However, everything around us was getting expensive. With rent and utilities increasing, we found we were not able to live as comfortably as we used to.
November 2023 came, and that was when I gave birth to my baby boy, Desmond.
When Desmond came along, I was on maternity leave … it was a huge struggle as the maximum pay was not much, putting us on a tight budget. My parents helped us out financially every month to help cover bills.
I found that we have been living paycheck to paycheck for the last couple of years. I started to think about my baby boy’s future and what this means for him.
Every day it rained. Every day we were struggling. And every week I watch shops and businesses close down … that’s when I thought about moving overseas.
Not just for myself, but for my son’s future. Where there are more opportunities for him, plus where we are able to provide for him and give him the best life.
There were many ads everywhere in regards to how Australia needed teachers, and after doing my research, my husband would be earning double what he did back home.
I am a qualified veterinary nurse, so I can work anywhere within the pet industry.
I started to weigh the pros and cons. The pros: food, rent, power, water, petrol are a lot cheaper, the weather was great almost everyday (of course, depending on where in Australia), the pay for both of us is a lot higher meaning we can actually live and have savings again – not living paycheck to paycheck anymore – and being able to afford things and holidays.
The cons were: car registration and healthcare are a lot more expensive for all of us, and we don’t get anything free for Desmond anymore, [and] of course, moving away from all our family and friends.
I saw an agency ad come across Facebook for teachers and applied for my husband. Within the next 12 hours, they made contact. Within the next 24 hours, he had about five interviews for schools in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney.
Within three days of contacting that agency, the contract was signed [with a school] and we had six weeks to move to Brisbane.
They were willing to help us out with $10,000 AUD for relocation costs out of their own pocket, being a private school, as long as he signed a one-year contract.
[That] definitely helped a lot with the last-minute flights, all our luggage … [storage], car hire, temporary accommodation (Airbnb), and the rest we used to help with the cost of bringing our dog over.
Two weeks in, we secured a rental. I spent three months with my son, as well as getting our lives sorted slowly, which was great. And I got financial help and subsidies every fortnight from the government, which made all this possible.
After settling in and sorting our lives out, I started job hunting and secured a job within a week or so, and Desmond went into daycare full-time. With the huge government subsidy for daycare here, it is easily possible to do.
Now, we have been here for six months and we are loving life.
Desmond is thriving in daycare.
My husband and I managed to clear both our student loans in less than six months. We will just need to clear our credit card debt (which we pretty much lived off over the past couple of years back home) and we are hoping to do this in the next couple of months, then we will be debt-free.
We also manage to have savings week after week, which was a struggle to do back home.
Once we get on top of things, we should hopefully be able to travel overseas again … visit home next year [and] be able to also start saving to buy a house here as well, which was not possible at all back home.
We definitely made the right move. Not just for ourselves but mainly for our child and his future.
