bgarside

I've been in NZ for 3 weeks now, looking for work in order to get permanent residency. Can anyone living in NZ give me some idea what sort of salary I would need for a decent standard of living?

I have one job offer, and may shortly get another, and expect to be offered $45 - 55k. Is this reasonable for a graduate engineer with 5 years work experience, and would it pay for a reasonable standard of living?

In the UK I was earning 26k sterling. Does anyone have a way of calculating an equivalent salary in NZD, taking into account the exchange rate and the buying power of 1 NZD compared to 1 pound sterling? At $3 for a coffee, and $12 for the cinema, it's certainly not $1:£1 !!!

Thanks,

Ben Garside

Aprilia

[QUOTE][SIZE=1]Originally posted by bgarside
I've been in NZ for 3 weeks now, looking for work in order to get permanent residency. Can anyone living in NZ give me some idea what sort of salary I would need for a decent standard of living?

I have one job offer, and may shortly get another, and expect to be offered $45 - 55k. Is this reasonable for a graduate engineer with 5 years work experience, and would it pay for a reasonable standard of living?

In the UK I was earning 26k sterling. Does anyone have a way of calculating an equivalent salary in NZD, taking into account the exchange rate and the buying power of 1 NZD compared to 1 pound sterling? At $3 for a coffee, and $12 for the cinema, it's certainly not $1:£1 !!!

Thanks,

Ben Garside



Hi Ben

I'm in the UK at the moment, but thinking about going to NZ.

I was talking yesterday with a NZ'er colleague who moved to the UK from NZ about a year ago. I asked him a similar question. Here he earns about £30k and in NZ he was earning just over NZ$60k. He reckons his standard of living here is a little higher in the UK than in NZ, so that probably gives you a guide. He did point out to me (which rather surprised me) that working conditions are better in the UK than in NZ (more holidays and a slighter shorter working week in the UK). He has his family here with him and has no intention of going back to NZ - it actually put me off the idea a bit.

JWW

Ben,

It's much like the UK in that it depends where you are. In Auckland you would want a bit more than 55k, esp if you haven't brought many pounds with you, but in Christchurch that would be fine.

I have found that the standard of living is much better here than in the UK and you can't compare coffee with coffee. It costs us $200 to insure our Landrover V8 fully comp for a year here and it was £400 in the UK. There are no NI deductions here or TV licenses and you can get fish and chips for a family of 4 for about $6. Renting a house is also dirt cheap.

I have found that once you've started at a company in NZ its quite easy to get pay rises, they just seem to like to start people off a bit lower. You could always take the job and give it 3 months and ask for a rise and if you don't get one start looking for something else. Its always easy to get a job when you already have one.

John.

bgarside

Thanks for the replies.

I get the impression that some things are quite a bit cheaper in NZ, such as car insurance, property rental, NI, etc. However, the property seems just as expensive, relative to local salaries, especially in Auckland. Food seems quite expensive, again relative to local salaries, and it seems that many companies here don't have pension schemes, so a personal pension would be an additional cost, as well as private healthcare, which probably cancels out the effect of slightly lower income taxation and no N.I. payments.

One recruitment agent suggested I'd need about double my UK salary, in NZD, to maintain approximately the same standard of living. I'm starting to feel it needs to be more like 2.5 times, at least in Auckland.

Anyone else have any comments on this, having migrated to NZ from the UK?

Should I go back to pommieland?!?!?

The horror.....


Ben

kiwis can fly

hi there

$3.00 kiwi dollars = 1 pound

So while salaries are lower here, houses are cheaper to buy, especially if you ar looking outside of Auckland.

Petrol is $1.05 NZ$ per litre.

What is standard of living anyway - is it only about money or is it about life style? do you like going to a park where there is heaps of people or do you like walking down the beach which is 20 mins from home and being the only person on it?

Outside of Auckland travel times to work are usually from 1min to at the most 30 mins.

It all depends what you are after ...

jeannie

I have been reading a lot of stuff on the forums I liked your answer the best. I's true people are immigating just for the all mighty $$$$$ but lifestyle should be first ????

sbasak

I feel quite surprised at these kinds of posts!

I am from India and presently working in UK (with 2 years of IT experience). Here I get £20,000 per year. Still I feel my standard of living was much higher in India (where I used to get paid INR 18000 or equivalent of £250 per month only, though I didn't need to pay house rent there as I lived in my own house)!!!

After my contact ends in next year, I intend to return to India. I found in UK to maintain a good standard of living (assuming living with non working spouse) one should earn at least £30,000 per year!

AM

Last night I was talking to an IT recruitment consultant in Aukland that happened to be on secondment from the UK. As I'm soon to be coming over to NZ I was keen to get his take on the job market.

We talked for a while in general terms about job markets his views included...

a) A fair view of salaries tends to be on a 1:2 basis (ie if you earnt £50k pa in the UK you're likely to be in the NZ$100k salary band)
b) NZ employers tend to look for people with broarder skill sets and an exact match to the job
c) NZ companies pay more attention to 'cultural fit' (ie will your face fit)

Obviously these are generalisations but they seem to make sense taking into account the differences between Europe and NZ...Any comments from the people already over in NZ ? (BTW What's the typical annual leave in NZ ?)

From a personal perspective, I and my wife aren't going over to become captains of industry, we're going for the lifestyle, Snowboarding, hockey and windsurfing here we come !

Cheers,

Al

Black Sheep

Hello Al,

So what exactly does 'will your face fit' mean? What IS the culture? Young? Very young? Short hair/long hair? jeans? suits? Formal? Laid back? Conservative? Liberal? Closer to USA or Europe? Hard working? Or feet up? Etc... You can generalize to a point about 'the culture' (IT) in USA, by the way, but you can have wide variations from company to company (say Sun and HP) and region to region. So is there some 'standard' of IT culture right across NZ?

(Funny to be talking about faces that fit in an environment like this where no faces are to be seen!!)

TA!

BritboyNZ

On the humourous side, in NZ 'routers' are pronounced 'rowters' (ie the American pronunciation). Using the english pronunciation 'rooter' will get you lots of funny looks. It wasn't until I'd been to several interviews and proclaimed that I had experience of 'Cisco rooters' did someone actually point out that 'rooting' in NZ & Australia has sexual connotations!!

As for working in IT generally, yes you're absolutely right that NZ companies do look for broader skillsets - IT Depts in corporates are nowhere near the size of IT depts in the UK & so it is definitely a big plus if you are multi-skilled.

3 weeks is usually the standard amount of leave you get (plus public holidays...NZ gets a couple more PH's than the UK), although it depends on the company, here at PwC if you are a manager or higher you automatically get 4 weeks leave and once you've been here 5 years you get 4 weeks anyway.

As for standard of living/quality of life - much better than the UK. I earn slightly less than I did back home, but still have my own place which is right in the city, 2 minutes walk to work, bars, restaurants, the viaduct etc on the doorstep. People at work complain that "it took me half an hour to get over the damn bridge this morning" obviously they have never had to commute using the M25!!

Russ

pcbengr

What about in wellington?? Is 55k enough?

sashimi

Quote:

nz companies look for broader skillsets, russ

A very useful post, thank you for that.

If you have time I'd like to know a bit more about how deep these broader skills are expected to be. When we look at the job ads my husband, who's the one with the skills, finds they're sometimes asking an awful lot, and in his opinion it doesn't always seem quite realistic to expect to find all these skills in one person. Basically anything from programming, dba, system admin and engineering plus whatever. And one, obviously cannot have an equally deep knowledge of all the different areas. I understand that with many companies being smaller than in Europe they don't need people with extremely specialised skills. But I'm still confused.

thanks

sashimi

Stan J

Ben,

If you follow this link you will it will give you a guide on the comparitive cost of living in various cities http://www.imercer.com/International...g_rankings.asp

You will see that for example that Aukland is about half of London's weighting.

But look at your own cost situation and consider the relative quality of life (here agaibn Mercer can help by judging Aukland to be in the top 6 international cities http://www.imercer.com/globalcontent...ewsrelease.asp)

The other thing you can do is gauge your salary against those advetised in the local press and question whether or not you get paid overtime etc.

Tove

There is a cost of living calculator here: http://www.gomatilda.com/calculator/index.cfm that you can use for calculations of the type "if I am earning x pounds in England, I need to earn y dollars in Australia to get the same standard of living". Can't remember if it's only for Australia or if it includes NZ.

Cheers,

Tove

Shal

Can anyone tell me how much would a married man with three children need to earn in New Zealand to have a good standard of living, we will be living in Auckland. My husband has a job offer there and I want to determine whether this would be a good move or not. I realise that the lifestyle is a major factor but obviously with having three children - money does come into the frame!!