Has anyone moved to NZ with no money ?
Oct 28th 2006, 1:17 pm
#76
By name and by nature
Joined: Mar 2005
Posts: 1,852
Re: Has anyone moved to NZ with no money ?
Originally Posted by 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.
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.
One piece of advice I'll give to anyone coming out here - if you find yourself surrounded by negative people - get away from them. They aren't doing themselves any good and they'll do you no good either. I suppose if I wanted to I could find people who don't like New Zealand but I don't go looking for them.
We're really happy here. We have lovely, lovely
friends, we don't have an awful lot of money - lots of times we're skint but we've always been like that so it doesn't bother us, at the risk of sounding corny, we just love our life together and so long as we're all right then we've nothing to worry about. This is our reality and obviously a different one than Mazi experienced here but it doesn't make it any less real. Stevie. I'm not ever going to pretend that it's cheap to live here - but I do think that people get stuck in a time warp when they've been here a while and forget or don't realise that prices are increasing back home too. Do you have children? The shipping might seem like it's soaking up money now but if you don't have to buy it here, you'll only have to pay rent out of the money you've got. I believe that, once you've got PR, you're entitled to family assistance. There's always a way out of a situation - you've just got to find it.
We've spoken before I believe about your wife's job prospects - yes? It might be difficult initially but you've got good earning power between you. It's mad here - it seems that people in my position can earn more than a tradesman with a family to support. I wouldn't try to say that it's going to be easy but, **** it, you'll be a long time dead. I think your being over here for a while before your wife gets here should enable you to get on your feet. Good luck pet.
Somebody mentioned Mt Albert a while back - be careful. There are a few streets that are called the 'golden triangle'. This area is lovely, but, step outside of there and you're in a 'not very nice' area. It's rough at night and my friend's 19 yr old son who lives there won't go out alone.
