Really worried about cost of living
 

We've been granted our visa so now it's decision time

I am looking at bills and how much people seem to be spending on house, food, gas and am getting really really worried.

We currently spend £600 on household bills per month on top of our mortgage

This doesnt cover

car fuel
childcare,
water - pay yearly
tv licence - yearly
car insurance and tax

We eat organic food and both of us work and ear ok money

The job market at the moment looks like i could earn around $70k, the wife wont be working certainly initially.

Are we going to struggle, will we be poor?

Obviously with one wage we'll have to tighten our belts but is 70k okish or do we not stand a chance?

We're a family of 4 with the kids being 3yo and 10 months and we're looking at melbourne

Any help would be great

Mat

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Hi Mat

I've been doing the same exercise recently and I estimated that, as a childless couple living in a rental in Sydney, we'd need about A$5k a month to live without taking into account clothes shopping, holidays, etc.

I put the breakdown here: http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=502110

It's based on a lot of guesswork but I hoped to provoke a discussion; maybe we can get one going here instead.

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

I would think you would be able to live ok on $70k depending on your tastes, and how much you're going to pay in rent/mortgage and whether you'll be buying expensive cars.

I find we're spending about $900 a month on childcare for 1
About $1200 on food
and $200 a month on water/electricity and gas bills.

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

hi folks,
we are not in sydney and have only been in oz for 4 months, but i shall give you the costs we have/are incurring on a weekly basis and hope it is of some assistance

initially - rental 3 bedroom - $350
now - mortgage 4 bedroom, though 50% paid - $284 (based on approx $180,000)
house/contents ins - $33
car ins - $19
internet - $15
elec (no gas) - $35
rates - dont know yet, still waiting for the scary letter to arrive!
house phone - $20, we both have mobiles and get a capped top up of $29 dollars a month also
car rego - $10 for 1, dont know if they are all the same
fuel - £60 for 2 cars , oh works locally and me just shopping etc, doesnt include many kms
groceries - $200, this is the target i try and keep to though i am finding it difficult, 2 adults and a teenager,
sundries - smokes $80
alcohol- ??
hairdresser - approx $150 every 4-5 weeks for me, oh bought clippers will do him for life! daughter, well coloured hair dye every few weeks and various colours too.
set up costs were quite large though we still are working with the basics as we brought only clothes and personal effects, most set up costs were met out of money brought with us.

just ask if there is anything i could possibly help with. :D

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

If you search for "cost of living" you should find many many posts and threads with views on the subject :)

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

We've been in Aussie since 24th Nov - we stayed with family for the first month before moving out of Sydney to Port Macquarie. We found that petrol is cheaper in Sydney $1.43 compared to PMQ which is $1.53. Food is also cheaper in Sydney and household furniture and stuff but that's just tough for us I guess!

RENTING

3 bed

• house - $280 week
• Rates - (incl with the rent)
• Water - $15 week
• Building Insurance (incl with rent)
• Contents Insurance - $351 per annum based on $125,000 with $15,00 NAMED items that's with AAMI
• Electricity - $20 week (depends on air conditioning and if you are heating a pool
• No Gas at this address - it's more common in City's, out of town its bottled and a fill is around $85 twice a year
• Phone - $29 per month plus calls on Telstra Homeline Plus gives 1 hour calls to the UK for $5 by inputting a code
• Internet - $89 per month for Bigpond 12gb liberty
• TV - 0 just use the aerial we're not home much
• Mobiles - we brought ours unlocked from UK and bought Optus Pay as you go SIMS. OK for a while but then we upgraded as Xmas presents to each other!
• Groceries - $200 weekly not including $50 wine and beer (wine $10 bottle - beer $30 for expensive bondi blond case much cheaper stuff available - UK imported beers are expensive)
• Health Insurance - we are awaiting stuff from Medicare on what we get on reciprocal (our VISA is provisional) but will need to top this up for ambulance dental and extras cover to around $200 month (for both of us)

3.0l Car - we fill it up when its empty - maybe $75 every two weeks - comes with 3 year NRMA (AA) cover and 10 year warranty

Also need:
Mandatory 3rd party insurance (can get it in with new car cost) $330 a year
Comprehensive car insurance $650 a year (NRMA insurance)
Vehicle Tax $322 a year (get it from the RTA)

Driving Licence also costs you (from the RTA)

BUYING

We are in the process of buying.
On top of the cost of the house there is stamp duty - for $590k stamp is $22046 plus solicitor fees at $1200 (bit higher than normal as we have to go through the Foreign Investment Review Board)

Once in bills should be about the same except the rates will be $1700 per year
and we'll have to sort buildings insurance.

We have a water tank in new house which supply's toilets, laundry and a garden tap. This should cut down on water bills.

We bought a Mitsubishi Outlander VRX 5 Seater which is top of the range so set us back $42,000k - but HAGGLE LOT's and you'll drill the price down and get them to quote ON THE ROAD costs all in or you'll get stung for the extras like delivery, premium plates, insurance and the like.

A 12.5m x 3m with jacuzzi pool will set you back between $50k and $60k.

Walking on the beach - FREE
Enjoying the sunsets - FREE
Good day out - WINERIES - apart from getting of course and accomodation the tasting is all FREE
Swimming and surfing - FREE
Beach toilets and showers - FREE
Exploring town and city parks FREE
Lifestyle - AWESOME !

In general I'd say with furniture you get what you pay for same as UK. Shop at Domayne, Harvey Normal, Oz Design, Forty Winks for more expensive quality stuff (but watch out they can sell you duff stuff too) but hunt out the bargain shops before commiting. We brought NO furniture and bought new. I personally recommend leather settees but depends on where you live. If you live somewhere hot the cloth settee will start to smell of sweat after a while and you'll be cleaning it often.

Electricals - try Good Guys and Bing Lee - bargain and haggle for everything. Go from one to the other until you can't get them down any further. We got an LCD for $2400 which started off at $3500 - the more you buy using cash and not credit the more you can bang the prices down.

Cheap clothes to be had in Target, K-Mart and Big W (same quality as ASDA, Tesco) - decent shorts $29 - with plenty of bargains. Loads of smaller clothes shops give all range of prices.

Petrol is cheaper - running costs about the same as the UK.

Food is more expensive than the UK and we certainly find we eat more healthy foods rather than eat hot stuff so we are buying loads more fruit and veg than we used to as there is much more choice. buy what's in season though as out of season stuff costs the earth. try to get used to Aussie branded stuff too as hungting out old UK fav names and brands just bumps up the food bill.

Alcohol is of course dirt cheap compared to the UK!!!!!!!

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Just a question in general - if you earned $70K equivalent in pounds in the UK would you cope - best sort of comparison for a starting point.

For some folks here the cost of living is cheaper for some it is more, for us it increased quite dramatically at the start (we have now caught ourselves up) but we moved from a regional area of the UK (Reading, Berks) to A Capital City - Sydney and our costs including mortgage took a massive jump.

You need to factor in your expectations as well, if you want to increase house size and improve location location - chances are your outgoings will increase and not just because of the cost of living differences.

I think 70K is a reasonable salary - keep to a three bed house in a general suburb and you will possibly not have any issues and have a great time. Do what we did and move to a large house in an up market suburb (take a lower wage as well and move to one not two incomes for a while) and you will struggle as we did! It came right in the end as we planned.

All these things are not because of differences in cost of living - I really believe they are roughly the same.

I put an answer to a thread on here with some of my costs. I will post a link when I find it

This is very general advice - you may need more specifics if I can answer a specific question I will.

Cheers

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

That seems about right. But then I dont know rental costs in Syd.

1k a week should see you covering most bills/rent/food/car

Sounds a lot, when you quickly spout ( 52 thousand per yr ) !!!!

But it is a lot !!!

Australia ISNT CHEAP.

Far from it in fact, albeit some items are reasonably priced, compared to uk. But you just cannot compare.

I really think, a lot of people should seriously get a reality check, and do as suggested in this thread, and do a spreadsheet of expenditure expected, and associated with day to day existence !!

Its not a "free lunch" society in Oz, you wannit, you pay for it. !

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Unfortunately I wouldn't guarantee that. We use lots of water as we are doing up the house (200kL a month on the last bill) and our water usage costs were only about 40% of the bill. The remainder of the bill is standing costs which you have to pay anyway.

Food bills can be very dependent on where you shop. I buy whatever in is season at the greengrocers. Last week was 49c Mangoes, 49c kilo's of tomatoes and 99c kilo's of fine green beans at one point we were eating lots of asparagus as it was 75c a bunch and other weeks had been bok choy at 50c a bunch. I now moan when I get less that 3 carrier bags full of fruit & veg for $20

Meat we get from the local butcher, mince is $5 a kilo, lamb legs $8 a kilo and rump steak $10 to $15 a kilo. I moaned at the other half a couple of weeks ago 'cause he went to a boutique butcher, but even then 6 week dry-hung Angus T-bones were $36 a kilo (decent dry hung beef in the UK was never less than £25 a kilo as you have to go to specialist butchers).

I struggle to spend enough at Woolies/Coles each fortnight to get a voucher for the petrol as it is now limited to the odd cans (we eat fresh whenever possible) and laundry dry goods.

Brewing your own beer makes it even cheaper :D , we buy the posh wort packs which cost a fortune compare to the basic cans ($38 compared to $11) but they make 2 slabs of really tasty beer, to the extent that we recently had a party and were drunk out of homebrew but friends left us all their premium shop bought brands that they were planning to drink.

From what I've found here is for most things you need to haggle, shops generally show everything at rrp. Its also worth shopping around and finding the best value places, I've had shops trying to sell me items that are twice the price of the shop 3 doors down (and same brand) but the shop that is cheaper for one thing isn't necessarily cheaper for everything.

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Good reply Ste! I would agree with everything here. Its not cheap at all - we found it to be a lot more expensive when we first arrived (used to it now) but it was a big shock I can tell you (even though we'd done lots of research).

Hubby is on a really crap basic wage but does well with overtime. We're a family of 3 and with overtime he usually brings home about $1100 per week which we do ok on (doesn't really leave anything for savings though!).

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Having been here 8 years I reckon that everything costs roughly double in dollars what it would in pounds. So this means your 70k income would be roughly equivalent to 35k in pounds in buying power.

Could you live on that?

(Mortgages are more expensive- interest rates are about 8.1pct)

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Thanks, Pollyana - I did search and some of the resultant information is in the post I linked to. All I did really was collate what I'd found on 3 different sites. Just in so I'll catch up on all the other good info people have posted here. :thumbup:

Of course I'm not comparing with the UK, which is adding to the fun. Also moving from approx 11% income tax is going to be something of a shocker. :o We've decided we're coming anyway if the transfer is not blocked at this end, but knowledge is power when it comes to negotiating the contract. :)

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

why do you have to buy??
leave your £$£$ in the bank and have fun

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

How do you work that out?

Drinking in a pub in Australia is just as expensive, or more so, than a pub in the UK.

Prices in bottle shops are no less than in UK supermarkets.

I am quite surpried at the cost of wine in Australia considering how much they produce.

Some things may be cheaper but alcohol aint one of them.

G

Re: Really worried about cost of living
 

Brother in Law is just back from Queensland and assures me Alcohol is very expensive in the pubs/restaurants - more so than the UK. Although cheap from the Bottle Shop - especially the $9 casks of wine!