How much money to take ?

[evojoan]

Hello, I know this question has been asked loads of times, but could I just ask how much money anyone that has recently moved to Adelaide, taken with them and managed ? Anyone with a breakdown of what is needed to pay out when first arriving, would be appreciated ! Thanks in advance

[Blossom]

In the end, you can only take what you have. If you only have $1000 then you will find a way to make it work, but the more the better. It also depends on if you are shipping stuff over or buying new?

 

Your biggest expenses are going to be a car, if you are getting one. This varies hugely depending on what you want. And then you have your rental bond and a month up front in general.

If you are buying furniture that can vary hugely too.

[Ktee]

I think its a personal thing. I have known people manage on $5k and others that have struggled on $50k

[Guest wijaya]

We came here in 2010, and I think for the first six months, like others will tell you, money goes out like water in the drain.. I think reasonably you will need around 20-30 k for the first 6 months.. As other mention, car is one of the most expensive outlay to pay.. We bought our car, Ford Laser 2000, for 7 k, but with a hindsight, we probably should have bought a better one, around 10-15 k, a newer car with less problem..

Renting is another spending.. the deposit et else could take around 2-3 k for the guarantee.. We also bought things like fridge, bed, dining, sofa before ours came.. Those costed a few thousand, of course depending on what you buy.

Apart from that, you need to budget for daily routine.. The ball park figure for family of four is around 250-300 dollars for a weekly shopping.

[Admin]

I guess a big factor will be if you already have jobs to come to or if not, then how long you need to budget for whilst still looking for work. If it takes 6 months to find work, then you'll need funds to cover you during that time period.

[Guest BurgessFamily]

I'd recommend having enough spare cash to be able to explore and travel around. So you get to know the place, and if you have kids, help them settle in a bit. A family of 4 can easily get through $20-30k in a couple of months just by setting up in a new rental. If you need to buy trade licenses etc... you'd need to think about that too (as well as any 'waiting' period). If you are wanting to buy a house, then roughly 10% deposit, and just looking at the cheap end of the market you'd need about $20-30k.

[debbie lawrence]

you can only live to your budget, we came over with 2 suitcases each spent 2 weeks in furnished rental then did gumtree for furniture, couple of settees, coffee table tv cabinet (they threw in their old tv), queen bed with mattress, i did westfields KMart for the big packs of starter stuff, saucepans and plates, bedding, hubby bought an old car (luckily he works with cars so can sort any problems outs), all in all we only spent a few thousand $'s, and have just been getting newer and better stuff as we've gone along.

 

Mind you there was a time we could only have 2 people round as didn't have enough plates or glasses !!!!

[Guest Claire-n-tel]

 

Mind you there was a time we could only have 2 people round as didn't have enough plates or glasses !!!!

Yep i remenber that one Debbie! We actually had people bring their own plate and glass round at one point!....(bring a plate....no i really mean bring a plate!)

[Guest Adelaide_bound]

Most of it depends on what you feel you need - for eg, we weren't going to get a car when we realised that we were going to be bringing less to settle in Adelaide with than we thought (we sold our car for less than we wanted in order to get a quick sale and just get on with our lives), but then we realised that as a TRT teacher (our only guarenteed income stream as neither of us had/have jobs to go to here) I would probably actually need a car to get to work early in the mornings - we originally were going to live in the CBD so this would have been less of an issue (there's good public transport and a good car hourly hire scheme in Adelaide), but the place we setteld on was a few K out from the CBD, so this became less do-able in case I got bookings at cross city schools etc.

 

We had originally budgeted $5K for a car, and when we didn't think we could afford that, scrapped the car idea, but actually through serendipity brought one for $1K, its fab and has no issues what so ever at all (its a little older and rough around the edges, but then so are we lol)

 

Even if you aren't planning on getting a car its best imho to budget for drivers licenses, as they are best for ID (well, not really really really needed, as in CANNOT do without, but it makes life a LOT easier if you have them). But this isn't a huge amount - you can either buy a 1 year or a 5 year one, its a very easy process for swapping over from the UK license, quickly done etc You can get the most up to date prices from the SA Gov website

 

The rest is up to you - we furnished our place pretty cheaply, gumtree was our very dear friend there - as others are saying really

[jaws77]

I'm going with the 'Take as much as I can' amount so it will hopefully see us through until I find a job. Mostly relying on the funds from the sale of our house though.

[Guest BurgessFamily]

When we began considering the move here back in 2000, I used another forum site (only found this one later) and people were asking what to do once they'd bought a house outright (no mortgage), how should they spend the rest - jetski's, boat, new pool in the garden, investment property etc... All sounded stressful, funny how things change.

 

You come with what you can, and you manage... that's it I guess. There is no real cut off, as there is always a way.

 

If you are PR (and maybe other visas), if you have kids you will get tax benefits, rent assistance etc... you'll already have income. Best bit, if you time it right, you'll get tax back from the UK and not pay any tax for the current financial year in oz.

Edited July 5, 2013 by BurgessFamily