[Twig]

Hello all,

After recent talks with recruitment consultant (and some research on my part) we have discovered Hubby can expect $80 - 90K. However, it is most likely we will have to reside in Auckland due to his job - is this salary enough to live on for a family of four with a $200K mortgage?

Any help with this would be great.

[Sam'n'Kelv]

I certainly hope so, or else I'm in BIG trouble.

[spudulike]

Hi, if you use the search facility you will find so many threads on this subject with loads of replies. Just type in financial or something similar into the search function.

All the best.

[Sam'n'Kelv]

Avalon's Money Thread (http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=9357) is definitely the best place to start.

[Cardy]

Hi there we are a family of 5 living in Cambridge Waikato ditrict NZ we started out here on a lot less than that and lived in a rental till we found a house we liked and could afford. Fortunately we now earn more than 80,000 . If you have got PR you can apply for family assistance and various other benefits as long as you are working more than 30 hours per week and i think you can earn up to $106,000 and still qualify. there is a calculator for you to work out you entitlement on the IRD website so you can put in your details and find out how much a fortnight you will get in assisstance. You could ring them and get a more detialed figure too there very helpful. Dont forget to apply for IRD numbers for all of you before you get here you will need them and it will save you time and money.


Good luck CArdy:nice1

[Trigirl]

$80k means you'll pay $22,470 in tax, $1,040 in ACC so take home $56,490 which is $1,086 a week. you will be entitled to £25 a week family assistance. so total of $1,111 a week.

a $200k mortgage at a floating rate over 25 years would currently cost you $408 a week leaving you $703 a week to live off.

hopefully that should give you a starting point to do a budget and see if you can manage?

[Cindy]

Trigirl,

The breakdown truly helped. Thank you!!!

[Twig]

Trigirl - thank you very much for that!! :)

[Tia Maria]

Trigirl what a great answer! :nice1

Its a bit cheeky to ask but any chance of doing a thread with a few wages breakdowns and mortgage claculations?

That way someone can get a rough idea of take home pay after mortgage, and budget accordingly.

I know I would have found it really helpful when I was in the UK! :yes

Cheers

Tia

PS You must have been super helpful with something else recently, as I can't give you reputation. :laugh

[Trigirl]

thanks tia - i've got it all on a spreadsheet somewhere so can easily do that.

[teambwr47]

Hello all,

After recent talks with recruitment consultant (and some research on my part) we have discovered Hubby can expect $80 - 90K. However, it is most likely we will have to reside in Auckland due to his job - is this salary enough to live on for a family of four with a $200K mortgage?

Any help with this would be great.

Can i ask what your husband does?

My wife who's the main money earner in our family has been talking to a number or recruitment people about potential roles in NZ.
She is a senior manager in IT in the UK and earns 90k basic with a package and bonus that takes her into 6 figures. When she started to talk to one they suggested she would earn 120-130k nz$ and that to us was a massive shock and nearly ened all our thoughts of moving there and then.
By chance realy, she continued with the process with one company and meet up with an MD of the british arm of a NZ company in london for a face to face interview at which he told her she would earn 'considerably' more than she'd been told. He passed back to NZ that they should proceed in talks to her and thats continuing.

The wages issue is complicated and we are still looking for a better idea as to how wages in NZ compare and where to pitch our expections.

Looking at a number of jobs that stand out it appears that, just figures wise, 2 times a UK salary is about where the right figure lies. Does anyone have a idea if this works out.

I am trained as a police officer and with the number of years i have served in the UK transferable to NZ i would earn a shade under 70K nz$ compared to about £34K in the UK. This obviously fits the above two times idea.

Has anyone got experience of negotiating for relatively high salaried roles and if so how did it go.

[barryp]

If your move depends on doubling a hundred thousand pound package, you should consider not moving. $200k is a decent salary for a CTO/CIO, and inconceivable for an IT manager, here.

Only about 5% of New Zealanders earn over $60k today, and twenty years ago you could put all of the $100k club in one large room. Now there are many more highly-paid people in the latter group, including IT workers, but the spread is still much narrower at the top than you're used to. IMO.

Working for a non-NZ company with operations here might allow a better package - I know a few IT consultants who work for UK/US firms who make far more than the local market supports. (Should they end up changing jobs, their next jobs will pay them far less.)

[Milliemoo]

Hi there,

I would have thought one of her biggest problems is going to be that those type of high salaried jobs are very rare and when they do come up I would have thought it more likely to go to someone with Kiwi experience. For that kind of salary in IT in NZ I guess your talking about directing a large IT division in a big corporate?

Milliemoo

[zardell]

The wages issue is complicated and we are still looking for a better idea as to how wages in NZ compare and where to pitch our expections.




New Zealand has outshone all my expectations except in one area....the salaries - they are dire and that seems to be the general consensus straight across the board.

Julie

xx

[Trigirl]

this is the Hays 06 salary survey for IT. its australian but includes auckland and wellington. it may at least give your wife some ideas on what to expect?
http://www.hays.com.au/salary/pdfs06/InformationTechnology.pdf

[Tia Maria]

Its interesting that for positions higher than programmer in IT, you seem to be able to earn more in Wellington than in Auckland. I wonder why? :confused:

Cheers

Tia

[Trigirl]

government work i'd assume? the large govt depts have major IT teams and always have big systems changes going on.

[teambwr47]

this is the Hays 06 salary survey for IT. its australian but includes auckland and wellington. it may at least give your wife some ideas on what to expect?
http://www.hays.com.au/salary/pdfs06/InformationTechnology.pdf


Thanks for that link it was very useful indeed.

[Twig]

Can i ask what your husband does?

My wife who's the main money earner in our family has been talking to a number or recruitment people about potential roles in NZ.
She is a senior manager in IT in the UK and earns 90k basic with a package and bonus that takes her into 6 figures. When she started to talk to one they suggested she would earn 120-130k nz$ and that to us was a massive shock and nearly ened all our thoughts of moving there and then.
By chance realy, she continued with the process with one company and meet up with an MD of the british arm of a NZ company in london for a face to face interview at which he told her she would earn 'considerably' more than she'd been told. He passed back to NZ that they should proceed in talks to her and thats continuing.

The wages issue is complicated and we are still looking for a better idea as to how wages in NZ compare and where to pitch our expections.

Looking at a number of jobs that stand out it appears that, just figures wise, 2 times a UK salary is about where the right figure lies. Does anyone have a idea if this works out.

I am trained as a police officer and with the number of years i have served in the UK transferable to NZ i would earn a shade under 70K nz$ compared to about £34K in the UK. This obviously fits the above two times idea.

Has anyone got experience of negotiating for relatively high salaried roles and if so how did it go.

In the UK he is an Mechanical Design Engineer at Associate level but doesn't want to go into that management level in NZ. He's currently on £44K so doubling the salary is a good guide on average (he would get around $80 - 95K for Senior level, which is lower than his current role). We were also told by a specialist recruitment guy that doubling was a good way to work salaries out but your wife doesn't sound like she has the 'average' job. Have you tried looking on Seek to see if there are any 'roles' similar to her current position?

[teambwr47]

Yes we've used the seek site and she's kept an eye on whats come up over the past few months.

The link posted above contains wage ranges for many IT jobs but virtually every single one of the roles there are people who in the UK would be 'working for' her in her position in the UK.

Her senior manger role in the company she works for now is the same as another role she had with naother firm as a director its just how roles are drscribed at some companies and its a partner role in all but title.

We will see how it all goes but the good thing is she's well down the road with one large firm who are saying they want to meet her in person before an offer which hopefully means there is an offer coming. The MD of that company told her in a telephone interview that she would attract 'considerably' more than she'd been told by recruiters but we are still wondering what 'considerably' means....lol

We have also wondered if recruiters pitch things in NZ lower so they can come back with a 'better' than expected offer to tempt you out to NZ?

[incredible hulse]

We have also wondered if recruiters pitch things in NZ lower so they can come back with a 'better' than expected offer to tempt you out to NZ?

I was offered a job (in IT) whilst in the UK and the original offer was 100k. When I stalled on this level and tried to start haggling with the agent they immediately offered 15k more. To be honest I wasn't expecting the immediate new offer and for it to be that high a percentage increase. The agent didn't have to go back to the client - it was literally held there in reserve by the agent. I have had similar experience on a recent contract where the hourly rate offered originally was increased by 20 dollars in the space of a phone call - I since learnt that the agent was still making 20% commission on that new revised figure. To be honest my experience of the IT agents over here are that they are not to be trusted as far as you can throw them.

Regards the salary expectations to your UK one - my own personal view is that if you doubled your UK package into dollars you would have disposable income similar to the UK. This is debated elsewhere and like-for-like cannot be compared as most come to NZ to change their lifestyle somewhat, but if you expect to live in the same way and have similar amounts in your back pocket each month I think you need to work on those figures. I personally haven't been able to achieve those salary levels (more like 1.4 times my UK salary package) and I also haven't found any NZ offers to contain bonuses, healthcare or pension components like I was used to in the financial sector in the UK. If I'm honest we are currently considering whether the lifestyle we have here is better then the UK and whether we will stay or not.
My own personal view is contracting IT work is a much better option than permanent roles in NZ as the benefits and training offered are pretty non-existent over here.

[vande23]

Hey there! this is my first post as a crazy American looking to maybe leave an even crazier political situation - and I found I can help already..! :)

For all your mortgage scenarios - and for most other people, here is a great site that I have used for years.. (click the Loans category at the top for mortgages).

http://www.hughchou.org/calc/

Enjoy!

[teambwr47]

Well all turned out to be relatively ok in the end..................

We have just returned from a whirlwind fact finding/interview tour of the general Auckland area and my wife has a job offer that will pay a total package of over 200K with parking and full family medical added on top of the deal plus a one off payment of 20k to assit with moving etc.

She had a second offer which totalled somewhere around the 160 mark but didn't like the company so much.

With this sorted it looks like we will be moving to NZ by the end of the UK summer and once there i'll try and find something to do job wise to give us a bit extra spending cash:cheers

Just as a footnote to the above and some of the replies we looked at the cost of many things in NZ while we were there and came to the conclusion that to have a broadly similar spending capability to that which we have in the Uk we needed to achieve roughly twice our UK income in dollars.
Quite a few people stated that NZ salaries are dollar for pound so if you earned £100 you'd earn $100 but this is total crap and i'm sure something trotted out to people many times.
We have achievd over the benchmark we set of two times UK salary and despite it being a cut in actual money if you calculate exchange rates etc hope that the move is about more than the pure numbers as we were very impressed by the country/people etc etc

[Belmont Babes]

Trigirl are you for real??? You are so helpful on this forum. Bet you do a very clever job!

[zardell]

Well all turned out to be relatively ok in the end..................

We have just returned from a whirlwind fact finding/interview tour of the general Auckland area and my wife has a job offer that will pay a total package of over 200K with parking and full family medical added on top of the deal plus a one off payment of 20k to assit with moving etc.

She had a second offer which totalled somewhere around the 160 mark but didn't like the company so much.

With this sorted it looks like we will be moving to NZ by the end of the UK summer and once there i'll try and find something to do job wise to give us a bit extra spending cash:cheers

Just as a footnote to the above and some of the replies we looked at the cost of many things in NZ while we were there and came to the conclusion that to have a broadly similar spending capability to that which we have in the Uk we needed to achieve roughly twice our UK income in dollars.
Quite a few people stated that NZ salaries are dollar for pound so if you earned £100 you'd earn $100 but this is total crap and i'm sure something trotted out to people many times.
We have achievd over the benchmark we set of two times UK salary and despite it being a cut in actual money if you calculate exchange rates etc hope that the move is about more than the pure numbers as we were very impressed by the country/people etc etc




:raebanana :raebanana :raebanana

That is really excellent news - congratulations.

New Zealanders are always telling me to negotiate for everything. Your wife did just that and it paid off for her - well done.

When you eventually settle in NZ, I hope you continue to post of your experiences.

By the way, love your $100/£100 cr*p comment. - priceless.


Julie

xx

[Trigirl]

:o thank you belmont babes!! i just do a very normal job i promise!

[RayBCO]

thanks tia - i've got it all on a spreadsheet somewhere so can easily do that.

Hello Trigirl,

Do you have any intention of provifing the wages breakdown as previously mentioned?

Great if you could...

Thanks, RayBCO

[Trigirl]

its on this thread
http://www.emigratenz.org/forum/showthread.php?t=10910

[swissmissdesigner]

You are clever Trgirl!
Can I sent you my Tax retourn?