Fisher1
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Phoebe Good luck both of you for Monday. The frozen pension issue is huge. I discovered a whole web site devoted to it a while ago and, providing the information there was accurate it seems that if you emmigrate to some countries (e.g. the Phillipines) your pension is raised in line with inflation, but if you go to others (e.g. Australia) it isnt. I also gathered that if you are temporarily in a country where your pension would be regularly raised in line with inflation, you have the right to be paid the full current amount for the period of your temporary stay - even if it is just a few weeks - then when you return to (say Australia) your pension drops to the lower rate again. The iniquities of this system are obvious, particularly when you consider that by leaving the UK we are saving them all the money they would have spent on our medical care etc etc as we got older. This has been brought before the European court of human rights but the case was lost - I don't know why Kath
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Phoebe You have to be over 64 to apply for the 804 but not the 103. Confusing isnt it :-)
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Thanks again Linday - great minds think alike, this is the way we have been thinking during the last few days. It all seems to be very pressing at the moment as we are on the last few days of our visit here - I really don't want to say goodbye and it sort of helps if there's a plan in mind, however tentative! Will be doing a lot of thinking during all those cold winter days to come in the UK. :-)
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Have just checked out the fees via link above - has it gone up AGAIN?
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Thanks Linday
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Hi al With everyone so desperate to get to Australia as quickly as possible my question is going to sound a bit odd, but here goes: If we applied for a contributing parents visa and paid the huge fees necessary I am assuming it would take about eighteen months. Can anyone confirm that, although you must validate your visa within the following twelve months, you can do this as part of a normal holiday, and can actually take up to five years to move over lock stock and barrel? I would also be interested to know whether, having moved over permenantly, there are any restrictions on the number of days per annum spent outside Australia after that? The reason for my questions? Well, my husband has just agreed to move out here if possible when the time is right. (yay!) We are coming to the end of a two month visit and I think he has just had the best time. I am now trying to figure out how to get our permenant visas organised. I don't want to delay because we already have health issues and I would like to know as soon as poss. if visas are out of the question. Also don't want to leave time for anything else to crop up. However, the issue of my elderly mother is huge. I have been doing some sums and I reckon that if we waited a couple of years and then applied, then waited as long as possible before moving it would take my mum up to the age of 101. I know this sounds calculating and awful but I love my mother and my daughter and am greedy enough to want to be with both of them. Any comments?
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Phoebe - sorry to hear your news - like everyone else I am thinking of you. Hope you have good news soon. Kath
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P.S. Also, I have read that if you swap from a 103 to a contributing visa things tend to move very quickly.
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Thanks for the explanation Alan. Also thanks Phoebe - yes I do know the waiting time for the 103. However, we have not taken leave of our senses:-) We cannot move over any time soon because I have a 91 yr old mother to look after. So we were going to just leave it for now till we realised that the new suggested 5 year visa gives a small advantage to people who are on the waiting list. Also, daft as it sounds, I like the idea of having my name on a list, however long .... also it will probably take me twenty years to persuade my husband to move :-) So the 103 application is a compromise.
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I am now totally confused - I hadnt realised there was a minimum age to apply for a parents visa. There seem to be two - the 804 and the 103 - I had thought that one was for people applying from within Aus. and the other for people applying from outside the country. My OH and I have just decided to apply for the 103 but are 'only' 60 and 62. Does this mean we have to wait? Also, the new five year thing - the way I read it, parents of Aus. citizens or P.R. s will be able to apply for a three or five year visa, depending on whether they are on the waiting list or not, but would only be able to stay for a maximum of one year at a time? thanks for clarification from anyone.
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Thanks for the information Alan, this is certainly interesting new information for me and could make life a lot easier in the future. Great news!
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That's awful!
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One way round the issue of mail from the bank going to an unauthorised person (ie the person renting your house) is simply to re-route your mail until it suits you to alter your address. You can reroute your mail in the UK for £30 for six months - but of course you would need someone trustworthy to reroute it to!
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Hi Pam Got to say, I choose my approaches with caution. Homelink tells you how good people are at replying - so unless someone has a rate of at least 80% I don't bother. Also I avoid the 'you've got to be joking' properties overlooking Darling Harbour and having gee whizz gadgetry. I know my limitations. I found that none of the people who approached me, although tempting in some cases, were quite what we wanted. I also had a couple of false starts, where people were keen and then cried off for one reason or another. The two we finalised are lending us their homes in the Northern beaches, which is a bit out, but fine by us. Daughter reckons she is moving in for the duration so she can go surfing - have been given permission but I'm not convinced :-) Still its going to be great to have 'our own place' this time - can invite people round for lunch - especially the kind friends who had the three of us over for Christmas lunch last time we were there. It's early days yet but I think it will have been worth it in the end. Watch this space:-)
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PPS you can go and look on the site without obligation, see whats available and how it works before you cough up the hundred pounds
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PS We also advertised our house as 3 bed when it has four - used fourth room as a storage depot.
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Hi Stellathedog We looked at a few home swap sites, too recommendation from a friend who had used one and decided on 'HomeLink' there are a couple of others with similar names ours is http://www.homelink.org.uk/house_swap_holidays.html To be honest I think they are all much the same. They provide some advice but really once you have the contact you are on your own. Many of the people on our site seem to be in a similar position to us - wanting to visit kids in another country or just wanting the adventure without the massive hotel bills. It's a leap of faith - I couldnt cope with a simultaneous swap and be all that way away while someone was in our house, mainly in case anything went wrong with the house. So we went for a non-simultaneous swap and so far so good. We made sure we checked with our insurance co. (Lloyds were okay about it but not everybody is) We got all our personal paperwork in a huge plastic container and left it at my mums together with the lap top and computer. We paid to have our post withheld for 2 weeks (£12) and locked as much of our stuff as poss in the garage, which is detached in our case so we could go and get things out in an emergency. It cost £100 to join the site.
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We opened an account with Westpac earlier this year -totally straightforward process. We have no intention of emmigrating at the mo but much to recommend it in terms of convenience. For example we sent all the spending cash for our upcoming holiday to our Aus bank account months ago - no more being held to ransom at the cashpoint by whatever charges are current with the british bank. Also sent it via a currency exchange web site so got a good rate of exchange. Very handy for presents also - I buy family presents this end and our daughter puts the money in dollars in our Aus account. Makes a great change from I buy family presents here and she promises to give me the money when she sees me!
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Hi Panman I was very interested by your post in which you said you bought a cabin on a holiday park - I have been trying to find out about caravan posibilities because we can't think about emmigrating at the mo (elderly mum in tow) and find accomodation when we are over visiting to be a big issue. Would you mind me asking how you found your cabin, did you have to jump through any hoops with the authorities, where was it and how did you find it. Grateful for any info as this would be a perfect solution for us!
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<p><p>Thank you. I wanted to do a blog about it because we have thought of house swapping many times (daughter has no room to accomodate us when we go over) and chickened out .... cleaning, insurance, worry, etc etc. The idea of a non-simultaneous swap is good because it allows for them to come over in our summer (ha ha) and us to go there in Oz summer. Also I felt better about leaving the house knowing I was only two hours away in case of emergency. You're still taking a chance, but we did make sure we took ALL our personal papers and ID stuff away, ditto computer and laptop and paid £12 to get the post stopped for two weeks while we were gone. Touch wood all was well (although we havent had the phone bill yet!</p></p>
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<p><p>Thanks for the comment about my blog - it's nice to know there is someone actually reading it! Kath</p></p>
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Hi all I am amazed that anyone could take this programme seriously. Its like all those programmes they used to do about moving to Spain - they even had a series about how you could get incredibly cheap property in the the wilds of Eastern Europe and flew people out there to have a look. I think WDU is hilarious because many of the families seem to be constantly on the brink of a major row (manufactured no doubt) and others are clearly there for the free holiday - oh, and they are almost always shocked about the price of property (don't they have internet?). I love this show because you get to see what Ozzie properties are like, should you ever actually get a visa. My favourite bit is the sobbing round the lap top at the end, as they say goodbye to their relatives (who they are going to see in about three days). Day time telly. Says it all.
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<p><p>Thank you! Hope you arent the Janet who has just spent two weeks in our house :-) although I was very complimentary!</p></p>
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Has anyone any thoughts on the freezing of UK state pensions on migrating to Australia? How do people manage? Any ways of avoiding this till the very last minute?