vickyb69

Hi

We are moving over to NZ in may 2010 - should we bring furniture or rebuy (its pretty old and tatty). Should we bring home telephones? (can we just plug them in?) How about kettles, toasters etc.

I guess what I'm asking is what will cost less to ship that to buy again!!

teebrown

Hi and welcome,

We arrived in March and brought over a 20ft container and squeezed everything in it. We didn't want to buy completely new, as our stuff was not too bad, we did buy a new sofa here, which we are glad we did as the rooms are so much bigger. I suppose it boils down to if you like your furniture or not, all the little things add up when buying, that's why we were glad we sent everything. Don't bother with the phone's as the the connection will be different, you will be able to plug it in but you wont hear it ring (pointless for a phone really). The kettle, iron, telly (depending on how old etc) will all work. You can send half a container, but you will have to wait for it to be filled before it will be shipped.

Hope this helps.

vickyb69

how much did it cost if you don't mind me asking?

teebrown

To bring a 20ft container over with Allied Movers based in Chch, it was approx £3,700 - but do get several quotes and knock them down, it does make a difference.

vickyb69

crikey - i don't think our stuff is worth that much

Flatcap

Hi Vicky,

We just arrived four weeks ago and our container is due to be delivered three days before Christmas.

We made three or four trips here to investigate where to live, living costs, schools etc, before we eventually took the plunge. Everything seemed to add up on paper and NZ looked quite cheap for most things - but of course since then, the pound has taken a dive and instead of converting everything at 2.8 to the pound, it's now more like 2.2/2.3 so things now seem very expensive.

Once you're here, you have to stop changing everything back into pounds in your head, and you very quickly realise that the cost of living is actually quite high. It would cost a small fortune to replace all your household things if you decided not to bring it over.
I'm sure that the cost of bringing over a container would be far less than having to buy everything again out here - even if your stuff is old, it'll put you on till you can afford to replace it. My OH luckily secured a very good salary (which is well above the average Kiwi wage), but even with this, we don't have a penny spare at the end of the month to allow us to buy any luxuries or enjoy being able to do any of the things we hoped we would be able to enjoy out here.
I'd definately say -fetch everything - even if you replace it a couple of months down the line, the Kiwi's will buy anything second hand and you'll probably get more for it on Trademe than on Ebay or sending it through an auction (talking from experience on that point!)

I really had no idea how much it was going to cost to replace the things I left behind - and that wasn't much!

Good luck anyhow, and I hope I haven't put you off. It's still FAAAAARRRRR better than being in the UK

vickyb69

I won't be put off - we are desparate to come over!! What is the average Kiwi salary?

Think we will bring flat pack furniture and bed (but not mattress); not white goods (they are really getting old and might not survive the journey) - again, sofa is really old. Prob cheaper to buy some cheap second hand stuff there until we can afford to replace it with something nice, especially for things that will be bulky to ship.

TeamEmbo

our phones worked ok here same "BT" type connector. Just plugged them in and all work and ring ok.

We paid 3,150 GBP for a 20' container but that was in 2007 and it was packed full. I think decent beds are expensive here so am glad we brought ours. We got two new leather sofas here (3+2 seater) for $999 and a large futon bed settee for $199 as the house we bought has a large rumpus room which needed furniture. We also bought a chunky wood dining table and 6 upholstered chairs was either $699 or $799 (can't remember exactly which now) when we got here. We shipped over all our white goods, sofas, beds, bedding, kitchen stuff, tools, garden stuff, pictures, mirrors, books etc etc. Personally I'm glad we did as some stuff here, I think, is very expensive and it would have cost us more to replace all the items in NZ than to ship in the container.

However, there are always auctions and TradeMe to get some bargains from if you don't want to or can't afford to buy new.

Flatcap

Sorry Vicky, I did forget to say that your television and DAB radios will be useless here. We packed our DVD player so we could watch British DVD's, but it may not play the ones you buy here.

Anything that has a transformer and uses a lot of power will need to be converted, which is expensive - so I wouldn't bother bringing things like your fridge.
Anything out of the garden is also a no-no - as it's not worth the hastle of disinfecting/inspection.
Alcohol - you can only take the normal customs limit - we only packed two bottles and it's going to slow down customs clearance by up to two days apparantly (and no doubt attract a small charge to inspect!).

Something you must remember to bring out though is bedding - if you're bringing over UK sized bed linen, make sure you pack British duvets to fit them, as they're different sizes out here (not feather ones though ).
I'd even pack spares next time if i had enough room. You can't beat good old TKMaxx - I sure do miss it!

Flatcap

If you bring the bed - you also need to buy a mattress for it and ship that too, as they're different sizes over here and probably won't fit your bed frame!!

teebrown

Our TV (8 month old flat screen) work perfectly and so does our fridge, freezer, hair dryer etc. The older TV's we bought over so the kids could play DVD's on in their room. I know it's a hassel to bring over garden stuff, but we scrubbed ours and bought it with us, the petrol mower was needed right away, the grass grows at a hell of a rate. But it's all personal choice, we didn't want to fork out for anything and even bought over cleaning stuff as it was in our cupboards (the packers snuck it in for us, along with extra booze and marmite)! but each to their own, I am glad we squeezed everything in, the container was here waiting for us when we arrived, so all we had to do was unpack and get on with enjoying NZ (we are still using the toothpaste we packed, and we have been here 8 months now)!!

Good luck.

Flatcap

Blimey, which removal company did you use?
Ours went though everything with a fine tooth comb and pulled out everything like the mower, cleaning stuff etc and told us we couldn't bring it

Wish we've have brought the tele if that was the case - we gave our really good LOWE tele away rather than get 20 quid for it

As to the average wage - reading the papers, I think it must be around $60k, but I don't know what kind of work that's for. What are you hoping to do out here?

A few things that might help with your budgeting tho (and this is purely based on the info I've been able to pick up in the few weeks we've been here, so I'm sure there'll be loadza peeps who've been here longer who'll be able to offer more/better info:
- Our phone/broadband bill is $150/mth without any overseas calls (don't know if anyone else has found a cheaper one)
- Up to now, I've been spending around $200/week on grocery shopping (for 3 of us, without any special treats apart from 3 or 4 bottles of wine per week)
- Petrol to get into work everyday is costing us $500/month (it's around 8 miles each way, but most cars have big engines)
- Average house rental seems to be between $450 and $600/week depending on where you are
Can't advise on Rates, cos they're covered by our rental agreement, and we've also not had our water bill yet.
- The quotes I've had for Health insurance (for non-residents) are between $170 and $200 per month.

If anyone can offer any cost cutting tips - I'd love to hear from yous 'cos I'm finding it a bit of a struggle.

RobClubley

Our fridge and freezer worked fine - why would they need to be converted? The electric is the same!

Telephones are definitely okay at NZ uses BT standards and plugs

TVs - newer ones will be fine as they're just about all settable to international settings.

Ours (7 years old now) got picture but no sound, but if you get Sky or Freeview then it doesn't matter as you're not using the aerial anyway.

Basically we brought everything.Even if your furniture is a bit tatty, if it fits, bring it! It will last you a while, save initial expenses and you wouldn't believe what crap gets sold on Trademe to Students etc!!

Flatcap

I think we got stitched up by Crown.... no to Fridge, no to Tele, no to garden stuff ......... am not having a good day now.

teebrown

Blimey, they certianly told you the wrong thing. We were told we needed a crate built around our TV, but then we told them we had the original packaging, so we didn't bother with the crate, it would have been an extra £100 if we did.

I just remembered why our telephone didn't work, it was a German phone and they have different ring tones over there. The only thing we needed to buy when we got here was a sofa, well actually 3, becuase of that many more rooms, we even had bubble bath pack in the container, I know sad, but it was there, so hey ho