I looked it up because i'm getting anxious about this whole UK political situation.
to get a spousal visa for husband so we could emigrate to NZ would cost around NZ $6k, which is about £2600. That's a HUGE amount of money and that's JUST the visa application.
Passports for the kids to claim their NZ citizenship would cost £185 EACH. So that's £555 for the kids to get their citizenship.
So we're already looking at over £3k just in paperwork.
Then you have to factor in flights.
flights to NZ you're looking at let's see... at the cheapest one way, £2500 for all five of us.
Then you have all those incidental costs.
and transporting our belongings unless we pull the shit my parents did to me (don't recommend) where we were only permitted ONE bag each. (yeah, we arrived in the UK with literally two suitcases. One small one for me, one shared one for my parents. That's all we owned. It was fucking ridiculous)
Shipping things like my pc, our collections (which we'd have to severely cull to make space and money), mementos, shit like that would be another chunk of change.
we have £8000 in our bank account
And that's not "8k savings", that's literally all the money we have to pay rent, groceries, energy and water bills, transport and entertainment... the works. We live on that a month, that's all we have. Which is, arguably more than apparently many people, but only because we live so frugally by cramming 5 of us into a 2 bedroom house that we pay under market rent for.
We also don't drive, which will be a huge detriment in NZ where, outside of Wellington, the public transport system is fucked. So i'd have to pay to get my license, which is expensive too.
and then we'd have to run a car which costs a fucking fortune.
We'd have to rehome the cats. It's around £2k PER cat to get them through all the tests they'd have to go through and they're old, that stress would be unfair on them.
Finding a special needs school for the kids would be difficult. NZ doesn't have great SEN care unfortunately and my younger two both failed to integrate into mainstream despite valiant attempts. That's why they're both at special schools now.
There are 21 special schools in the entire north island of NZ. Only 21. (and for some reason one is in Paeroa? Why? It's a tiny rural town, why does it have a special school when Wellington, the fucking capital, only has 2?)
Then we have to factor in finding a place to live. Auckland is expensive and I don't have a lot of family there any more, most of them are either in the waikato valley or taupo. Hamilton, though small, IS a city and is near to my mother's side of the family while my dad's side has one brother in some rural middle of nowhere outskirts of auckland area and one in taupo with all my cousins and their families.
So, rent in hamilton and taupo.. let's see.
3 beds near taupo town center is $800 a week. so that's $3200 a month. That's £1392 which is actually more than we pay NOW in fucking LONDON.
So let's look at Hamilton. Which also happens to have 2 special schools.
you're looking at about 5-600 a week. So let's do the higher end, that's $2400 a month which is just over £1k. Closer to our current rent, but in a much smaller city. Probably a bigger house though.
Move in costs apparently are 4 weeks as bond and then 2 weeks upfront though, so that's basically 6 weeks rent up front. So uh.. $3600 just to move in. That's quite a wad of cash. I mean that's like £1500 up front.
And so just like that we've wiped out that 8k in our bank.
I mean, it MIGHT be doable if the parents all gave us a bit of money toward it, but it'd still be really tight financially and would be extremely reliant on husband being able to get a job.
On top of that, there's absolutely no guarentee NZ isn't swinging wildly right too. The current government certainly is having a good try.
