Just trying to work some stuff out.

[LKC]

I think the salary question would give me pause. He makes a massive amount of money by any measure - the equivalent of 133,000 pounds. If you spent all of that on living, and your house is almost paid off, how will you go if your income is only 30,000 pounds?? Thats less than 1/4 of your current income. I know you have talked about rental properties but they are often fraught with expenses. I worry about my own standard of living dropping when I (eventually) get home - and I will go form making $85,000 to about 35,000 pounds. I think you need to thoroughly look in to your expected take home pay in the UK and what your expenses will be, particularly with a family.

 

I see what you are saying, but the point is, we have been paying the house off at a faster rate than we could have otherwise managed, it isn't that we were at the end of our mortgage and paying the last bits off. We increased the payments to pay it (much) sooner and so spend the majority of his salary on that. Our living costs are a small proportion of that. Does that make sense? We'd have enough to pay in cash for a home and perhaps two rental properties in (some areas of) the UK, OH's salary would only have to cover day to day living costs.

[LKC]

Bearing in mind that we live in southern Sydney and bought our home eight years ago, before house prices in this area started to escalate.

[Guest]

I see what you are saying, but the point is, we have been paying the house off at a faster rate than we could have otherwise managed, it isn't that we were at the end of our mortgage and paying the last bits off. We increased the payments to pay it (much) sooner and so spend the majority of his salary on that. Our living costs are a small proportion of that. Does that make sense? We'd have enough to pay in cash for a home and perhaps two rental properties in (some areas of) the UK, OH's salary would only have to cover day to day living costs.

 

It definitely isn't salary that matters it's disposable/residual income - assuming you would move back to Scotland and not set on living in Edinburgh's Stockbridge or Glasgow's West End I would imagine you could easily buy 2-3 properties compared to Sydney. We moved from Perth and instead of a 30 year mortgage of close to $600k we now own one property outright and have a 12 year £150k mortgage on another with and for us our income is higher - it does depend hugely on what you do, it seems public sector (nurses, teachers etc.) and trades do better in Australia but other professionals don't seem to - of course money is far from everything and if we felt it was we'd have never moved to Australia in the first place.

 

We pretty much made the decision on holiday - at Schipol airport on the way home more precisely! Seeing my son heartbroken and begging not to go back, saying goodbye to my parents and realising that my life in Australia was definitely no better than then one I'd had. I'd never been homesick, I'm a glass half full kind of person and just get on with things and I feel we made a rational decision about where was best for us - so far it has worked out and I have never had even a moments regret (my son of course now claims to be Australian and no doubt will head back one day!)

 

Initially we were going to come back for a year to make sure it wasn't just nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses and that could maybe be an option for you - could your husband take a sabbatical? It does make things more complicated if you decide you do want to stay in the UK and it could be unsettling for your children not knowing whether it's temporary or permanent - you'll know their personalities and how they would cope but ping-ponging is expensive, a years 'working holiday' not so much so especially if you have a job to go back to. In the end we were so certain we wouldn't want to return that we bit the bullet but if you're not 100% it could be an idea.

[LKC]

It definitely isn't salary that matters it's disposable/residual income - assuming you would move back to Scotland and not set on living in Edinburgh's Stockbridge or Glasgow's West End I would imagine you could easily buy 2-3 properties compared to Sydney. We moved from Perth and instead of a 30 year mortgage of close to $600k we now own one property outright and have a 12 year £150k mortgage on another with and for us our income is higher - it does depend hugely on what you do, it seems public sector (nurses, teachers etc.) and trades do better in Australia but other professionals don't seem to - of course money is far from everything and if we felt it was we'd have never moved to Australia in the first place.

 

We pretty much made the decision on holiday - at Schipol airport on the way home more precisely! Seeing my son heartbroken and begging not to go back, saying goodbye to my parents and realising that my life in Australia was definitely no better than then one I'd had. I'd never been homesick, I'm a glass half full kind of person and just get on with things and I feel we made a rational decision about where was best for us - so far it has worked out and I have never had even a moments regret (my son of course now claims to be Australian and no doubt will head back one day!)

 

Initially we were going to come back for a year to make sure it wasn't just nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses and that could maybe be an option for you - could your husband take a sabbatical? It does make things more complicated if you decide you do want to stay in the UK and it could be unsettling for your children not knowing whether it's temporary or permanent - you'll know their personalities and how they would cope but ping-ponging is expensive, a years 'working holiday' not so much so especially if you have a job to go back to. In the end we were so certain we wouldn't want to return that we bit the bullet but if you're not 100% it could be an idea.

 

I don't think that OH could manage to get a year off work - he co-owns a franchise, and he's not aware of any way that he could take that length of time off. He is due for some long service leave next year, which he thinks is three months, so we could theoretically take the kids out of school and go over to the UK for three months, although we have four cats which we would need to consider. I do wonder if it is nostalgia/rose-tinted glasses, although I have been progressively more unsettled here since our last visit to the UK three years ago. It's a funny feeling. I don't exactly feel homesick or anything like that, just that I don't quite belong here somehow. I love Australia, it has been good to us and has been a great life experience, but as time goes on I feel that I belong less and less, where perhaps I expected to feel an increased sense of belonging.

 

We wouldn't make any snap decisions. We're back in Australia now (arrived yesterday morning), I've decided to take the Christmas term off uni to give myself a bit of breathing space, and then once we've settled back in here we'll work out what the best thing to do is for all of us. My OH is going to make contact with the UK part of his company (where he worked before we relocated to Australia to work for them), and will ask for news of any UK joint-venture partnerships coming up. He'd prefer to buy into an established store in the UK if one came up in the right location, so he would be effectively doing the same job as here, rather than him work as a dispensing optician for someone else. That may well turn out to be the deciding factor.

 

I'd be happy to work too, although I have been out of optometry for so long that I don't think I could re-register with the GOC at this point. I'd be happy to retrain for something else though, so we would have a second salary coming in. Alternatively, I ran my own online business from home for a few years, so I could potentially do something like that again, which would mean I could be home for the kids during holidays etc.