# A few questions



## maybeimamazed (Apr 2, 2013)

Hi, I'm new here, I'm sorry if these are things you get asked all the time. Hoping this will be the beginning of a long journey for us and that someday I'll be one of the ones doling out advice  My partner and I have been talking about emigrating to NZ with our 3 children (currently aged 0, 2 and 5). We are thinking about trying to raise the funds, we don't have an awful lot of money at the moment so it may be some time before we get there. We've done a lot of research on the main immigration websites and lurked in this forum for a while, but I wanted to ask the following. (Don't expect anyone to read and answer all of them, but if anyone has anything to offer for any one of them that would be much appreciated, thanks!)

Can you give a breakdown of your past/current personal emigration budget? I know this will be different for everyone, we’ve done numerous workings and have some rough estimates but it would be good to see what it ended up costing various real people.

Does anybody know what the realistic demand is for people in management accounting, finance manager type roles, and how likely it would be to secure a job from overseas? Would you recommend doing this before or after beginning the application process? (We have checked and should have more than enough EOI points).

What are your views on applying for a working visa and then going for permanent residency later versus applying for a skilled migrants visa from the start?

Is there a NZ equivalent of something like OFSTED where you can find external reports on quality of schools?

I teach private antenatal classes and am a birth doula. I know that doulas are a little known thing over there so am prepared to give this up if needs be, but I’m wondering if anybody knows of whether there is a market for private antenatal classes or if I need to be considering a complete career change. Similarly I am training to be a hypnotherapist – again does anybody know if there is much of a market over there for this? How is New Zealand in general for self employed poms?

Those of you who know Auckland – what are the nicest places you’d consider raising a family within a 45-60 (at most) minute drive of the CBD? 

Is a Working In immigration expo worth attending, and if so, at what stage would you recommend going? We can’t afford to emigrate yet so would you say it’s better to wait ‘til we can, or is it worth going just to satisfy our interests?

Thanks in advance!


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## escapedtonz (Apr 6, 2012)

maybeimamazed said:


> Hi, I'm new here, I'm sorry if these are things you get asked all the time. Hoping this will be the beginning of a long journey for us and that someday I'll be one of the ones doling out advice  My partner and I have been talking about emigrating to NZ with our 3 children (currently aged 0, 2 and 5). We are thinking about trying to raise the funds, we don't have an awful lot of money at the moment so it may be some time before we get there. We've done a lot of research on the main immigration websites and lurked in this forum for a while, but I wanted to ask the following. (Don't expect anyone to read and answer all of them, but if anyone has anything to offer for any one of them that would be much appreciated, thanks!)
> 
> Can you give a breakdown of your past/current personal emigration budget? I know this will be different for everyone, weve done numerous workings and have some rough estimates but it would be good to see what it ended up costing various real people.
> 
> ...


Hi,
Welcome to the forum.

Breakdown of our emigration costs from the UK last year :-

Residency visas for 2 adults and 1 infant - approx £4000/£4500 - hard to keep track of as the payments were in dribs and drabs and this includes the services of an Immigration Consultant.
International Removals for 5 bed detached into a 40ft container without any vehicles - £5400 including an airfreight package which arrived after 2 weeks.
2 weeks in a fully furnished 3 bed rental apartment in Southport UK after house emptied - £600.
One way flights via Emirates - £1950.
4 nights stop over in Abu Dhabi - free with friends.
3 nights stop over in Sydney, just because we wanted to check it out - $750.
First 8 weeks fully furnished holiday home rental close to Wellington city - 3 bed bungalow including all utilities/heating etc - £2900 (paid for by new employer).
Hire car for 2 weeks via Hertz. Mitsubishi Highlander V6 4x4 - £600 (paid for by new employer).
Shipping insurance - around 1.5% of the value of the total goods in shipment £500 (insured for free by new employer).

Difficult to secure any job from overseas unless you have a visa and firm plans to travel unless your skills are urgently sought after.
Takes a lot of research, applications and knockbacks.

You must decide which visas to apply for before making the decision of whether to try and secure a job before or after the visa.
If you are going the EOI route and Residency then I'd say secure the visas first as they can take a while.
If you going for a Temp Work Visa then you need a job to secure the visa and vice versa you'll need a visa to secure the job - catch 22.
If you manage to secure a job though these visas don't usually take long to secure and last max 30 months I think.
You could then apply for Residency from inside NZ.
I suppose it all depends how quickly you wish to be here. If you want to be here say from 6 months then go the Temp Work visa route, if from say 12 months go for Residency.
All depends on your personal circumstances.

For school ratings try www.ero.govt.nz 

Don't take much notice of the decile ratings. These have been/about to be abolished and don't actually give an indication of how well the school and its teachers/pupils perform.
It is just a pointer to the social class of the kids that attend based on where they live, how many people live in their home, their parents education/job/social standing. It is only used to give the school a score for government funding. The higher the score the less assistance the school receives although the higher the score the higher social class of the kids families that attend.

Sorry cant help you with jobs or Auckland.

I'd recommend attending a jobs expo and earlier rather than later. They aren't that expensive to attend and they are an excellent place to get some answers from people in the business helping people emigrate all the time and you never know you could land yourself a job as employers do attend.

Cheers


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