BEVS

This subject was brought up in another thread so I thought it might be helpful and a little bit worthwhile if we could put our heads together and come up with a bit of a list of what expenses we incur - obvious and hidden - and then try and put a ballpark cost to that.

To start:-

Visas
Medicals/Xrays.

Shipping

RobDon

If your case is unusual or complicated you might want to hire an Immigration Lawyer. Lots of $$$$$

If renting on arrival, then rent will usually have to be paid upfront, plus a bond.

Buying basics to last until all your worldly goods arrive.

Hiring a car to get around.

Stormer999

Fees for NZ recognition of International Qualifications.

RobDon

Fees for Professional Registration, if required.

S_and_T

Police Certificates
Pet Shipping
Spraying of equipment (outdoor furniture, etc)
Marine Insurance (if shipping)
Flight costs.
Stopovers (if appropriate)
Hotels on arrival

And in my case (excuse the pun), cost of excess baggage at the airport!

Bo-Jangles

Accommodation prior to departure
NZQA Assessments
Certified copies of passports, qualifications, certificates and stuff for visa
Courier fees for visa applications and professional registrations, nzqa and the likes

BEVS

Cost of selling UK house or ongoing costs in renting it out.

Can we put some prices to some of this?

RobClubley

I can't remember all of the specifics as we moved over in 2005, but we worked out the total cost of migration for us was about GBP13k

Medical checks, application fees, police checks etc
Sell UK house
Fly ourselves and two cats over
Pack and ship one 20ft container
Ship one car
Hotels before leaving UK
Stopover in Hong Kong for a few days
Catteries, hotels etc here before finding a rental

SSky

Loss on sale of house .. had to reduce by 15k so that was a starter.
Loss on our car, one year old .. bought for 12k sold for 7k.
Paid of credit cards .. 7k
Medical stuff and police checks etc was maybe a 1 grand maybe more
Immigration stuff was heaps, no memory of what it cost now, must have blocked it to protect my sanity but they seemed to want bundles of money at every turn and we did all the paperwork ourselves.
Even when we got PR we still had to pay per person for some English language thingy.
Can't remember the cost of shipping, something like 2k but that was 10yrs ago.
Rental in a really crappy house .. can't remember maybe 150 a week?
Buying white goods, bedding, essentials whilst waiting for the container was a couple of grand at least.

I did a little tot up of all our expenses when we first arrived of what we had lost in house sale and car sale and other stuff etc settling and so forth and it came to 60 THOUSAND UK POUNDS .....Aaaaarrgh!

moving2NZ2013

Holy crap!

Ours was with setting up 6k Tops.

Polly 3

Allow for excess baggage for those things you must bring with you and rental car and or public transport/taxi costs until you either get a vehicle or yours arrives. Boy it really costs to set up another pantry for scratch, cost us over $600AU at the first supermarket shop in OZ. BTW have a basic picnic kit that comes with you in the plane, plastic plates, glasses etc, we usually can last with that until the "stuff" arrives

Bo-Jangles

Why would you waste valuable airspace with cheap old tat like that, when we already have Warehouses full of that sort of stuff here?

Polly 3

Cos, when you arrive you may not be able to get to a warehouse easily.We arrived to a 14 room empty house with nothing, no car, 4 kids and a dog, we were very glad for anything that first night or two! We also were very glad for the sleeping bags, pillows that we bought with us too.

bourbon-biscuit

It's pretty rare for expats to arrive and go from the airport straight to an empty house without transport, so I reckon unless you are likely to be in that situation it is a waste of luggage space bringing picnic stuff and bedding.

TommyLuck

This is a very good and often forgotten cost of relocating, not forgetting the cost of the stuff you gave away or binned pre-relocating because it wouldn't or couldn't travel.