you are not going to get in trouble overspending.

I do have a Qantas credit card too, still fee free from my time as a bank employee. I use it only for emergencies or to manage large payments where i might not have the cash immediately on hand.

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.

On 08/07/2022 at 21:40, Marisawright said:

It is outlandish, I'm just saying it's the same in the UK so not exclusively an Australian thing.

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.

On 04/07/2022 at 16:50, Marisawright said:

When we were in the UK the banks there were weird about foreign income too. Understandable because they have no recourse to that foreign money if you default 

Considering the account has been open for more than ten years and there’s always been a credit balance, we own our own home in Australia outright and have assets elsewhere in Australia, I thought it was a bit outlandish to refuse without even checking our income. Luckily we didn’t actually need a card, we just wanted the air miles.

On 04/07/2022 at 19:24, ramot said:

We had no problem at all, getting a credit card when we got ours years ago even though we were on the 410 temporary visa.

We are now citizens, all our income comes from UK, is guaranteed  income for life from pensions, I don’t know anything about rules changing, but had no problem getting a credit card from Qantas a couple of months ago for the air miles. I do find here that if you don’t fit ‘the norm’ unless you are lucky enough to find someone switched on, you face an uphill battle to get them to understand. Ask to speak someone higher up, or check out other banks, and threaten to move your account,

Hope all is well apart from that. x M

 

Hi Ramot, yes all well with us, thankfully weren’t impacted by floods, just the endless rain. Your reply is interesting because it shows that a credit card is possible!  I was very annoyed with Westpac because we have had our account open for ten years -since long before we left the UK, and there’s been quite a lot of money through it. For a credit limit of $6000 dollars!  The guy we spoke to thought it was ‘interesting’ that I would be the main account holder, and found it hard to believe that we had no other credit cards.  So we’re thinking of moving the account anyway. I think I’ll look into the Qantas card, thanks for the info.   Hope all’s well with you.

Hi all,    I recently decided to apply for a credit card because I wanted to get airmiles rewards on my spending - it seemed like a good idea at the time. I am now an Australian citizen, have had my account with the bank in question for ten years, loads of money through it and never overdrawn.  I’ve been living at the same address in Australia for just over four years. I have a retirement income well in excess of the minimum outlined by the bank, and have most of it transferred here from the UK.  So I was gobsmacked to be told by a not-very-nice man on zoom (in the manager’s office, in place of the manager!) that I was not eligible for a credit card.     I notice they have recently changed their web page eligibility criteria to include the need for a verifiable Australian income. I’ve decided the airmiles aren’t worth it, but this seems crazy to me.   Is this typical, or are all Australian banks weird about foreign income?

52 minutes ago, Loopylu said:

That is very strange as I don’t know of any friends in the UK who live alone who have been stopped from seeing their family or parents for over a year. A month or two at most during the hardest lockdowns. Bubbles are allowed so unless your niece is overseas and not allowed to travel to the UK there really is no good reason why they have not seen each other unless, of course, your sister is shielding due to a serious health condition. 

My niece lives in London and my sister lives in Stafford. But my sister is in a bubble with her son who lives in Sheffield, and it’s my understanding that people over the age of sixty cannot be in a bubble with two different families?  I  used my sister as an example of the fact that everything is far from easy in the UK. People are being limited in their movement in all sorts of ways, for instance I have many friends in my home town who are only allowed out to excercise, and no driving allowed.  My point was that until we get this virus under control everyone will suffer limitations to some extent.

1 hour ago, Loopylu said:

My SIL has worked 2 weeks in every 6 for Qantas in ticketing Her job disappears at the end of March as Qantas is closing the domestic ticket office permanently (not just for Covid). As she ordinarily works at the International Airport Qantas will not make her redundant. She  has applied for many jobs, studied and got new qualifications but no alternative work for her. Probably because she is a 60 year old woman. Older women are now the highest group on welfare benefits.... age discrimination is rife. 
 

If you read my posts properly you would see that I believe the vaccine should go to the most vulnerable and those most at risk of coming into contact with Covid first. ScoMo and the other pollies do not fall into these categories. The doctor at the PA in Brisbane who contracted Covid from people she was treating should have been inoculated well before those reprobates. 

Regarding your sister in law - things are pretty much the same in the uk for women in the sixty plus age group, who now have to wait until they are sixty six to access their contributory state pension. This means that many women in the Uk (categorized as elderly and vulnerable) have been forced by financial necessity to continue working on the front line in schools and hospitals. So things aren’t that rosy in the UK either.  I’ve only been in Australia for three years, and I had planned a trip back this year, which obviously isn’t happening. I am quite homesick at the moment, but do you know what? I thank my lucky stars every day that I’m here in a place with such low infection rates that I can live an almost normal life - especially when I speak to my sister who lives alone and hasn’t seen her daughter for over a year. Fundamental right to a family life? I think we all need to accept things the way they are and get on with our lives as best we can. 

1 hour ago, Dusty Plains said:

The UK government has announced that from Monday next week, new Covid-19 laws will come into play. A ban on leaving the United Kingdom is included in new coronavirus laws coming into force next week. 

The law says no-one may 'leave England to travel to a destination outside the United Kingdom, or travel to, or be present at, an embarkation point for the purpose of travelling from there to a destination outside the United Kingdom' without a reasonable excuse.

It suggests anyone who breaks such rules could face a £5,000 fine. There is also a £200 fixed penalty notice for failing to fill in a travel declaration form – giving person details and reason for travel – for those planning to leave the UK.

Exemptions apply including for those needing to travel for work, study, for legal obligations or to vote, if they are moving, selling or renting property, for some childcare reasons or to be present at a birth, to visit a dying relative or close friend, to attend a funeral, for those getting married or to attend the wedding of a close relative, for medical appointments or to escape a risk of harm.

Sound familiar? 

Pity they didn’t do that in the first place.

18 hours ago, purplealster said:

As someone who grew up in a third world country, then lived in the UK for 9 years before moving to Australia 15 years ago, I am 100% supportive of Australia's policies towards border control and the Liberals response to the COVID Pandemic.

It sounds like you are a very angry individual, who tends to lean towards the left of politics. I am yet to come across a left leaning person who doesn't have a permanent gripe about something. 

My mother and mother in law are both still in Africa. If something had to happen to them, and the chances are it would be more along the lines of murder or rape rather than covid, myself and my husband would have problems getting to them. Yes, the thought of this is frightening but these are unprecedented times. We also realise that it is pointless worrying ourselves sick about it this - I haven't seen my mum in 3 years and my kids their grandmothers - very sad but such is life.

You seem to be fixated with the fact that Scomo has been vaccinated. Yet, you do not direct the same anger towards Albanese and Bandt who have also been vaccinated. Why is that?

 

Generalisation is seldom wise. I’m a ‘left leaning’ person and I don’t have a particular gripe about anything.

7 hours ago, ozexpat said:

Residence Calculator

Use the calculator link,

probably 1 month later as they allow 12 months away in past 4 years (and no more than 90days last year)

 

9 hours ago, Noshee said:

Hi everyone iam new here I have a question regarding citizenship residency requirement 

We came here to Australia on 20 March 2016 on visa 489( family of 4) 

Me and my daughters left Australia after 10 months stay in Australia (18 Jan 2017) and came back after 13 months on 1 March 2018 never left Australia since then. We became permanent resident on 7 April 2020. My husband will be eligible for citizenship in April 2021. My question is when will me and my daughters be eligible as I stayed out of Australia for 13 months in the last 4 years 

 

Hi Noshee.    I got my permanent residence in 2016 then returned to the UK for sixteen months. Haven’t left since. I am currently applying for citizenship - as someone said, they allow you twelve months away in four years.  The calculator is good, but I also discovered that if you begin filling in a citizenship application online and you are too early the programme tells you so, tells you when you will be elligibke and shuts you down - so if the programme allows you to apply, you know you’re okay

On 19/03/2021 at 16:40, Loopylu said:

Bully for you.
 

It has been an extremely stressful time trying to get back to the UK to spend time with my father before he dies a horrid but fairly quick death from pancreatic cancer. I work with others in Brisbane who have not been so lucky and they have missed the passing of parents and funerals. 
 

I sincerely hope this never happens to you or anyone you care about. You obviously have no sympathy for me or my family....

Dusty plains said he was happy with the current arrangements for leaving Australia. Many people in Australia must feel grateful for the draconian rules that have kept them safe - I know I do - but I’m sure most people would also feel the utmost sympathy for people like you, who are suffering because of those same rules.  Thirteen years ago I watched my father die of cancer during a weeks ‘holiday’ from my job outside the UK, knowing that if his death took longer than a week I would have to leave ... so I have some small notion of the grief you must be enduring, particularly with your husband’s ill health to contend with. I hope you can get through this harrowing time and back to Australia with the minimum of further anguish. People do care.

9 minutes ago, ramot said:

I buy M&S on line, works ok most of the time. So many women of an older age here belong to what I call the white trouser brigade here on the coast, with a loose top. Often I can’t tell one from the other!

Yes I’m going to go to M&S online - need my Marks’ knickers!  I stocked up when I was in the UK in 2019 but of course our proposed bi- annual visiting plan has hit a bit of a glitch ...      people dont seem to do the white trouser thing round here, but I know what you mean!