Tricky

Update. House is sold so we are organising shipping companies now. Negotiating the form that is the TOR form as we speak. Luckily we have 5 weeks, but it appears people are getting them pretty quick of late. Pet shippers say that if we don't have one by the time the dog goes we will only pay £60 in duty charges as dogs are valued about £300? However we should have one soon. Selling the two cars seems the only main headache we face. They are both less than 3 years old so hoping it won't be too difficult.

We have just applied for a UK passport for our Oz born toddler. Depending whether you were born after 1983 or not you may well need to submit your parents birth certs, we had to supply my wife's mothers original birth certificate in the application, so just be aware of that. Also, they prefer a British passport holder as a counter signatory if you know one. If not they accept others, however the form says they have a preference. Other than that it's pretty straight forward. At least when you have it you can easily prove citizenship once back in the UK for registering for everything. Also, before you leave, do you have a certificate of citizenship for your child for Oz or passport? We have both, just in case we decide we ever want to come back.

We will be heading to Salisbury initially to stay with family, however will be aiming to head to Somerset and work in Bristol, but we are happy to go where the work is. May end up staying in Salisbury or may end up towards Bmouth or Soton. We still have our UK bank accounts and will have a deposit from the sale of our house here in SA, it's obviously just the income we will need. If we need to wait 3-6 months then we can look at renting initially, however that probably isn't as easy as it used to be either. The house buying process is incredibly slow in the UK compared to here so we know we will be in with a wait anyway.

Oh really. That's interesting and great news if true. Will talk to some lenders/brokers as soon as we land, however everytime we've applied for a Mortgage they've asked to see 3 months of payslips, hence I assumed there would be a wait.

We are a bit apprehensive of this. We plan to sell our place May/June and aim to get about $365k for our 3 bed place. We will be heading back to Southwest UK so will have to spend more than that over there. We won't get to take that much back with us so will need a mortgage. Does anyone know how long roughly it'll take to be able to get a mortgage back in the UK? I assume at least 3 months of employment? We can stay with the in-laws as long as we like but if it's likely we won't be able to buy anything for a year or so we will rent once we have employment if we can find something.

Well it's all go at our end. Currently getting the house ready for sale is going well and we are counting down the weeks. Have had some quotes for the dog's shipping and now we have to start sorting belongings. It's interesting, but we've never really realised that we've been missing out on family life until now. And our daughters birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks and we are so relieved that it'll be the last birthday where it's the three of us and next time the whole family can be there instead of on Skype. Only 20 weeks or so left. It'll fly by.

We will be moving back close to family, maybe 20-30 mins away. We will actually have the opposite problem with family, we will have to try and keep them away, we always did when we were in the UK lol. The in-laws are even paying for the dog to return to help ease the financial pain that it international relocation. Got our first estate agent coming next week for an appraisal and to suss them out. The only thing we are stressing about is selling the cars and hoping they sell and if they do dealing without them for a few weeks. Sure we will cope.

So we've made the final decision to return to the UK. It won't be a rush as we already have visitors coming out for Easter and first two weeks of June so plenty of time to declutter, plan and tidy up the house/garden for sale. Hopefully have it on the market mid July. As we've got the toddler it will also help that we have 5 months as things can take twice as long ? It's strange though that now we've made the decision, my head is already in UK mode and I'm concentrating on looking at areas to live, job ads, mortgage costs etc. I've sort of left the whole trying to 'fit' here alone now, which after 7 years I never felt I did. I love the place, don't get me wrong and we've met some great people but I've always felt reluctant to put down any roots which is what helped us make the decision, however the number one reason is our daughter having time with family, and they are all excited about us returning and we've got accommodation with the inlaws for as long as we need to find jobs and then somewhere to buy which will take a massive amount of pressure off, however not all of it, there's only so long you can live with the inlaws. Now to make the most of the time we have here before the next stage of the adventure we call life.

Yes we are also nervous about it financially as we will both quit safe jobs and have no clue as to how long it will take to get new ones in the UK. We've spent a few weeks researching, calculating, pondering, wondering, worrying and we still haven't decided. At some point you just have to jump, and hope. We did it when we came here, and has worked out ok so we have a bit of hope. Hopefully you can make a decision easier than us and it all works out well. Good luck! The Family pull is a tough one.

Yes you're right £150 a week, not day. But appears it may be more. Oh dear. We have also allowed for £300 a month for petrol (2 cars) but that's based on what we drive here, we won't know until we've found jobs how far we will have to drive. Put all this together with an estimated mortgage and you realise that Adelaide is reasonably cheap to live, however the 50% childcare rebate and cheaper fuel help a lot!

Thanks everyone, we are trying to work out whether it's viable and we could survive. We've been looking at household and general costs compared to pay based on job ads. But we've been out of the UK for a while. Does any of this look way out? For info, 2 adults and a toddler, looking to live in a 3 bed house. Gas £35, Elec £35, Water £40, Council Tax £150, Tv licence £15, Internet £30, Car Tax £30 per car - all per month. Then a couple of annual costs, Car insurance £300, Home insurance £300 Then the biggy - childcare. Would need about 4 days a week. Looks like £150 a day so £700 a month? Grocery shopping £100 a week.

I've read through a number of similar threads and it doesn't seem anyone has gone and then come back, which is encouraging. It does make sense to go asap once we've decided. Want to be paying back into the UK pension rather than the Aus one. And the exchange rate is pretty good for going that way. Pretty convinced it's time to start a new adventure.

Just wondering whether anyone has been in a similar situation and can offer advice or offer advice even if you haven't. My wife and I have been in Adelaide for 7 years, and two years ago had a daughter. We like living here, and although sometimes we feel a bit isolated from the rest of the world and that it's tough to just 'pop' somewhere else we have no major issues with the place. We have a house here and are citizens. We have however started to talk about how our daughter is the other side of the world from family. Granted they have come to visit and we have been back there with her once, but it's still a limited amount of time and we can't really afford a European trip every year. We are now trying to decide whether we should head back. We didn't leave the UK because we hated it, we left for an adventure really. Obviously only we can work out whether it's worth it financially, whether we sell our house here or rent it out just incase, etc. We know that jobs aren't a guarantee straight away, as we knew when we came here however we were quite lucky in that regard. Has anyone had similar feelings, moved back and it has/hasn't worked out. Reasons as to why? We just wanna make sure we make as best educated decision as possible. We would be living 30-50 minutes from family as we would plan to move back closer to a city instead of country villages. We don't expect to see family every day and we realise that we will never know for sure if we made the right decision. Enough of my rambling. Thanks in advance.