# Should I stay or Should i go?



## soulsurfer (Feb 15, 2010)

I asked a similar question previously, but to get to right opinion on the matter, i feel like i need to elaborate on the situation....
I am 22, Graduate of Animation Ba(hons), have a £5000 loan to pay off, at £120 a month. But dont have to pay any of it off for another 3 months and have a car i can sell here. I have lots of friends currently on the west coast of australia, one of them being a potential girl friend...now, i know what you thinking.. 'i'm going there for a girl'. In actual fact this is what i've been trying to figure out and make sure of... that im going out there for me and not her. She is british, but we figured our living situation in the UK would not allow the relationship to work, due to lack of money and being far apart. So that is another benefit to our relationship, being out there with her in australia. Basicly, in order to get a cheap flight, i really need to book now. and i need to make sure i find a job out there, just so i can afford to pay back the repayments every month and have money to live . Also i am wondering how i would pay this money back into my british bank account... would this be complicated?
(bearing in mind i will be entering the country with about £2000 to spend on what I need)
The other thing is that i dont know if i'm going to have this opportunity again, where i actually have money available to go and do this. I could sit here working trying to prepare and save up, which is (incredibly hard in britain at the moment) and not end up going till i'm 30, where everything changes... whats your scope?


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## Wanderer (Jun 16, 2007)

soulsurfer said:


> I asked a similar question previously, but to get to right opinion on the matter, i feel like i need to elaborate on the situation....
> I am 22, Graduate of Animation Ba(hons), have a £5000 loan to pay off, at £120 a month. But dont have to pay any of it off for another 3 months and have a car i can sell here. I have lots of friends currently on the west coast of australia, one of them being a potential girl friend...now, i know what you thinking.. 'i'm going there for a girl'. In actual fact this is what i've been trying to figure out and make sure of... that im going out there for me and not her. She is british, but we figured our living situation in the UK would not allow the relationship to work, due to lack of money and being far apart. So that is another benefit to our relationship, being out there with her in australia. Basicly, in order to get a cheap flight, i really need to book now. and i need to make sure i find a job out there, just so i can afford to pay back the repayments every month and have money to live . Also i am wondering how i would pay this money back into my british bank account... would this be complicated?
> (bearing in mind i will be entering the country with about £2000 to spend on what I need)
> The other thing is that i dont know if i'm going to have this opportunity again, where i actually have money available to go and do this. I could sit here working trying to prepare and save up, which is (incredibly hard in britain at the moment) and not end up going till i'm 30, where everything changes... whats your scope?


The old saying is you're only young once and there's more to life than money and sure as hell if you let yourself get tied down it can be more difficult to throw the ropes off.
Whether it be for a matter of the hearts or not, if you're way out here and default on your loan repayments, as long as it's not the Mafia after you, is there an insurmountable problem of delaying payments?

The other issue you need to consider is if it doesn't work out with the girl, are you of a mind to keep travelling for to get here quick and work I figure you're talking of a WHV and so it'd seem a shame to waste if you get all morose and homesick.

And what of the girl/long term plans, for does she have a PR or is she also on a WHV and what do you do if she is already 6 months or so into hers?
and without having done regional woork or WWOOF Australia to get a second WHV she'll be leaving well before you.
If that is not applicable to her, it is something you can consider to give you longer time in Australia and perhaps find and Employer to sponsor you if it is desired to make the stay longer.

Have a look at Welcome to AirAsia.com, The World's Best Low-Cost Airline for cheap flights via KL.
Work in animation may not be all that easy to come by though if you ain't too fussy, should be something about that you can get into, seasonal pearling up in Broome from about April/May on supposedly offering good money.

Transferring money overseas is easy enough and talk to your UK bank before you leave and they'll have a bank identification number which is used for international transfers.
You can open an account out here even before you leave, ANZ - Travel and foreign exchange - Foreign Currency Rates & Currency Converter ANZ being one of our big four banks that allows that and possibly even an office in the UK.

Once you have the receiving bank code, _[used to be called by some a Swift Code though some may have changed to just calling it an IBC/N [International Banking Code or Number ] or something like that.]_ it's a process that you can do yourself online, a fee I've paid in the past being about $25 and probably risen a bit or a little more to go into a bank branch and do it.
That can be more a pain for international transfers is something that other than Capital City banks rarely do.

And with the fee being a flat ammount, it'll be best to do transfers in larger sums less frequently to keep % cost down, though you may offset that if you can get a better interest rate in Australia.
For that you could consider linking an ING Direct - high interest savings, bank accounts, home loans, business banking, everyday accounts online account to something like the ANZ account and so you can have your main money in a higher interest earning account and just do online transfers when you need it.

Likewise with the ANZ, you might ask if [probably not possible] it is possible that you can have an account that is truly international, ie.
one that you can pay into here but also access it online as if it was money also available in the UK and so you could make a direct payment from it to your UK existing account without incurring the international transfer fee.
That already happens to some extent with Credit Card accounts for you can use them for international payments and the money gets debited to your account _[ with a relatively small international transaction fee ]_

You can also do international withdrawals easily enough when travelling and so another approach would be if your parents or another trusted family member had a second card to the account you open for Australia and then they just went along to an ATM in UK, withdrew the money and paid it into your account over there.

We've got a few threads in the section, some with cheap travelling possibilities too, like Rental Relocations Australia New Zealand United States Canada - Hire Now at StandByCars for instance so have a browse to get some ideas.


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