Frustrations, excitement and a barmy idea!!

[Serendipity]

Not really sure which forum this fits in, but here it is:

 

We're now in the frustrating and anxious, but exiting and privileged position of being ready to make the move to Australia this year! Except we have a large and expensive house that just isn't selling and we don't have jobs yet!! But nothing is insurmountable as far as I'm concerned! We're going with open minds in every respect at the moment, and just feel lucky to be able to take this opportunity in our lives.

 

In a quick summary. We (me and husband both mid 40's and two children aged 6 and 8), had PR visa's granted March 2015 WHILST we were in Oz on a three week trip. (We'd expected it to be granted before we went, therefore we'd validate when we went on our trip, however due to me being self employed, had to provide extra documents and the process took longer then expected!!). Anyway, we did a visa validation trip in Feb this year - had a great week in Newcastle NSW and would love to live there and are working toward that.

 

Husband is the main earner and where we go will be dependent on where he gets work. He has a few things in the pipeline which could be either a job offer in the next few months or, come to nothing. I'm an Occupational Therapist and will start to look for work when we have settled somewhere (its a tricky process for OT's to get registered but I'll cross that bridge at a later date- I'm not desperate to work as an OT and am looking for a career change but that's another story).

 

Kids are great travellers and well up for the adventure of emigrating. They even love the long flight!

 

I'm in a temporary locum job at the moment and husband took voluntary redundancy a few months ago, as a bit of a shove in the right direction (a risk, but one we needed to take we felt at the time). I've had a massive de-clutter and am mentally packing all the time. It seems we are just waiting....for SOMETHING to happen! We have just sold a rental property we had, so in a few weeks will have a lump sum of cash. We had hoped to sell our own house but its very slow, and a difficult house to sell and in actual fact we love it so much, if we come back we would want to live in it. So renting it out is an option. We know it would rent out easily.

 

I'm pretty fed up with waiting and feeling we're in limbo. IF our house sold we could go, or IF husband got a job, we could rent out our house and go. We've pretty much been saying whichever happened first would dictate what happened next. Then yesterday I had a 'brainwave'! We know that being in Australia makes it MUCH easier to get contacts for work in my husbands line of business. If we set a date to go, possibly October time, we can buy a used campervan/ caravan when we arrive and spend a few months travelling and exploring. Husband would be in the country to go for interviews and I could home school the kids. I have a few friends who do this, whilst I wouldn't want them home schooled for more that a few months, it could work for us. We'd hope that by Christmas my husband would have found work and we could rent a house, start school etc

 

Am I mad? Has anyone done anything similar. I'm just itching to go and start our Australian adventure. As I said, we're going with open minds, we don't imagine the grass is greener just a different colour green, and it may not be forever, but at the moment we're going for the life experience. We'd probably aim to start somewhere up north and travel down toward Sydney. My husband would have to fly if he had interviews. I'd happily sit for the required hours each days to home-school my darling children, patiently! (said tongue in cheek). I know we'll have to look into everything carefully but would appreciate any thoughts/ comments. Thank you.

[amibovered]

I can see you are busting to go, and what you are planning sounds like fun, BUT, what's the plan if your husband hasn't found work by Christmas, will you be able to enjoy the time whilst on tenterhooks waiting to start your new life?

Edited June 18, 2016 by amibovered

[Isabelj28]

What does your husb do? As you have a lump of cash, could your husb take some of this, get a rental property established for you as a family then start looking for work more seriously? That way as soon as he secures a job, you and the kids could come on out and find that the home is set for you. This is kind of what my partner, now husb, and I did. Except I came first, then he came after with his son. It settled him straight away.

[Sammy1]

Not really sure which forum this fits in, but here it is:

 

We're now in the frustrating and anxious, but exiting and privileged position of being ready to make the move to Australia this year! Except we have a large and expensive house that just isn't selling and we don't have jobs yet!! But nothing is insurmountable as far as I'm concerned! We're going with open minds in every respect at the moment, and just feel lucky to be able to take this opportunity in our lives.

 

In a quick summary. We (me and husband both mid 40's and two children aged 6 and 8), had PR visa's granted March 2015 WHILST we were in Oz on a three week trip. (We'd expected it to be granted before we went, therefore we'd validate when we went on our trip, however due to me being self employed, had to provide extra documents and the process took longer then expected!!). Anyway, we did a visa validation trip in Feb this year - had a great week in Newcastle NSW and would love to live there and are working toward that.

 

Husband is the main earner and where we go will be dependent on where he gets work. He has a few things in the pipeline which could be either a job offer in the next few months or, come to nothing. I'm an Occupational Therapist and will start to look for work when we have settled somewhere (its a tricky process for OT's to get registered but I'll cross that bridge at a later date- I'm not desperate to work as an OT and am looking for a career change but that's another story).

 

Kids are great travellers and well up for the adventure of emigrating. They even love the long flight!

 

I'm in a temporary locum job at the moment and husband took voluntary redundancy a few months ago, as a bit of a shove in the right direction (a risk, but one we needed to take we felt at the time). I've had a massive de-clutter and am mentally packing all the time. It seems we are just waiting....for SOMETHING to happen! We have just sold a rental property we had, so in a few weeks will have a lump sum of cash. We had hoped to sell our own house but its very slow, and a difficult house to sell and in actual fact we love it so much, if we come back we would want to live in it. So renting it out is an option. We know it would rent out easily.

 

I'm pretty fed up with waiting and feeling we're in limbo. IF our house sold we could go, or IF husband got a job, we could rent out our house and go. We've pretty much been saying whichever happened first would dictate what happened next. Then yesterday I had a 'brainwave'! We know that being in Australia makes it MUCH easier to get contacts for work in my husbands line of business. If we set a date to go, possibly October time, we can buy a used campervan/ caravan when we arrive and spend a few months travelling and exploring. Husband would be in the country to go for interviews and I could home school the kids. I have a few friends who do this, whilst I wouldn't want them home schooled for more that a few months, it could work for us. We'd hope that by Christmas my husband would have found work and we could rent a house, start school etc

 

Am I mad? Has anyone done anything similar. I'm just itching to go and start our Australian adventure. As I said, we're going with open minds, we don't imagine the grass is greener just a different colour green, and it may not be forever, but at the moment we're going for the life experience. We'd probably aim to start somewhere up north and travel down toward Sydney. My husband would have to fly if he had interviews. I'd happily sit for the required hours each days to home-school my darling children, patiently! (said tongue in cheek). I know we'll have to look into everything carefully but would appreciate any thoughts/ comments. Thank you.

 

Lots of Australians go traveling for six months to a year around Australia. They home-school the kids through the Dep of Education, it's not a case of just sitting though, it's very active and requires a lot of effort.

 

Just remember, that you will still need a significant amount of cash to stay at parks on your journey. Other than that, treat it as a holiday until you decide where to settle.

Edited June 18, 2016 by Sammy1

[adele244]

Oh my gosh..... You are going through the exact same as us! Our situation is slightly different we could easily sell our house, it is selling our business that is literally a case of "how long is a piece of string"

Selling the business is the difference of being comfortable (Having a small mortgage) in a decent"ish" house or if we dont having a larger mortgage than we have here.

It was a no brainer that we simply had to wait to sell the business........however I am now thinking that the whole point of going was for the children growing up there. If it takes 2-3 years to sell business our kids will be teenagers and I really didn't want that.

 

Im even thinking of just giving the business away (which is madness) but I just want to go now - like you said being in limbo is a horrible feeling!

 

I totally sympathize with you. I'm not sure if the whole camper van with 2 kids and home schooling would be as smooth as it sounds. Could you not use the money from your recent sale fund a rental and by the time that comes to an end I'm sure your main house would have sold/rented?

 

Totally feel your dilemma! :hug:

[Lucharmily]

We were in a fortunate position a few years ago to take time out form our Oz life and travel round the country in a campervan. Homeschooled 2 children while third was under school age. Children learn far more outside of a classroom.

 

Had a fantastic experience which we will cherish for many years to come.

[Guest]

Sounds a fab idea but I don't think sits realistically with job hunting, outside the major cities communication can be difficult. I would move out but get a temporary rental.

[Quinkla]

Without a permanent address, you may struggle to get things like ID, mobile phones, employment, etc. I don't know for sure - but worth investigating before committing to the plan. Also be aware that hire of a camper van may not be cheaper than renting a unit.

[NicF]

Without a permanent address, you may struggle to get things like ID, mobile phones, employment, etc. I don't know for sure - but worth investigating before committing to the plan. Also be aware that hire of a camper van may not be cheaper than renting a unit.

 

This. My OH looked in to hiring a camper van big enough for 2 for three days recently and it was going to cost over $500. I suspect you could get a better deal for a longer period but you would probably find it would be as cheap, if not cheaper, to rent an unfurnished place somewhere.

 

As a holiday your plan sounds great, but as a way of living while trying to find work it is seriously flawed.

[Gbye grey sky]

They are planning to buy a campervan, not rent it. Mobile phone coverage all up the east coast we found very good but you can only have Telstra outside the major population centres.

 

Not having an address for ID purposes could be a major stumbling block with this plan. Do you know anyone who would allow you to use their address to register for Medicare, obtain drivers licence etc?

[Quinkla]

They are planning to buy a campervan, not rent it.

You are right. But second hand camper vans are hideously expensive - you can easily spend $100,000 on one that would have enough space to actually live in - and not sure that reselling it after a short while would get a return on that money. My experience as a Pom straight off the plane was that Aussie dealers could spot you a mile off and wouldn't think twice about ripping you off in terms of both price and quality. Even if you only drop 10% on the purchase price, for a $100k camper van that would be $10k = plenty to spend on rent without even worrying about site fees, etc.

[Gbye grey sky]

You are right. But second hand camper vans are hideously expensive - you can easily spend $100,000 on one that would have enough space to actually live in - and not sure that reselling it after a short while would get a return on that money. My experience as a Pom straight off the plane was that Aussie dealers could spot you a mile off and wouldn't think twice about ripping you off in terms of both price and quality. Even if you only drop 10% on the purchase price, for a $100k camper van that would be $10k = plenty to spend on rent without even worrying about site fees, etc.

 

True. Maybe a suitable car and a caravan is a better option. At least you can then unhitch the car so you are not dragging the whole family along to job interviews etc. The kids can stay at the campsite.

[Quinkla]

You would also almost certainly need a permanent address to register a purchased vehicle. Then there would be the duty - in Victoria for a $100k vehicle, the duty would be $4200 - again, money that will not be recouped and could have gone on renting a unit. Even for a $50k transit van, the duty in Victoria would be $2100.

Edited June 20, 2016 by Quinkla

[Gbye grey sky]

You would also almost certainly need a permanent address to register a purchased vehicle. Then there would be the duty - in Victoria for a $100k vehicle, the duty would be over $5000 - again, money that will not be recouped and could have gone on renting a unit. Even for a $50k transit van, the duty in Victoria would be $1600.

 

We bought our new car here before we had a permanent address. We stayed in a furnished rental for the first couple of weeks, struck up a friendship and used that address when registering for Medicare and our new car.

 

If you are going to live here then a car will probably be needed sooner or later so the only additional expense is a caravan which they may or may not wish to keep for holidays.

 

There are other practical issues with this plan of course but it would be quite an adventure.

[Quinkla]

We bought our new car here before we had a permanent address. We stayed in a furnished rental for the first couple of weeks, struck up a friendship and used that address when registering for Medicare and our new car.

Yes, you can do that and it would probably work. But you can't do that if you have no address at all and intend to live in a vehicle that you can only purchase once you already have an address. I believe dealers will sometimes help you around the hurdle but then you'd be paying dealer rates and expecting to sell the vehicle later privately - dropping a huge amount of money in the process.

[Marisawright]

 

... yesterday I had a 'brainwave'! We know that being in Australia makes it MUCH easier to get contacts for work in my husbands line of business. If we set a date to go, possibly October time, we can buy a used campervan/ caravan when we arrive and spend a few months travelling and exploring. Husband would be in the country to go for interviews and I could home school the kids. ...We'd hope that by Christmas my husband would have found work and we could rent a house, start school etc

 

Am I mad?

 

Yes, I think you are completely bonkers!

 

If you had money to burn, then I assume you wouldn't be worried about selling the house before you go, or about your husband having a job. And yet you're planning to put yourself in a situation where you're definitely not going to be working for a few months, and you're going to spend extra money on a campervan/caravan, site fees etc?

 

Migrating to another country chews money at an alarming rate without making it more complicated! If you do the sums, I'd bet you'd find it cheaper to find a rental property in Newcastle for six months than to do the campervan.

 

You say your husband would have to fly if he had interviews. Fly to where? From where? If you're aiming at Newcastle you may find you can't fly there from wherever you are. Also you'll have the additional costs of the flights, possibly a hotel overnight.

 

If you're so desperate to go, why do you have to wait till the house sells?

[Serendipity]

Wow, thanks so much for all these replies. We've been away for the weekend and had a really good chat about things. I'm going though all the replies now and making notes so we can look into everything that's been mentioned in more detail.

I take on board all the possible problems that have been highlighted, and all the costs I hadn't thought about.

 

We MAY be able to get a postal address which would make certain things a bit easier. However I can see that it may be a huge benefit to have a rental property and will start looking at that. Whilst we loved Newcastle, we can't be sure my husband will get work near enough to actually live there. He's in marketing so needing to be near major cities. He's been in discussions with a company based quite near Newcastle, but we can't pin our hopes on it. That's one of the issues, that we don't know where we may end up permanently.

 

I think we've decided that IF we go for it, we'd buy a car and caravan rather than a campervan - just in terms of being practical.

 

So, loads to look into with all the comments above. We know its a plan with many flaws at the moment, and needs some serious tweeking. But thank you all again.