Is my Salary enough?

[Scotinho]

Hi,

 

I hope you could give me some advise.

 

I have an opportunity in Sydney CBD that pays 90-100k on top of that is the superannuation. I get private healthcare for myself only and up to 10% annual bonus.

 

i am married with 2 kids (3yr old & 10month old).

 

I am awaiting what visa/sponsorship we will all get.

 

Is this enough? We do not need a huge house with all luxuries but want to know that i would not battle to find some cash to take the family out once a week or so. this potentially will be a 2 yr job maybe longer.

 

Q1 - Where can i look for a good family suburb to rent with transport into the city centre (less than an hour)

Q2 - Do i need private healthcare for my whole family as i believe as UK citizens we entitled to the government healthcare

Q3 - What age do schools start and i believe we would have to pay for our oldest. any rough idea on cost?

Q4 - Can you give me a rough cost on utility costs a month (gas,elec, internet, water etc)

Q5 - Cost to buy/lease a car?

 

i know it is a lot to ask but hopefully someone can help a little.

 

Thank you

[LKC]

Hi,

 

I hope you could give me some advise.

 

I have an opportunity in Sydney CBD that pays 90-100k on top of that is the superannuation. I get private healthcare for myself only and up to 10% annual bonus.

 

i am married with 2 kids (3yr old & 10month old).

 

I am awaiting what visa/sponsorship we will all get.

 

Is this enough? We do not need a huge house with all luxuries but want to know that i would not battle to find some cash to take the family out once a week or so. this potentially will be a 2 yr job maybe longer.

 

Q1 - Where can i look for a good family suburb to rent with transport into the city centre (less than an hour)

Q2 - Do i need private healthcare for my whole family as i believe as UK citizens we entitled to the government healthcare

Q3 - What age do schools start and i believe we would have to pay for our oldest. any rough idea on cost?

Q4 - Can you give me a rough cost on utility costs a month (gas,elec, internet, water etc)

Q5 - Cost to buy/lease a car?

 

i know it is a lot to ask but hopefully someone can help a little.

 

Thank you

 

Q1: In my opinion, you could do much worse than Sutherland Shire. Rents are lower (as are house prices if you should wish to buy), the furthest train station is an hour to the CBD, it is green and leafy, family friendly and has all of the amenities that you could ever want. We have lived in Sutherland Shire for almost six years now, and have been very happy here.

 

Q2: No, you don't need private healthcare. The only insurance that we have is ambulance insurance, because youngest and I ended up being blue-lighted to hospital three days after we arrived, she had suspected meningitis. Scary enough in itself, but the $400 bill afterwards was unexpected. We are a fairly healthy bunch, and OH owns an optometrists so we don't have to worry about the cost of specs/contact lenses, but in the event that we should need an ambulance I feel that the insurance gives peace of mind. We do put a certain amount of money aside each month just in case we need to pay privately for something (such as the vasectomy that OH recently had), but the medicare system is fine for general healthcare.

 

Q3: School starts by the time they are six providing it is before the January start date, or they can start in the January if they turn five on or before the end of June. In other words, if your child was born Feb 2008 (as our youngest was), she could start at four going on five in 2013 (as she was - with just two weeks at four), or we could have held her back until she was five almost turning six (she turned six two weeks after the term started). Had her birthday been between July 2005 and January 2006, she would have had to have started in 2013.

 

Payment depends on the visa. On a 457 you will have to pay (unless you can prove financial hardship I believe), which is about $5000 per year. On a PR visa it is free. When I say free I mean that there are no fees to pay. However there will be voluntary donations, sport programs, excursions etc to pay for, which can cost up to $1000 per year.

 

Q4: We pay our utilities either monthly or quarterly, with the exception of insurance and council tax which we pay yearly. Council tax for us is about $1500 per year, both car insurances are about $500 (both over 35 years with no accident history, mine a brand new top of the range X-Trail and OH an old V6 Commodore), house insurance is about $2500 with unlimited rebuild costs and some fairly expensive separately listed items of jewellery and photographic equipment.

 

Quarterly utilities include electricity at about $750 per quarter (we have solar panels and solar hot water, but we also have a pool pump which runs about 8 hours per day and two big fish tanks which have filters/heating running 24 hours per day). Water is about $350 per quarter. We don't have gas here (not available in our suburb), but we do have to pay for wood for the fire over the winter which costs us about $800, so I suppose about $200 per quarter.

 

Monthly it is really just the phone bill which is about $140 per month for enough data to use Netflix most days and for phone calls to the UK, which are made every three or so days.

 

Q5: Car budget - how long is a piece of string?! You can get cars for $1000, or for $100000! I just bought a new top of the range X-Trail for $46000 (about $6000 off the list price) because I know a man who knows a man. Cars can be had for far less and far more than this, and it really does depend on your budget. Just remember to account for the total on road costs, such as stamp duty and CTP insurance.

 

With respect to the salary, OH's salary is $64500 BUT he gets a huge amount in bonus which makes his salary up to a comfortable level. Before his bonus started we did manage on the low salary, but we had to budget quite hard and have pretty much paid the mortgage off, so repayments are low. Living costs have increased since then too. I would definitely recommend making a spreadsheet, putting all of your costs in the UK in, and then googling for Aus costs.

[Scotinho]

Thank you for your response