mazi

I moved there in 2003 after being made redundant and then having my flat fall down around my ears in London, hence no money. I was fortunate in that my boyfriend is from NZ and we went there knowing he would be going to a job, and i found gainful employment soon after arriving. But be warned - it is no picnic and probably not the lifestyle you think it'll be. You won't make (save) any money, it is not a cheap country to live in unless you have many British pounds saved up, and it's not that much fun either. I spent my three years there trying to get out again - and now I have. I'm in Italy where I also came with no money - and I'm having much more more fun!

trigod

Hi,

Heres our story just to add to the pot. Myself and my wife have had enough of this country and have decided NZ, but we are going for the lifestyle change. Our mortgage here is quite big and we both find it a real chore considering we are 26 & 27. We are hoping to go with £20K and only student loan debts! (Although I am going to hide behind the sofa when they come for this! ).

We intend to rent a little place to start with and when we are settled then consider a house purchase. We are going to learn a lesson from having too big a mortgage in the UK and have something that is far more affordable and doesnt cast a shadow over our lives.

We dont have kids, just a cat and hes going to follow after 6 months, but we are doing this so that in a few years that if we have kids they can grow up in an environment where life isnt about the money you have or the posessions you own... I think that if you want to do the best by your family sit down and work out how much you are going to need to get through 12 months in NZ without work, work out how long you need to save to get there and get a plan together. I am sure you would rather ride out the UK for another year to save rather than go to NZ and have a horrible time due to money issues!

Remember good things come to those who wait!

Good luck with it all, I'm sure you will make the right choice for you and your family.

G

mazi

Hi G - when are you going? be careful - I can tell you from experience buying a house there is not as easy as you may think (sorry if I'm insulting your intelligence and you know all this already) - house prices are astronomical and the cheaper ones tend to be those awful weatherboard things which leak, have no heating (like all houses in NZ, and believe me, the weather is NOT good there - summer lasts a MAX of six weeks, depending on location obviously and the winter is cold) and just plain ugly. My mortgage ate up the same percentage of my wages as my mortgage in London, my food bill ate up a higher percentage of my wages than in London, going out for drinks is far more expensive taking into account the lower wages (ie. a 5 quid cocktail in London will cost you 15 dollars there). I can't comment on the cost of other 'activities' because there are none - although i will readily admit that going for a walk is free in most places. You may be an entirely different person to me and therefore love the lifestyle change (and it IS a change) but I didn't and of all the British people i met there (clearly only a small percentage of the total number of ex-pats) none of them did either. Due to the low pay there if you don't like the place and you've spent all your British pounds building or buying a house you will have to work a hell of a lot to get enough money to get out again. we ended up renting our house out, trotting over to Europe for a few months to make some real money and then going back to tie up our loose ends before leaving for good.

In short: it is not an affordable country, it is not the idyll most brits think it will be, it is not a fun place, it is not a warm place. And contrary to your idea of not wanting future kids to grow up with the idea that money is the be all and end all, every NZer i have ever met is absolutely obsessed with the stuff. But enough of my moaning - you must decide for yourself - and it is only my opinion after all, i am big enough and ugly enough to realise my opinion differs to that of some other people.

trigod

Out of interest, where do you live, what industry do you work in and do you have kids?

DiffordA

Clearly you are a very different person to us (G is my OH) but thanks for your thoughts!

mazi

I am trying to work out why you want to know this, but can't! So, to answer : Italy, English teacher and proof reader, no.

mazi

Forgive my ignorance but what is an OH?

DiffordA

Other Half, I know it takes some time to get used to all the abbreciations!

trigod

Other half. So whats your experience of NZ then, you lived there?

GowHow

I am a big believer in the saying "nothing in life is free"

If people expect to leave the UK behind and disappear to somewhere else in the world, put their feet up and expect to live the life of luxury or miraculously change their life/fortunes, then they are in almost all cases heading for a fall.

Life is about making choices but for most of us it is also about working and making sacrifices.

We are primarily moving to NZ for an adventure. We are lucky enough to have a sizeable amount of equity that will enable us to buy a similar house in NZ without a mortgage. The sacrifices we are making are both financial and personal. Financially we are quite well off with a healthy household income and our son at a good prep school. It would be easy for us to stay in the rat race and count or lives away until we retire on a nice pension.

We have decided life is too short and the world is a small place these days. We both intend to work in NZ and job offers seem to indicate we will have a household income of $100000 - less than half our UK income.

Personally we will miss our families but they are all willing to visit....

I suppose what I am trying to say is life is what you make of it, wherever you live. There will always be haves and have nots, crime, greed etc wherever you live, you just have to rise above it and work for your lot. With a bit of luck you will meet some good people, make good friends, have some fun and the occasional bottle of Cloudy Bay along the way.

Adam

mazi

I was on my way to the Italian lesson and worked out the OH thing then! But thanks - I'm no good with abbreviations, text lang etc. yes, I lived in NZ from Feb 2003 to March of this year (with a stint in Europe last Summer to check that we definitely wanted to move back to this side of the world and to earn the money we needed to leave NZ and re-set ourselves up here). My OH (I'm learning!) is a NZer so I feel i know the people (or at least one of them) very well. We didn't meet in NZ (we met on a bus in Belgium) and I went there to find out more about him and where he came from, to meet his family etc. and to experience something different. He had lived in Europe for 6 years before meeting me so he had probably changed a bit when we went to his home country and we were both pretty miserable there. We hadn't intended to live there but I did a course at the university and was offered a job at the same university as a result. I ummed and ahhed a bit but decided to give it a go as I thought it was a beautiful place and I was having a pleasant enough time. Living there is a different kettle of fish though.

BUT as I said before I fully appreciate that other people like different things to me - and I'm simply not sporty or outdoorsy (essential if you are to be considered in any way normal in NZ), I like reading, museums, galleries and anything to do with words, and NZ is a hard place for someone with those interests (apologies to anyone from Wellington or ChCh, I realise you are a bit more culturally inclined). I'm also not really a 'casual' person and i don't think much of going to the doctor (having paid my $50) to find him in a pair of shorts. I appreciate a good view but only as a break from the city rather than the other way around - it can get tiresome after a while - you do start to think "oh look, ANOTHER mountain, MORE acres of grass with nothing on it, oh gosh a cow - AGAIN". In the UK I have lived in both the country (Somerset) and the city (London) so I do consider myself conversant with both ways of life, but NZ just did not do it for me.

I stand by what I said about the cost of living etc. and the difficulties of house buying/selling - I am not a greedy person, in Italy I earn less than I did in NZ but my quality of life is better because here i can do the things I want to do, no one admonishes me for being English, the people are more to my taste in terms of culture and class (terrible word but really the only one that will do here - and despite NZ priding itself on being 'classless', it isn't. If anything the people are inverted snobs), and it is a more affordable country.

You may well love the lifestyle there - I am sure there are expats that do, i just didn't meet any of them. But then, birds of a feather do flock together so it may well be that I met all the British people who thought the same way as me - and of course you may be very different (as your OH pointed out!). Just try not to burn your bridges in the Uk becasue you may want to return one day...

Mazi

mazi

I couldn't agree more about life being what you make it etc. And i am making mine just fine now I'm in Italy - a country far more suited to my taste. But people can't help it if they don't like something/where. It's great that you have the fortunes to do what you're doing so good luck. And ChCh is a far better place than Hamilton it must be said. Waimarie!

mazi

very true - you can't convert in that way, but you can think about the percentage of earnings being spent on things like mortgage, food, petrol etc. and that puts things into perspective.

Genesis

Its a bit unfair saying that 'NZ is not a fun place'......how would you know? Did you go everywhere? We have LOADsS OF fun and we live in Palmerston North. Perchance you didn't look hard enough?

mazi

Bless you! You say you have fun in Palmerston as though you would expect not to have fun there. I went to many places though due to work being quite time consuming I didn't spend as much time in the South Island as I would have hoped. I've been to Palmerston too and actually seem to remember a fairly fun time there which involved a rather odd girl who insisted on taking us to her aunt's house and pouring wine down our throats. No, I didn't go everywhere though, I must admit - have you been everywhere, are you qualified to say that i am being unfair when i say it is not fun? remember it is an OPINION - and i did qualify this in my messages; I also pointed out that it is not a fun place (in my OPINION) for someone who is not interested in sports and the outdoors, and I'm sure you'd have to agree to that. With the exception of Wellington and ChCh, as i also pointed out.

I'm very pleased you have loads of fun though - so do i now that I live in Italy.