beketamun

You did the right thing unless you could service it yourself. For any cars like that you need to look at parts availability. Even 10 years ago you'd steer away from something like a Skoda because even if you could use Volkswagen parts for servicing, availability of things like replacement bumpers or light casings meant a long wait from Europe, and there are not as many VAG mechanics here as in Europe. In all seriousness....look at Toyotas. They are everywhere, they're not classed as a more premium car like in the UK, parts are easy, every mechanic in Australia can service them.

thanks for that, they deliver to ACT as well which is a new thing.

You need a credit record, so some utility bills and perhaps split them across yours and your partner's names so you both get a record started. You may find you need a credit record even to sign up to a post-paid mobile phone contract because you'll be taking credit.

The UK is damper and there's a lot more wear and tear on the vehicle through constant stopping and starting. Here you can see 50 year old cars wiithout any rust and Toyota's that will do a million km. I saw a Volvo 142 automatic cruising the street here with it's original paint job....very faded but sound. My grandmother drove one of those in 1977 and it went to the scrapyard 40 years ago. The classic car shows here are excellent, you see British cars that don't exist in Britain anymore.

I bought a Skoda Fabia VRS on a credit card once. Ordered it online, it turned up on a truck and they rolled it off and handed over the keys, 0% for 12 months.

Yep, I know. As you've described it is very sophisticated. I bought at auction once, wont bother again. Last one i sold we refused to auction and the real estate guy was superb, had a great strategy. We were goiing to sell at 825 and one up the street went up for 888 (to attract the Chinese), so we held off for a few weeks, let them do all the viewings. As soon as they went "under offer" we put ours up for 900 and it sold 30 miins after the first viewing. Pre-pandemic though, wiith low interest rates. But a changing market will change strategies.

if you went to the auction, they're good at it....it is a very sophisticated and quick market, none of this 6 months to sell a house nonsense. It will interesting to see how things might change in a dropping market. Our last house was bought off-market, we sold at higher than asking price and gave them 90 days to complete. If you know the area you want, might be worth making friends with a few real estate companies and getting on a list for early viewings and telling them what you're looking for. Sometimes people don't want to hold auctions or pay for advertising, they just want rid...they'd be expecting a quick sale with little hassle/haggle.

Had similar issues....went over for 3 weeks to arrange the sale of my dad's house in February before he comes here, a simple house and big garden split off for a building plot....no mortgage or chain complications. The land has taken 5 months to sell to a cash buyer, the house isn't even on the market yet because the new boundaries have to be registered with land registry. They are bloody hopeless. The estate agent nearly fell off his chair when I said we usually had 30 days to complete over here.....it concentrates the miind somewhat when you work to a deadline. On the bright side, prices are still rising over there and he doesn't have to hang around there waiting for the house to be sold now.

Have you considered trying some drugs to make yourself more mellow, you seem to have the money?

It's not though ? I thought REISA look at inner, middle and outer zones to get the median price for each area as the best method as comparison, then combine for the overall median for the statisical area. Obviously the numbers and distances involved will be different, but then that is a different comparison?

Honestly, that's rental prices. And in Canberra, being Canberra...it extends out into the edge suburbs where a lot of the newer properties are, 40km long? https://7news.com.au/business/housing-market/renting-a-property-has-never-been-more-expensive-as-new-data-shows-prices-are-soaring-amid-australias-cost-of-living-crisis-c-7513934

Canberra is more expensive than Sydney these days, probably because of mass covid vacancies in the Sydney CBD...some great deals around. Melbourne is the cheapest in Australia, nearly $1000 per month cheaper than Canberra for a house. Completely insane.

Only for some...I remember Ford Fiestas being expensive in Australia when they're cheap as chips in England. This was years ago though. But compare Toyotas. Rav4 Hybrid top of the range AWD. UKP 49,308. AUD57,354. That's about $30,000 Aussie dollars cheaper if you buy in Australia.

I went ANA last time, like night and day compared to Qantas or BA. It's noticeable that nationalised 'national' carriers have treated passengers far better than the privatised national carriers, who've taken Government covid money and then still slashed their staff and services....Qantas totally let Australia down and are struggling to recover services now having got rid of so many staff who were sacked. It begs the question, privatisation has not outsourced risk when these companies basically threatened to shut themselves down if Government's didn't bail them out, and then sacked staff anyway to keep gioving money to shareholders. So where is the benefit over nationalised airlines that never threatened that and still managed to keep flying? No difference, the taxpayer still bears the cost either way? Now we have these regional small airlines that took the risk in covid and replaced Qantas, being outcompeted and forced out again by Qantas who are using that bail out money to kill competition again and expect it all to go back to normal. Sometimes you have no choice but to go with Qantas, but i'll try and use anybody else if i have to. All my Virgin miles are also being transferred to Singapore, they did their bit to keep going through the pandemic and incurred huge costs so i'll support them. I have to say though, Qantas staff have been fabulous, they're far more helpful than Virgin who also shut down, but they seem mightily pissed off and there's little 'national pride' being shown in how they're perceived now.

Are electronics more expensive here? Last time i checked the UK was more expensive, especially for things like TV's and computers, they're far closer to the place of manufacture here. Here's virtually the same Samsung TV.....4595 UKP, or 4995AUD? The UK is about 60% more, and they have lower wages anyway...thus far more expensive ? https://www.harveynorman.com.au/samsung-85-inch-qn85b-neo-qled-4k-smart-tv.html https://www.currys.co.uk/products/samsung-qe85qn85batxxu-85-smart-4k-ultra-hd-hdr-neo-qled-tv-with-bixby-alexa-and-google-assistant-10236983.html

They used to use a 2.2 ratio for cost of living taking into account exchange rates, but that is changing now. If you want the same UK convenience of everything on the doorstep it does not exist anyway outside city centres because it's a bloody big place, but the amount of stuff you can do cheaply, or for free, is impressive. You just have to adapt, and the "average" person has obviously made and saved a lot more money in Australia and enjoys a higher quality of life. It just depends how you measure that and what you're comfortable with. I dont recognise the 4 week leave thing, I've never seen so many people regularly not turn up to work and the public holidays are stupendous, plus you can purchase leave and then take months off.....my missus has 2 years of personal leave and 22 weeks of "holiday" leave in the bank. That's either a career break with full pay, personal leave on full pay, or early retirement and long service leave. The flexible arrangements are a response to the remoteness and the desire to travel further, which you can often not do over a few weeks. You have to work to earn it though, you don't get it as a new starter without putting the effort in. We don't miss out on holidays either, we try and go overseas at least once a year, and do about 7 long weekends or coast trips. The rest of the time, if you get to live in a good place with good weather, then holidays aren't the necessity they are in the UK (just looking at the airport queues and people desperate to get away to sit on a decent beach for a few weeks). USA flights are very reasonable from Australia, but the USA is becoming more expensive for both British and Australians due to depreciating currency against the USD. Try SE Asia, try Japan, try India, even the middle east if you like that sort of thing on a direct non-stop flight...timezones are not as bad, prices are good on an Australian wage, and they're probably more culturally enriching than retrenching to the UK or USA which are not going to teach you anything that you don't already know about.

Years ago my local paper had a front page story on weed plants discovered growing in the plant boxes outside McDonalds on the High Street. I knew the guy in the photograph pointing at them, I also knew he was the one who'd planted the seeds !

with the health insurance over here you get straight in for treatments, leaving the ones with no health insurance in the public queue, which should theoretically be reduced making the waiting time shorter for those without insurance. That's important in these covid days with lengthening public queues due to delays, there is a huge backlog in the public system and so many serious illnesses undiagnosed or untreated. It's a sort of self-imposed means test leaving the choice to those who can afford to pay, the theory being that if you have the money, you won't put yourself at the mercy of the public system. They never had full NHS here so no sense of grandfathered entitlement to totally free care at the point of delivery. The issue is of course, healthcare costs are rising faster than wages so if you want the same treatment, people have to pay more. To be honest, that's not a bad figure to work on. If you're retired for 30 years you're still going to need a couple of new cars, some renovations, probably extra healthcare costs as you get older. $4k is good for a maintenance budget. We live off $4k a month now and we're both working, but we save a lot more. We will be able to easily maintain ourselves on $4k post retirement but are budgeting for more than double that because we won't be able to just take a work contract to make up a shortfall.

I think on PR it's tax free, but you need to have owned it for 12 months. Once you've got the headlight swap thing done they're virtually the same...i think Aus have adopted European iso standards now for baby seats, they used to make you render it less safe in order to comply with an inferior standard etc..

if you're coming on PR and bringing a container, I would seriously consider getting some good European stuff and bringing it with you as it's a one off opportunity to import tax free as personal possessions, if you can be bothered. Cars are a good option, Audi, BMW or Mercs are far more expensive here than Europe, you can make $30k. Meile goods as well. Good curtain material is hard to get here at a reasonable price too...it sticks with me haviing to pay high labour costs for people to use junk material they supply. If you're only here for a short while it's not worth the hassle. Ironically we brought an IKEA oak coffee table that's now about 30 yrs old, and some bespoke oversized sofa chairs we got specially made in the UK, some Brabantia kitchen stuff that costs a fortune here.

Bunnings is more like Home Depot in America, you can drive trucks inside some huge stores and Australia is a massive DIY country, plus they do a lot of trade business whereas B&Q are more aimed at consumers. My dad spent half his holiday here just wandering round looking at the products he didn't see in the UK anymore, but he was probably part of a dwindling skillset of fixers in the UK who want every possible product. When Bunnings expanded into the UK they thought they would destroy B&Q on quality and choice, but they couldn't last...there just wasn't the interest in their products or DIY to make it viable, and they probably miscalculated just how many giant 6 burner BBQ's the British would actually see a need for ! I have a very good Swedish architect friend in Sydney who only uses IKEA Australia for food, insists it's not the same quality, with more high class items appearing in Sweden than in Australia. They share about 10,000 products worldwide (like zigbee smart lights for instance using intra-compatible E27 or B22), but add on a "culture" setting for individual countries and potentially a few thousand different things....just compare the stores in Sweden and China for instance. You can get some really high quality timber and furniture products in Europe that you can't get in Australia, which is really strange considering the different types of excellent native timber available in Australia, but maybe IKEA aren't interested in a small market or the unsustainablity of Australian wood clearing? What is different about Australia is that the last time they did a comparison, Australia's IKEA products were the most expensive in the world. The Canberra store i think is the only one in the world that doesn't meet the IKEA standard of a minimum population density within a store radius, but they opened it anyway because of the larger amount of spending money that people have here, plus the massive apartment expansion sector going on right now. Prices have dropped in recent years as the competition has tightened, but they still seemed aimed at fitting out apartments with short life expectancy and disposable products.....some of the rugs they sell you could do a better job of yourself.

most policies have now been updated to include a level of covid cover, including credit card travel insurance. They tend to exclude cover when travel is not recommended, but include personal delay and medical insurance if you catch covid yourself, or within close family. You need to google a few options and look at reviews....you just looking for a week, or annual cover?

that's a no brainer...get onto it because you'll need passports after the citizenship ceremony so a pretty easy process can drag on for a long time, which is not great if you are stuck in limbo with sick family. We were lucky in that we did our test in Canberra and wanted the passports very quickly, so they fast-tracked our ceremony and did it in the office a few days later and we got it all sorted in 3 weeks. I don't think that happens anymore especially if you're regional !

Yes

And even more amazingly arrogant for you not to be able to read the complete sentence in English and yet still make a brazen assumption !