3 go mad in Adelaide

Well that thread's given me something to read whilst I sit here at stupid o'clock in the morning not being able to sleep because it's so ******' hot in Adelaide right now!

BristolUK

That's the point I keep trying to make as a counter to others (the wealthy ones who give kids credit cards to run up $20k a year) who say how everything is expensive. It can be expensive, but it needn't be.

We are mortgage free, so it's been manageable so far and in a couple of years both kids will have left school and (hopefully) be working. Yes, that is exactly it.

G586

What if they want to go to college?

(Mind you, we lived on less as a family and I've put myself thru uni twice, but in the UK)

BristolUK

One does want to go to Uni. But plenty of others pay for it by loans, p/t jobs, summer jobs etc.

She saw her mum fund herself so she thinks she could too. She's already decided she's going to work for a year to raise money.

I wouldn't be surprised if she decides she likes the freedom that comes with an income.

But despite buying a house and a rental and furnishing the house and living on some more capital for three years until my Civil Service pension kicked in at 50, we still have some capital left over from my UK house sale. And I only came out of that with £123k - Examples of how the £ goes further in Canada

So we should still be able to help with some costs. We won't keep a rental for ever. Sooner or later we'll sell and hopefully enjoy the capital.

That's why we did things the way we did - establishing a manageable income but having the sale of a property to raise capital if needs be and also plenty of scope to downsize the house and raise capital that way. Then my main pension is due at 65.

G586

I did that too, not a swanning about year out but a save every penny one...

jonfrank123

But in many other areas of the UK they are way cheaper. For instance rents in Vancouver in Canada are way more expensive than Newcastle in England. You need to compare like with like to get a true idea. We will be moving to the Cotswolds close to Oxford and are looking at paying a lot less rent than our condo in Montreal.

Property taxes in Montreal are on a par to the UK when converting from pounds to dollars but are a lot higher when taking into account low Quebec salaries

dunroving

Glad to hear it, and good for her. My brother and I worked part-time all the way through undergraduate, and no-one paid for my 6 years of postgrad but me. A heck of a lot of the students I taught in the States were paying their own way too (maybe taking out goverment loans as part of it, but then the idea of a loan is you pay it back, it's not a handout).

I think for those students, the experience of working their way through college was as much of an education (in life) as taking classes.

In Scotland, students don't have to pay any fees, and I think that's a mistake. Too many of them look at an undergraduate education as a right rather than a privilege.

BristolUK

Sure...but my post was responding to the sweeping statement that "Property taxes are higher (in Canada) than the UK."

Under normal circumstances I would agree with comparing like with like. But these forums are all about living in other countries. Whether someone has identified another country to move to or they just "want out", it is not actually necessary to find or compare like with like....it could be just find somewhere affordable and good enough.

(Edited to add - for example, Moncton may not have the entertainment options of Bristol - although it has some different ones - but it's far cheaper to live here and more than good enough.)

As for like with like, you're a bit off in comparing renting a Condo in Montreal with life the Cotswolds aren't you?

Bevm

Interesting point. I tend to look at it the other way. All countries are so variable, so when making that huge decision to move to another country we have to be specific about where.

For example, I suspect you could have sold your Bristol house and done a similar financial swap -- which I think is brilliant, BTW, if you like where you are -- in other parts of the UK. Not sure exactly where's the cheapest decent place in the UK, but probably Moncton is one of the cheapest pleasant urban spots in Canada.

As best I can tell, the poverty line cut off in Canada for a city the size of Moncton and a four person family is $33,000 pa, so you are living frugally! Not a bad thing. We're frugal, too. But again, to imply to someone from the UK that they could move to Moncton -- or Canada! -- and live well on your income is stretching it.

Poked around a bit more.
For 2005
Median income for Canada, about $56,000
For NB $45,000
Most expensive -- Alberta, at $65,000
From here

So we have to choose not just a country, but where. In reverse, too. We're planning to go to the Devon coast, which is as lovely and as expensive as where we are now. There are plenty of places in the UK we wouldn't go back to, including all the ones not on the coast.

Bev

BristolUK

I'm sure I could have swapped a home in Bristol with somewhere else, but I would still have needed to work for a living. Moving here has enabled me to retire. All the more remarkable that my income here is only marginally more for four of us than I had for just me back in the UK.

My reason for being in Canada is because I met a Canadian woman and married. But for that I'd probably still be in Bristol, where I was perfectly happy BTW, although I had been planning early retirement and a move to Spain about now.

The thing about poverty levels is it means different things to different people. We run a 4 bedroom home, we have two TVs, 2 DVD players, 3 computers (2 on the net). We all have winter clothing and we have no problem paying bills. That's not poverty. Not even frugal.

Also it usually has links to 'average' earnings which are often distorted anyway. Last time I looked, so called 'average' wage levels in the UK were far higher than most people earn. That's just silly. The 'average' that should be used in this context is the 'mode' average....the most common one.

It's also important to remember we are mortgage free. Our $18k income without a mortgage is the same as $30k with mortgage payments of $1k a month.

I haven't said this on this thread but I do on other threads....I was a low paid Civil Servant. My pension is based on final earnings. So that means it's lower than many others would be. I also left work early and took my pension early. That means it was even lower again.

Most people moving to Canada do so with with much higher job skills and higher salary demands. They've already been paid higher incomes in the UK than I had and very probably had higher value property than I had. If they are in their 40s like I was they are probably not far away from much higher pensions than mine.

It's not so much telling people they can live well on our income, it's showing that if I can achieve a manageable level of income (in retirement!!) for four (and have good assets) using the equity in a modest UK home in one of the cheapest areas in Bristol and a crap pension, then many, many more, highly skilled, highly qualified people with greater resources should be able to do even better.....especially if they'll have a salary.

gotoronto

Good for you. Best of luck with the move back. We left after 4 months.

Actually, you'll get a decent exchange rate now for your CAD$ that you are making in the house sale!

Poppy2

Sorry - no time to read all the replies, got to page 4 and realized I was wasting valuable life and getting nowhere aside from seeing members bicker over detail.

I came to this thread as I was looking at the Canniversary board, thinking of posting something as we have been here in NS one year tomorrow and it has been a great year. Nothing exceptional has happened, above and beyond the ordinary, infact someone else might say it has been a tremendously stressful time with exams and jobs not entirely to our liking. However we know it is home and I know very well why - because we have emigrated before and it was hell. However that said, we stuck it out and made the best of it for 4 years, and that was in New Zealand.

I think you need to do what is right for you, please believe me when I say that. But having made the move twice I understand the waste of money that is incurred, not to mention the upheaval on kids and schooling. Personally, I am so impressed with education here, I wouldnt want to leave because of that alone.

On the one hand, you waited for years for PR (I think thats right?), but you seemed poorly prepared for what NS would offer you that now you want to leave. Secondary to that, there are seemingly a load of fab reasons to return to the UK..........so why didnt those things keep you there in the first place? Moving now, between the UK to here and back again, and in THIS universal recession........what a loss of money.

So my point is - will you be happy in the UK? Something prompted the big move to NS, and after a matter of months you ping pong back to the UK. Will you be happy? I hope so, but I would think it through hard.

You came at the wrong time of year to my mind, if you were to stay until the spring and summer (even if you have holidayed before at those times here) I think it would make you feel better. That said, nothing could have made NZ better for me, and the reason why was buying a house that made us permanently broke. We had no quality of life, we had a high mortgage and constant renovations to pay for and do ourselves - it was hell. NZ was also not for us, it is too poor and backwaterish, I dont like standing out as being different, which all foreigners do there, and the backlash that comes wth that - there is nothing like that here, people are glad to have us.

So I wish you well, but it sounds to me that there are deeper issues here and I hope you dont go to the UK and ping ping off somewhere else. Some good friends of ours have done just this. They left NZ when we did after 4 years, went to the UK and hated every bit of it, left recently after less than a year, went to Oz and after no more than 3 months are going back to NZ. So think it through and avoid knee jerk reactions tht are costly when you may regret them later. A move to another part of NZ would have saved my friends 2 moves and all that involves with 2 small children.

Hope it goes well for you guys and you have found the right choice

Tr1boy

So let me get this straight, you're accusing one person of not doing enough research on Canada, but yet seemingly made the same mistake yourself in NZ?

Tangram

But Poppy stayed in NZ for 4 years, not 4 months.

Poppy2

No I didnt make any mistake - I said that I didnt enjoy NZ and it wasnt for us, but we lived, worked and raised our children there for 4 years. We can say to anyone that we lived in NZ for a significant amount of time and as such, we can definately own an opinion about the place. Also, we would all rather have tht as our back story and something for our kids to remember and be proud of, than we stuck it out in the UK and had absolutely no adventure.

A mistake is not understanding that immigration is a process and therefore not necessarily going to be all your heart's desires. Its no movie, its real life.