CrozierFamily

Asking prices are going up, sale prices are not really rising so much. As someone else said, wages are not increasing so there is not going to be a material change in values for a while. I wouldnt be expecting to see much of a benefit for a while yet.

Some of us live in reality, a place that bills actually need paid and money doesn't grow on trees.

I am not saying they should be thrown out to the street, and I am not saying they should all of a sudden start paying for the extra rooms, but if there is a smaller home available for them to move into then that should happen. It is only fair. If they could not afford to buy a house they should be provided with something that fits their needs. Thats it. I know this is a difficult subject and my view may feel heartless to a point, but hard decisions are required. My grandmother is going to have to sell the house my grandfather strived to buy all his life to pay for an old folks home, that doesnt feel fair either, but that is the way it is.

Why should the rest of us have to pay for their big houses? They had their whole lives to save up and buy their own place and they didn't do it. I appreciate it is difficult, but the gravy train has to stop.

It is a really difficult decision to make around visiting or not. I think going to see them everyday may be worse still as they have to go through being left without us so often, I would be concerned that would put even more stresss on them. We are just going to leave them alone so they do not have the ups and downs, as I think they will come to terms with being on their own for a while and I don't want to upset that. Obviously not trying to tell you what to do, you have more experience than I do at this. This is the most difficult part of moving for us for sure.

Boom it just hit 1.7. Can't believe my eyes.

Just checked XE and the $ is at 1.699! Is it going to hit 1.7 today? This is a far cry from Easter. How far can it go? I need to change some money for my move in September and don't know whether to do it now or hold off. Decisions, decisions.

All the talk of severely disabled children being forced to share rooms is just scaremongering from the left. I have no doubt that if an individuals needs requires a single room they will get it. It is this kind of pathetic scaremongering that causes more trouble and ill feeling when the government is desperately trying to reduce an unsustainable public sector spend. Perhaps some people will fall between the cracks who do really need the help, but in the main they will be sorted out and these changes are predominantly doing the right thing. Old folks in council homes with more rooms than they need do not have a divine right to their property, neither do families or individuals with more beds than they need. We need to cut our cloth according to what is affordable. Unfortunately this will obviously cause some degree of upset to individuals, which is a shame, but alas it is the way it has to be. The money has run out. Hard decisions are required.

I checked with my wife and we are going with a company called Golden Arrow. They have been very good and came in a little cheaper than Pet Air if I am not mistaken. One to consider anyway.

If an employer is proactively trying to headhunt you to go to Australia, I think the least you should expect is for them to cover essential costs for the move. I agree maybe not the cats, but everything else should be covered by them and $7k will not strectch far at all. Normally sales jobs are a base plus a bonus, is this not the case with this role? If there is a bonus structure obviously if you perform well you could do better, but like others have mentioned here, I do not think you would get the same standard of living you are getting in Stratford for the salary they are offering especially as your wife will have to give up her job. Apparently the spouses of the main 457 visa holders can find it more tricky to find work, given they could have to leave the country very quickly if you were to get fired. That may be another factor to consider. Personally I would go back to them and tell them that if they want you (and you do mention you have specialist expertise), they need to offer you a PR, pay all reasonable costs and provide a salary commensurate with what you get in the UK. I wouldn't be afraid to do this either as it is perfectly acceptable for you to back and make your own thoughts known on what it would take to make you consider a very big change like that. Basically if they want you they should not be making you be disadvantaged by the move and if I am honest their offer sounds somewhat derisory.

Hi Fran We are moving to Melbourne in September and will be taking our two dogs with us. I am not sure which company we are using, but if my wife sees this thread I am sure she will update you. The company we are going with are based in Shropshire and have been very good with us. The total cost of shipping, quarantine and all the jabs etc is coming in at about £4,500 for the two of them. I presume you have all the rabies checks and stuff done already so the dog does not need to stay in quarantine too long? We have it organised so they only need to be in quarantine for 30 days which is great. We are also sending them straight away and aim to find a rental within 4 weeks. We have decided that we will not visit our dogs when they are in quarantine as we worried that if we do go and see them it would upset them again when we left, so we have decided that although we would obviously love to go and give them a wee cuddle we are not going to do that. I think we can arrange for a dog walker to go and see them and take them out to make sure they are getting some interaction. As far as I am aware the Melbourne quarantine station is nearish to the main airport, but I could be wrong. Good luck brining the dogs. It is very expensive! More than it is costing us to ship all of our stuff!

Sounds absolutely fair to me. Social housing should not be something you are entitled to for life, and you should not be given more than you need. Much like benefits people need to understand that their are not entitled to a free or subsidised life. A lot of us pay our way and cut our cloth according to what we can afford. Not the nasty party at all. The balancing the books, not wasting money party is more appropriate. The scaremongering about disabled children having to share rooms is pathetic. Were does it say that anyone, disabled or not is entitled to their own room or whatever. When I was young I grew up sharing a room with my sister. Did me no harm. News flash for you Perthbum. The gravy train is over mate. Public spending needs to be reduced and the life of riley for many is over.

When we started planning to move to Australia we worked out what we absolutely needed to get there, and then what would be good to have to be sure. I was never going to travel without a job, so I based my costs on travel and initial set up. I worked out I would need about £2k for flights, £4.5k for our dogs, £2k for initial accom, £1k to ship the bare essentials, £500 for a rental car and then about a minimum of around £5k for the first months long term rent and bond and £3k for a deposit on a car. Ideally I needed some more for other stuff but that was the minimum I thought we needed. My assumption was always that I would start earning within a few weeks of arrival. A year of hard saving and we have managed to build up a decent little pot to bring with us and I am happy we have done the right level of planning to be safe and secure. I have sold our house, but have no plans to use the equity for anything other than a deposit on a new home. Nothing beats a little excel spreadsheet to keep yourself on track and make sure you have a plan! I think it is a fair point to say you can over plan, but if you don't at least have some idea of what you are getting in to you are very foolish. It always amazes me on wanted down under for example when people rock up in Australia and are amazed at the cost of living, or rentals or whatever. Have they never heard of google? I do have a family to worry about though. If I was single I would have flown by the seat of my pants and just gone for it. One way ticket, bosh.

Lol. Took about 10mins to prove my point.

My wife and I splashed out on a TV bed a year or two ago. It is amazing. Press a button and a 32" TV appears at your feet. We have Sky TV and everything in our room. We also have a very nice memory foam mattress to go with it! Right now I am trying to work out how to get it to Australia!

My wife and I are 6 weeks away from our big move to Australia. We are bringing our two young girls to Melbourne and it feels like we are coming to the end of a very long journey! The seeds of my own ambition to move to Oz were sown when I was a little boy. I used to religiously watch the Aussie Soaps every day for all of my teenage and University years and I always dreamt of living in that sunny looking place on the other side of the world. I was brought up in a small town in Northern Ireland, a place with little in the way of decent opportunities so the idea of Australia was something incredibly appealing to me. I was convinced right up until I left Uni that I would soon migrate to Oz and probably end up shacking up with Susan Kennedy off of Neighbours (I love her). I was so convinced I would be heading to Oz that I ditched my Uni girlfriend because she insisted she would never go. That didn't quite play out though. When I left Uni I found a good job back home in Belfast and was happy living near my friends and family. I met a girl and we moved in together and she didn't really seem to be keen on moving abroad. She especially did not fancy Australia, for a number of reasons. We ended up looking to migrate to Canada for a while, but had no luck. Randomly we moved to England so my girlfriend could study to be a teacher instead and we have been here for 6 years. She never did study to be a teacher... 3 years ago we got married, and we now have two girls. After the birth of our first daughter we started to talk about the life we wanted to give them and we both agreed that maybe we should have a bit of think again about migrating. We lived in England, but we are not English, so if we were having to bring the girls up away from home maybe we should go someplace a bit more interesting! We considered New Zealand and then Australia. Soon we had firmed up our thoughts that Australia would offer our children a great lifestyle and would be a great adventure for our family to give it a go. Alison had changed her original view on Australia and I think we both felt that it was the right thing for us to do if we could make it happen. That was almost exactly 12 months ago today. Now when I get something into my head I tend to be a bit of dog with a bone. I don't give up until its done. So given I do not have a skill that is on the PR list (I am a product marketing manager for a building society), I realised I would need to go down the 457 route to get a chance to migrate. I also realised it probably wasnt going to be easy. I found all of the relevant recruitment agencies and businesses in my industry and started to email them about jobs. I emailed people every day for a year (I counted the other day that I have sent over 3k emails in the last year). I had a lot of people say very nice things about my experience and a lot of people say I should find a job easily, but nothing ever seemed to come of it. The big issues were my notice period of 3 months here in the UK, and my need for sponsorship. Regardless of this we saved like crazy and just kept positive. It was going to happen if it was the last thing I ever did. Then I did get offered a job back in February of this year with Commbank in Sydney. Initially we were a bit over excited by the offer and accepted it, without thinking about the finances properly. After some deep thought we decided we had to pull out of the offer as we did not think my salary was enough to live a good lifestyle in Sydney. That was probably one of the most difficult decisions I have ever made. I was really worried that was our only chance and we had given it up. In the end that turned out not to be the case. A week or two after our second daugther was born we were offered two jobs in Australia, both on a salary that was doable. We had a choice of quiet living in Toowoomba or a more lively life in Melbourne. We decided Melbourne. Since then I have sold our house and will be handing in my notice to work tomorrow. We are all ready to go on the 7th of September and things are getting very exciting. Never did I really believe I could pull this off, but it looks like I have and I personally feel that I am giving my girls the greatest gift I could in providing them with a chance to grow up down under. I am going on a 457, but I fully intend to convert it to a PR and I also believe I will make this happen. Can't wait to get there and start our new life in Oz.

It appears to me that this thread is a decent example of how the assylum seeker issue is playing out in the wider world. What I mean by that is you have a majority of people who feel the current system is wrong, and a lot of people are abusing it and want to see change. On the other side you have a very vocal minority of individuals who have a great deal to say about why places like Australia and UK should just let anyone in who manages to get to their shores. My personal view on this is that really Australia should not have many true assylum seekers, because to get to Australia many of the people in these boats have passed places like Japan, China, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam etc etc etc. Why is it if they were seeking assylum that they didn't go to those places? The answer, is because they are a in a large proportion a group of chancers, who are economic migrants seeking a back door in. The majority of people in the UK are sick of this abuse of the system. I would imagine decent tax paying individuals feel the same in Australia. You are always going to get the bleeding heart dafties and their extremist views on this issue. They are of course incredibly vocal, and love to throw accusations of racism and the rest to anyone who doesn't share their view, but the reality is that the majority of people are fed up with immigration abuse. Something has to be done and I for one congratulate Australia for taking a proactive stance on the subject.

Hi there, I was put forward as a marketing specialist, my role is a senior product manager with a health insurance company.

Hello folks, just to let you know how our 457 Visa went. We ended up applying for the Visa on the 15th of July and we had our Visa granted on the 23rd of July. So the timing was really very short considering. This was for Melbourne not Sydney.

I am from the UK and most of the people I know think this is a very sensible move. None of them I would add are either EDL supporters or racists. If you are searching for assylum perhaps maybe you should go to the nearest country for help. Not the one you fancy. Typical view of a left wing bampot to suggest something like this is in anyway wrong. I only wish something like this had been done in the UK years ago.

I have been surprised at how expensive nearly new cars are compared to new cars in Australia. It seems there is little value in the used car market really. For example I have been looking at Mistibushi SUVs and a brand new car is similarly priced to a 2 year old car with 50k on it. I am not sure what way to go with it to be honest. There is obviously some difference, but not massive. My suggestion to you is to hit the used car websites to see what you can find. I have been looking in Melbourne and likey everywhere there appears to be some good car megastores that offer some good value. The korean car manufacturers definitely seem to be the ones offering the most value, but even then they are expensive compared to what you would pay in the UK! Not quite the same as when I managed to get a 6 month old 5 series BMW that was over £50k new, with only 4k on the clock for less than £30k a few years ago though! You would have to be some kind of pop star to afford a BMW in Australia!

I would also be interested in views on the best pay as you go package. Is there a particular provider who has best coverage etc?

I always like to work from the point of view that no news is good news! Also, the lady has said it is an average of 4 weeks and things are taking a bit of extra time at the moment because so many people tried to get their applications in before the new costs kicked in.

Hi. The company managing my 457 (which was submitted last Friday) have told me the current average processing time for the visa is 4 weeks. Hopefully they are right!

I grew up in Northern Ireland, and we have different policital parties there. When I moved to the mainland when I was at Uni I didn't really know who to vote for, but as things were going well I thought Labour were doing okay and I would vote for them and I did. Never, ever in a million years would I do that again. I am not sure what is nastier. The party who abused the economic welfare of a nation by spending money they never had in the good times and trying to buy a majority elecorate through benefits and public sector jobs growth, or the party who are now trying to ensure that our childrens children don't end up paying for the mistakes made by their grandparents... Torys aren't nasty, they just live in the real world, were someone actually has to pay for stuff and you can't just keep on sticking it on tick.