Fisher1
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Everything posted by Fisher1
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I think the crucial difference is that the Australian pension is a benefit to which individuals make no contributions during their working life, whereas the UK pension is not a state benefit because inividuals have contributed to it throughout their working lives - and as for any paid for pension, what you get depends on the amount you have paid in - not everyone gets the same.
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Thanks for the info. Residential care sounds similar to the UK - a mess! hugely expensive, with no way of insuring against or saving for because the costs are so high. I believe the average stay in s UK home is two years. I intend to stay in my own home with help until I'm too doolally to care where I am ... Till then, head in sand.
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There are always some people with an eye to the main chance - but I doubt there are many expecting to come over to Australia and claim benefits. On the other hand, most people want to know how their new country functions and what help - if any - would ultimately be available if the need arose. I'm a bit puzzled by your comment about anti parent feeling. I'm in NSW and have met with nothing but kindness and enthusiasm so far = how do people know you've come over on a parent visa anyway? Most people I've met have assumed I've been here donkeys years and just never lost the accent.
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We did!
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Please excuse me if I'm mistaken but as I understand it, there are two different cards available to pensioners. One is the commonwealth seniors' card and the other is the pensioners' card. The commonwealth seniors' card entitles you to various discounts that (in my opinion) are easy to live without. In New South Wales it entitles you to a Gold Opal card - which caps your costs on Public transport (train, bus and ferry) to $2.50 per day. A fantastic perk which enables us to travel far and wide without a second thought. Possibly there are similar schemes in other states? The pensioners' card is different - it only goes to people receiving the state pension, which is a benefit paid to those on a low income. The pensioners' card gives discounts on (I believe) important living expenses such as power. This Australian state pension is the one you can't apply for until you've been in the country for ten years.
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A planned holiday clashed with the allocation of our visa two years ago, which was sooner than we had expected (!) We liased with a case officer and booked a quick week's holiday in Auckland - emailed a screen shot of the booking confirmation from an online travel company. We left for New Zealand early one morning and found an email allocating our visa when we arrived at our hotel.
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Good point Ramot. My parents bought their retirement home in Wales when they were in their late fifties and never gave a thought to the staircase - which shot out of the tiny hall at quite a dizzying gradient. It was only thirty years later that chickens came home to roost and my poor mum had to move to a sheltered flat at a time when she really didn't want to leave behind memories. Also worth considering whether there is a downstairs bathroom, and whether it's possible to get from house to garden to street without needing a ramp. Three steps to our front door was no problem till we had to negotiate it with mum's wheelchair. Don't want to be a misery but I look at steps and stairs in an entirely new light these days!
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Its the units that I've noticed dropping a bit, not houses. Maybe a difference there.
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Yes we had to buy the house we ended up with in a hurry - there really was another offer on ours (we know because they shared the cost of the survey!) We viewed on Saturday, went back on our own on Sunday to look at the outside and met the owner by chance, had a chat. monday we surveyed and Tuesday exchanged contracts. Terrifying speed but it was a cheaper house so very desirable ... The others made a higher offer but our seller let our original accepted offer stand and sold to us ... Msybe the chat helped ... So some people are honest about it all and this particular agent was very good.
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We found that all negotiations were through the agent and no contact was possible with the actual seller - i was very tempted to out a letter through the door of the house we missed commiserating with them over the loss of 13,000$ but thought better of it. some agents seem fairly straight but we guessed this particualr person was playing games - it was kind of obvious the claims of other buyers didnt ring true somehow - which is why we backed off. Incidentally, another trick we noticed in Sydney was photoshopping the details in the online ads. My daughter's flat was for sale complete with non-existant flowers and a patch of grass transformed into a smooth lawn!!!! Insane because as soon as you visit you see the reality ...
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I think the correction is already beginning in Sydney - another reason we bought the smallest place we could live with. I've been watching Sydney prices since way before we left the UK and have noticed a slight but definite drop since we arrived eight months ago. Something else to beware of when buying is … the estate agents! I don't know what they are like elsewhere but we had a bad experience with an agent who kept refusing our offers on a house until we reached our limit and gave up! He then waited a few days and rang us saying that the sellers were keen to sell and might just consider an offer just a couple of thousand higher than ours. It was quite satisfying to be able to tell him we had already exchanged contracts on another property. The house with the higher price tag then sat on the market for a further three weeks, had two more open days and then sold for thirteen thousand dollars less than we had offered … you have been warned!
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Yes, the frustration must be immense just not knowing. We chose our current location based partly on house prices being affordable ... Then sat and watched them climb as the exchange rate plummetted. We have been lucky to find a place that didnt twke all our money although it was a sharp downsize from what we had in the UK! We too wre renovating Nyorksgrannie ... Hope yours is going as well as ours (touch wood). The thing about the endless uncharted waiting is that you can't plan properly - I really hope the Au govt sort out the visa situation so that at least people have a realistic view of the time scale and costs when they fork over the not insignificant first VAC. A private firm carrying on the way of immi would risk being sued for false representation ...
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Yes, the frustration must be immense just not knowing. We chose our current location based partly on house prices being affordable ... Then sat and watched them climb as the exchange rate plummetted. We have been lucky to find a place that didnt twke all our money although it was a sharp downsize from what we had in the UK! We too wre renovating Nyorksgrannie ... Hope yours is going as well as ours (touch wood). The thing about the endless uncharted waiting is that you can't plan properly - I really hope the Au govt sort out the visa situation so that at least people have a realistic view of the time scale and costs when they fork over the not insignificant first VAC. A private firm carrying on the way of immi would risk being sued for false representation ...
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Hmm diagnosis not quite as straightforward as that in my experience.
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You are right, it should be covered, but the govt. refuse to treat it as an illness and shove it under social needs. When you become ill enough to be bedridden snd need nursing care to prevent bed sores etc, then the NHS will, on receipt of confirmation from a health care professional, pay the nursing part of the care. First you have to get your relative assessed by a social worker, who is probably not going to be available until a week next Tuesday. So while your mother lies propped up in an easy chair by day you beg invisible people on answer phones to ring back urgently. All this for something like ten percent of the 1000 pounds weekly fee. We offered to forgo the NHS bit, but that wasnt allowed because everything had to go through a social worker regardless. When a social worker finally rocked up she asked me if I thought my semi- comatose mother might have stopped eating because she was a bit depressed. Many people in the UK do stay at home because there is no money to elect to go into a care home and their 'social needs' aren't deemed serious enough to need full time care. So their loved ones drive themselves into the ground trying to keep their increasingly demented relative safe, fed, and clean. Want to take two hours out to go for a walk, do a bit of shopping? You pay up to tweny pounds an hour for the privilege. I've heard it described as like being under house arrest ... Surely senior care in Australia can't be any worse? Sorry, I realise Ive strayed a long way from 'poms in oz', rant over.
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For us this was not an option because it was impossible to find anyone who would insure us for longer than thirty days once we turned sixty five. Several people have said on here that longer periods can be insured well into old age, but when we made our decision we had already searched high and low with no success ... So dont bank on being able to get travel insurance for long term visits. I would imagine if you are resident for tax you would be considered resident for NHS provision? It seems that you are resident for UK twx if you spend more than six months in the UK or if you have a residence for your sole occupancy for more than thirty days. I think so called health tourism is ruled out but if you were temporarily resident, who knows ... One of the main complaints about frozen pensions is that we frozen pensioners are saving the government money by NOT using the NHS ...
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Yes, care costs are horrendous in the UK. Having watched my mother's life savings being gobbled up at the rate of a thousand pounds a week, I find the whole notion of extreme old age absolutely terrifying. If you stay home and your long suffering partner tries to care for you, payments for respite help depend on where you live and what your council can afford. I don't know what the answer is so I tend to stick my head in the sand.
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I was under the impression that UK citizens could still get treatment in the UK if they were taken ill there - particularly as there is a reciprocal agreement with Australia? The question about residence is how long you need to be there before you are officially considered a resident again?
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Yes, this is another worrying trend. Although the state the NHS is in at the moment, I'm not sure it will exist in its current form for much longer. I think you'll find they've tightened up on charging overseas visitors for treatment ( I mean overseas visitors who are not UK citizens) at the moment and that's why you were asked to fill in forms giving your citizenship status.
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It's not depressing, Ramot, it's realistic. Things we did to avoid nasty suprises on arrival? 1) checking out the property web sites on a weekly basis for two years before we moved. 2) Calculated our monthly living costs in the UK, added 25% and changed the total into dollars at a modest 1.6 to the pound. It gave us a monthly budget that we have been able to stick to and could cut back on if we had to. Since arriving we have bought a much cheaper house than we could have afforded, leaving some capital to invest elsewhere and hopefully produce an extra income. Finally - We will enjoy being here for our grandchildren while they are tiny but we are prepared to return to the UK if things don't work out financially. The big scary for me is the cost of later life care. But care costs are horrendous in the UK too. I think the difficult part is acknowledging a need to return to the UK if necessary, before you get too decrepit to make the trip!!
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I understand the finances only too well - just substitute North Wales and Sydney and you have a perfect financial storm to match your own. We were very lucky, firstly that we got our visa just before the current fiasco masquerading as a visa process. Secondly we had already decided we didn't want to live in Sydney and would be happier in a seaside town down the coast - more like the town we were leaving. Prices there had rocketed up but we could still just about afford it if we bought a smaller house needing work. Is there no chance that you could buy within reach of Melbourne e.g. Ballerat (one hour by train) or Geelong (also one hour by train) ? It seems such a shame to have gone through all this for nothing. Having said that, we were talking about staying in England when we were finally free to move over and found it a worrying time financially. There comes a point when you have to throw in the towel. As someone else said, don't drop out officially till the very last minute - you have nothing to lose.
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Actually I thought it was a bit off as well - a sort of 'us and them' remark that I've never associated with the parents' thread. Then I decided I was overreacting … I think it's important to emember that in the absence of personal contact, non-verbal expressions etc. innocent or even jokey remarks can be mis-construed on occasion. It can't be helped, just need to acknowledge the misunderstanding and move on.
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The first quarter of 2019 will see the implementation of Brexit - I can't believe sterling will rise during that period!
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Nam-m isn't complaining about the wait - simply wondering why s(h)e has been asked to resubmit a clearance document from the Vietnamese police.
