TheColebecks

Hello Everyone

Our family are looking into moving out to Oz - we have narrowed the placed down to Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth (hubby has relatives there) - if anyone has info on these cities re suitability for 3 boys aged 13, 8 and 5 (schools etc), the kind of job demand for a self-employed electrician it would be much appreciated.

Our main question is one of average monthly/weekly living expenses - we wont have a mortgage but would like to know what taxes we will have to pay and the % amounts i.e. income tax, is there stamp duty, council tax kind of thing, land tax, average weekly grocery costs for a family (there are 5 of us). I think the thing thats worrying hubby is that we will come all the way over there hoping to live a more relaxed way of life with no mortgage only to find we have to work as hard or harder to actually earn enough to live on lol

Its been great reading all the posts on here and we have learnt loads from them so far

Kindest regards to all.
Kari Colebeck

Vegemite Kids

cant help with the questions of mortgage and taxes cos that depends where you live, type of house, job etc......

but for cost of living (groceries) see post I did earlier http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=232456

TheColebecks

Thanks for your reply (I have copied your grocery list for comparison with one of mine )

I had a feeling taxes etc would depend on where we decided to live - thats a big question as I dont know enough about any of the places we've shortlisted!!!

Still, Im trawling the WWW to find out as much info as possible.


I assume however that wherever you go there are taxes to be paid such as land/services - refuse collection,etc/income tax/stamp duty - I read somewhere that you have to pay for education what kind of costs would this incur or are the costs just for private education??

Kind Regards
Kari

molloymj

Hi,

I found this quite useful when comparing UK to Aus and then Aus states.

http://www.gomatilda.com/calculator/index.cfm

All the best!

TheColebecks

Thank you

Kari

Dicko

I posted on this subject the other day as well, so I would be interested in the replies.
Here my post and I only got 2 replies

Is it comparable

Looking forward to some views.

Cheers
D,K,J,B,J

ABCDiamond

Another thread to look at is http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=278297

It tries to show how difficult it can be to answer the question clearly, but is food for thought .



To try to help with Council taxes, I can give some personal figures for NSW & QLD:
NSW: Rates and water $ 1,788 last 12 months - Western Sydney
QLD: Rates and water $ 1,676 last 12 months - Brisbane Bayside


Tax: 2004/2005
$0 – $6,000 - Nil
$6,001 – $21,600 - 17c for each $1 over $6,000
$21,601 - $58,000 - $2,652 plus 30c for each $1 over $21,600
$58,001 – $70,000 - $13,572 plus 42c for each $1 over $58,000
Over $70,000 - $18,612 plus 47c for each $1 over $70,000
plus 1.5% Medicare levy
http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/co...88&mfp=001/002

tiredwithtwins

I found the aussie supermarkets that did online shopping quite useful - if you get on one (thinkk it was coles i looked at) and note down the cost of stuff you would normally buy in the uk, add it up and work it out as a percentage of your weekly salary (thats if you know roughly what you will be earning in aus), will give you a good idea of what your shopping spend will be.

sue

sandradee

From my experience, I would say on the whole the C.O.L over here is similar to the UK, but there are parks and beaches everywhere you look here!!! We love it here.

TheColebecks

Thanks everyone for your help and comments on this - it would be such a bummer to get over there and have to work harder than we do here just to put food on the table - especially as we wont have a mortgage!

If I find any further info as I trawl the net I'll post it here.

Regs
Kari