Hi Guys,

Just thought to ask if there is anyone like us with two young kids, 9 and 3 years who have moved to Sydney and would like to share experience of moving down under in terms of quality of life you can get for the same price, say if you are earning £50k in the UK what is an equivalent salary to mintain same standard of living in sydney and also how kids are doing in the new place.
Cheers

At current exchange rates you will need to earn around $125,000 to have the same lifestyle. More if you have no or little housing deposit.

BB

The exchange rate has not much to do with cost of living..when you are earning $$ .. Mortgage, utility bills, entertainment, beer etc in my opinion can all be paid and you can still have more money left over even earning under 125k. Easily I reckon.

£50k in the north of England would offer a pretty high standard of living, it wouldn't really in London or SE, so hard to say really. But the consensus seems to be times it by about 2.5 so I would go along with Buzzy on this.

Quite - the exchange rate is not very helpful at all. One would need to look at earning potential and COL in both countries.

Rates are misleading and unhelpful. A person earning $60,000 per year is now earning £37,500 per year in sterling, but less than two years ago they were earning £24,000. Yet their spending capacity in the AUstralian market remains the same, of course.

Wouldn't this depend on how big the mortgage and utility bills are, what you want to do as entertainment and how much beer you drink.

I've been living and working in Sydney for a good while now and would say that a single income $125k will by no means buy a luxurious lifestyle.

I always find posts like this slightly offensive. The vast majority of people on this website, and by that I guess something like 90% will earn no more than 60k - 80k per year and have a perfectly decent SOL.

The whole "Well I couldn't get by on less than five mill" twaddle is pretty bad form, don't you think?

If this person is earning 125k he or she will have an exceptional SOL in any city in Australia. This is $7000 per month after tax FFS.

Just speaking as I find and no intention to offend anyone, but I really don't agree that 125k will buy an exceptional SOL in Sydney, I can't speak for any other Australian city.

125k equates to take home of about $1550 per week, on the basis of spending a 30% of income on accommodation I'd stand by my statement that $500 pw rent in Sydney will not buy luxurious accommodation, especially if the OP would like to live in a house.

If choosing to buy, 3x125=375k mortgage, and without a large deposit this will not buy a luxurious or exceptional house anywhere you'd want to live within Sydney.

Why is it offensive? Why do you assume that 90pc of people on BE earn less than the average salary or just above it? Why is it that anybody that earns more than average salary has to keep silent in conversations like this. I would completely agree with Coldbear, 125k is not going to provide a luxurious lifestyle and it is absurd to suggest it would provide an exceptional standard of living.

i agree.

however if your into eating caviar and bathing in champagne then it wont

It's closer to $1750 per week, and you could get a decent place to rent for $500 per week, or $2000 per month. That leaves the OP with $5000 per month to pay bills and buy some food.

Not exactly a struggle. Most people would love five grand after rent.

I would suggest some people have tickets on themselves them, because most people would consider $7000 per month take-home pretty luxurious.

And of course it is offensive to refer to a sum of money that is obviously way more than most people earn and imply it is not enough to have a decent lifestyle with. It's bad form and I see it a lot and it irritates me. Also, I do not want to get into the semantics of "luxurious" either. Luxurious could mean literally anything, and it is clear to me the tone of the post implied 125k would be difficult.

Which is patently not the case, unless like I said, one thinks rather a lot of oneself.

you have to factor in paying for schooling if they dont have PR i suppose, but if they also get LAFHA then they will have more to spend.

2500 a month on rent can get you somewhere in a nice suburb with a commute thats not going to kill you; and 5k left over for sundries isnt too shabby

Exactly. I think we agree on this - that a decent place can be got with 7k take home every month and leave plenty afterwards. Not too many years ago my wife and I earned a combined income of about $50,000 and we rented an expensive place in the UK and had the best time of our lives.

Watching people close to me who earned twice as much constantly whining about having no money demonstrated to me that large numbers of people are very, very poor at controlling spending. One friend told me once that just he and his girlfriend spent £200 per week in the supermarket. £200 per week for two people! No matter how hard I tried I could not work out what they were spending the money on. And that's 200 pounds from a few years ago so much more after all this inflation.

My point is that if you are one of these people then yes, I concede 125k will not go far.