If he isn't working for a year, he won't need private health insurance, he can just forget about the insurance part.

Me an my wife did it using one application and we did it ourselves. We got the marriage certificate signed early for the PR application, but I used 'living together as de facto' for over a year to fulfill the spouse condition in our application. We did live together and have the same address for credit card bills, and that is all we submitted. No problem with the application, got the visa in four months with no questions asked.

Both of us needed to take IELTS but only one of us have to do the skill check. But that was a couple of years back too, so your circumstances might be different. Save some money for the application fees and we got the visa at the same time, so less trouble there for us.

Nursing is still very in demand. It shouldn't be too hard to find a job as a nurse. But prepare to work really hard, physically demanding and long continuous hours.. which shouldn't be any new if you are already a nurse in Malaysia. Pay is not high though, I heard senior nurse (more than 10 years+?) are still earning slightly less than first year doctor.

The only advice I would say is, don't come to Australia for the $. Nobody should be talking about $ without knowing the personal circumstances.

If your household income is AU$100k and you are sending 2 kids to private school which cost AU$30k each, how much do you have left after tax? Probably not enough to even pay your mortgage. If your household income is $150k, which is supposed to be the benchmark for being rich in Australia, considering limited investment for tax deduction and the need for after school child care, how much is there really left?

I would think you would understand seeing that you are already here. There was just an article like a month or so saying the enrollment to private have raised and there is like 40%-60% of people who do send their kids to private school. If you think you should send your kids to private school in Malaysia, then you should do the same in Australia, there is no reason to compromise and downgrade.

People here either move to an address with selected public school or enroll into private school. I would think that people who chose to migrate here are people who care about their kids education, and thus belong to this group too.

Houses with an address that can get you into a good public school are 20% or even more expensive then an address right across the street that can't get you into that good school. So it is really either private school or more expensive address. Or is it just Sydney?

So today, I found a second example that happened this year where people moved for child's education. The first example was someone who sold their place, rented in a good school catchment area while planning for a purchase near the new place. The timing was really bad as Sydney's real estate market is rising rapidly this couple of months (more so for good school areas), and they had to increase the budget of the new purchase month to month.

The second example today was that they bought a place 40 minutes away from the city by train. You can't really drive to city even in weekend as the only road out to the city are always jam, so it will take up to 40-60 minutes to reach city by car. The property was more then 1 million. I can get something with similar building condition (and possibly lesser price too) which is 15-20 minutes to the city, provided it is not in a sort-after school area. The good side though, was that their land was really huge.

Last year there were 308,613 students enrolled in government secondary schools, compared with 310,558 the year before, a drop of about 1 per cent, the figures show.
The number of students enrolled in private secondary schools in NSW was 196,243 last year, up from 192,613 in 2011, a rise of about 2 per cent.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/b...l#ixzz2Y3Yaez1L



So that is about 38.8% enrolled to private school .. hopefully that can set the expectation of more people right about education here in Australia.

I thought I answered that ... there are good and bad public school, in most cases, the good ones are surrounded by houses with really high prices. Do more research and choose carefully. And also, prepare earlier, start registering once they are eligible. If your child is already 4 or 5 years old, be prepared to be at the back of a very long waiting list.

Perth might be different though....

No worries, just have similar worst case scenario expectation as you would in Malaysia for everything. You will be fine.

Another option is to sacrifice yourself and expand your search parameter, look for places 1 hour away from your work place ... very common in Sydney as I can count with more then 1 hand of people who stays at least 1.5 hour away from work, some 2 hours even. That is Sydney for you, Perth probably won't be as bad.

btw, check for after hours child care support too.... that is also not a given. And year one starts at 6 depending on the month your kid is born in.

Again, don't take this as a given..... Australia are one supposedly one of the western country with the longest working hour...

I do receive emails during weekend and in the middle of the night and many ppl work till 8-9 every day too... Not as common as Malaysia, but it is not as rare as you think.

That is great, congratulations.

It will be hard for you to get a loan with 3 month contract only, unless you have a huge deposit from Malaysia, you probably can leave it for now. Not a lot of people are using FHOG now that it is only limited to new building. New buildings here are very badly built and high risk of not completing and completed totally different from the initial spec.

It is the lost of time that you can't get compensation over. Just don't have the mindset that Australia is supposed to be a developed country and everything is fair here, then you are fine. Remember to do your due diligence and be extra careful.

It is just that there are far too many cases of things turning bad here. And far too many people just put their trust on developer blindly. They just make the purchase, did the payment as requested, and only when it comes to completion date, then they went on site and realise they paid too early too much for the wrong thing and asked to wait another 12 months for completion.

You must have a good resume. Probably an exact fit to the job requirement and they doesn't have many other candidate to consider . The wage range could be one of the reason too . Fast forward a year from now, you will be in much much much better position with your here as well.

$70k is not low, even with 10 years experience in IT, there are a lot of people getting such rate. It depends on the type of IT work and the role you are in though. It is like people getting rm3k - 4k after 10 years in IT in Malaysia, there are more of them out there that you think.

And if the family is on a dual-income with $70k each, you are already better off almost all people here.

The only thing is that when you migrate, you start of from the ground again. Like working in Malaysia and trying to get a property using that money, is really hard. And when you are comparing it to people that started at 22/23 yo here, you will feel that difference. But with the skills, experience and the correct attitude, you'll catch up pretty quickly though.

And really, I don't think you should change your lifestyle just because you moved here. If you have a decent job but became frugal only after you moved here, I would really question your reason on why you want to sacrifice that way.

As for me, I still eat out every day and shop when we need it cause I don't compromise on food and household items are here to stay, so why not pay more for quality, which is what I would do back home anyway. However, I drive a cheap car, but my car in Malaysia was even older and cheaper.

Fresh grad does not get $60k, especially not for IT.

I'm probably repeating myself, but I don't think people should migrate here because of their off spring. Just send them overseas when they are older, there are plenty of places in the world to choose from. Even if you move to Australia, your child will probably end up in UK or USA anyway, which is what is happening here now. And education here is not cheap, it could just be a "Sydney only" situation, but people who can afford it sends their kid to private school, and for any professional who migrates here because of your children's education, you should be in that group too. We just had a look on the school fees, year 1 cost 14k per annum and it gradually increases to 24k on year 12. That is excluding the fees for uniforms, out of school activities and stuff. And yes it is very common to send kids to after school tuition/classes too.

Think about yourself and what you want to achieve. What really makes you happy and strive for that. Your kids will be good if you spend enough time with them and being the role model to educate them. Australia or Malaysia, it is the same. And migrating at 40 years old is not uncommon, a lot of people does that. I personally won't do that unless I am in huge trouble in Malaysia, but I won't discourage you either. Reason being, I feel like earning MYR to support an AUD lifestyle is really hard. I did work in Malaysia for almost 5 years, and I am still playing catchup now after being here for 3 years. I am not really worse off then most people here, but I think I would have achieved more if I started in Australia instead of Malaysia, and I still want that to happen. 10 years of catching up will be too hard on me psychologically though.

Look into a suburb that you want to stay, look at the school ranking, check the waiting list to get into the school, look at the property price and you'll know the differences.

If you really want to move here, just do it asap. Even if it is just applying for PR and decide later, it doesn't really cost that much doing it yourself right? Or is it a lot more expensive now....