jackiewalters

My question is, we have no house to sell in England and we are moving to canada with enough to see us through for a few months whilst my husbands settles into his job and I find myself a job. Do you need to have loads of money in the bank to make it in a new country? I read these threads on this forum and every one seems to have sold a house etc, we have none of that, we are moving over with minimal savings and our clothes with a view to starting all over again in every sense of the word. Is this do able? Has any one done the same sort of thing? Please tell me we are not alone.

And No SARCASM PLEASE!!

nikki dreaming

Hi

I hope its doable

We have sold a house, but its not given us a large pot of money to come over and start our new life with by any stretch of the imagination, so in this sense we are similar.

The remaining pot we have from the house sale will cover the costs of getting us and our furniture there, a couple of months living costs and the start of a deposit on buying a house.

I just think this is a fresh start for us and we were never going to be in the category of living mortgage free in Canada anyway, so I am grateful that we managed to sell the house and have a small amount which will hopefully enable our dream to become a reality

Good luck, I am sure if you are determined enough you will make it

retsujou

I have no house to sell. I do have a significant amount in my savings and my situation is special as I have a Canadian girlfriend (which makes getting loans, a car etc much easier) but apart from that I am not starting out with a lump sum. I also do not plan on owning a house, as I have no family and we do not plan on having one it seems unnecessary.

The Canadian property market is in a sharp decline and I would rather like to rent until it hits the low end. That way I can buy a property and laugh all the way to the bank once the property market recovers in five or six years.

I think it is very doable.

tinytears

We can't sell our house, whether we rent it or hand they keys to the bank remains to be seen, but there certainly isn't a huge pot of money that's for sure.

We will make do, we will sell what we can and then take it from there, it will be difficult for a few years but I don't care, I don't even care if we never get a mortgage again, we never really "owned" this house either - the banks do that and as it turns out the investment was for cack all because the place is now lawless and gangs of kids have effectively wiped out all the equity in our house.

stubby42

Thats only half true, it depends on what province your moving too, provinces like sasketchewan and alberta the house prices are still rising.

JamesM

When I went to Toronto back in 2004 I had around £6000 in the bank. That was more than enough to tide me over well I got a job, I also ended up buying a car with what I had spare. You do not need alot of money but obviously having more money increases your chance of success in the short term because it depends on how long it takes to find a job etc..... If you find a job quickly you obviously don't need that much money. It is worth considering the current economic climate aswell if you are moving there with little money.

christmasoompa

I don't think you have to have a big lump of money, we certainly won't have either - we're not selling our house while we're in Canada, we're just going to rent it out and rent over there (although like you, hubby has a job to go to so that does give us a bit more security). It just means that you won't be able to live mortgage free like a lot of people on here are lucky enough to do.

I would just say be realistic, go with enough money to support yourselves for 6 months just in case (God forbid your husband should lose his job or similar but you never know - particularly important if you have kids).

It will also cost quite a bit to get yourself set up there, paying first and last months rent, deposits, buying cars, mobile phones, insurance, etc, so do a good budget, figure out how much all that will cost you and make sure you've got the money for that. I've guessed approx $20k if that helps? If you're only going with clothes then you'll need to add another chunk to buy everything again i.e. furniture, electricals, garden tools, pots and pans, bedding etc - although one thing I've read numerous times (and the reason why we're paying to ship our furniture etc over) is that it's usually cheaper to ship your own stuff to Canada? Think about everything you have, even down to all those little things like a potato peeler, loo brush, etc - it would cost a fair bit to replace your whole house! Something to look into anyway.

The other thing we've budgeted for is last-minute return flights for all of us just in case, God forbid, something awful happens to family and we have to fly home in an emergency. So that's probably worth budgeting for as well.

Good luck, hope that helps.

jackiewalters

Thank you all so much for your suggestions and advice I have taken it all onboard and also I now know that I am not crazy for doing it this way!!

Could I ask we found that it was very exspensive to bring all of our furniture etc over with us to Canada, could you point us in the direction of who you are using to ship your furniture?

christmasoompa

Hi Jackie,

If that reply was directed at me then I'm afraid I can't yet help - we're not going until next year so I haven't yet got any quotes. There is a recent thread on here about shipping quotes which may be very useful though. I've budgeted about £6k (medium sized 4 bed house with 2 kids and all of their associated rubbish!) which is certainly going to be a lot cheaper than buying it all new over there.

Hope that helps.

Edited to add thread I mentioned: http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=569698

jackiewalters

Bless ya

jericho

We didnt bring any equity over (didnt have any!) but we made it fine with about £5000 in cash. I had a job, which helps, but dont be put off by all these people that say you need £30k or whatever because you dont. Obviously, if you're planning on moving here and furnishing your house with new stuff, you'll need money for that but otherwise, you'll be fine.
:curse: Sorry for the smiley- my daughter made me do it

Helen Parnell

I totally agree that you do not need a bucket full. I assisted a family who only had $18,000 canadian, with no jobs, no furniture, only a dog.

They had not planned a thing, flew over, moved into a hotel for one week and rented a car for a week. By the end of the week they were going to be homeless! I found them a rental, and the girl in the office gave them some furniture, I lent them pans/pots/sleeping bags whilst they brought an air bed to sleep on. They went to the local recycling and picked up two bikes!!

It was hard for them due to lack of research and money (they could not get the money out of the UK for two weeks and were down to their last $20 in a week!) I actually walked her into the bank and the bank manager (a friend) gave them a line of credit of $1500 on the spot!

Anyhow they are still here (they had no money to go back!!) after 18 months, love in Cochrane. Got local jobs, eventually brought a cheap 2nd hand car and have both retrained and got much better paying jobs.

They are a real sucess story and shows it can be done. They only had a dog rather than children to worry about and were only in their 20's so were still very much in love with each other and were willing to put up with a few hardships.

SarahBC

Hi there,

As others have said, you can certainly move with a more minimal amount than others can bring with their house equity.

We came with $17,000 and held onto it with a death grip. Luckily, my work permit job worked out fine and my wages covered our living expenses.

One of the most important things we did was not spending much on a car. We purchased a 1981 Chevy Caprice for $1400. My partner is a good mechanic and patched it back up each time it went wrong.

What this meant was that we still had our $17,000 6 months later so we had a downpayment for our house.

Double bonus - after 3.5 years of driving the Chevy Caprice, we are taking advantage of the BC government's Scrap-It program to bribe us to take it off the road. We're getting $2250 because we've bought a less polluting car and scrapped the old car via a car dealership.

SHIPPING

In 2005, we used Brittania (we were living in Kettering at the time, so our local Brittania agent was Pink & Jones). We opted for a shared container which is much cheaper than having your own.

We got rid of tons of stuff, but shipped some key pieces of furniture, boxes of books, CDs, clothes, kitchen equipment etc. It saved a us bundle because we didn't immediately have to buy much at all (except for electrical stuff). Again, bring bedding with you. I've been very disappointed with the choice/cost in North America. Tescos does nicer designs!

The cost of the part container was 1500 UK Pounds and Brittania sent a team to pack our belongings. We booked this about 4 days before we were due to leave and the service was superb. It took 2.5 months to arrive in Vancouver, and we drove a cube van to the shipping agent to collect it ourselves, which also saved a lot of money. Every item was in perfect condition.

Hope this helps!

Sarah

MarkG

Some places claim prices here are rising, others that they're falling, so it's probably a fair guess that they're pretty much static . Certainly prices around where we live don't seem to have changed much in the last few months.

Auld Yin

I think Saskatoon is the exception in the current Canadian R/E market. Former Saskatchewaners are returning and the Province is showing a net increase in population, which hasn't happened for many years. All-in-all it's a nice place to live. A small city with most major city facilities and ,of course, a university which generates population growth to a certain extent.