Power Of 5K

It's always great to be working in a hospital. Especially more so in Oz. We're entitled to Smart Salary, which is a company doing salary packaging so you end up paying less tax. Sure, you pay $200+ a year for their services but you save thousands in tax. Great trade off if you ask me. It works by packaging either your living expenses (you get a "credit card" that you use to pay for your groceries or bills), mortgage or rent. Different hospitals have different yearly limits. This amount is $15900 where I work which equates to $611 per fortnight. The company take this amount off before your salary gets taxed. Say I earn $2611 this fortnight. Rather than get taxed for the entire sum, I'll get taxed based on $2k.

There's more. I can choose to take up an entertainment card which is a debit card that I can use to pay for my dine in meals (not applicable for take away). I set the amount that's to be deducted every pay day. At the moment, I've set it at $200. So using the same scenario, I now get taxed based on $1.8k.

There's always more. If I go on holidays, I can package the entire sum of my accomodations, regardless of the cost. So if I spent $1k on hotels, I can package the whole sum or choose to have it done over several pay periods. The campsites I book when I go camping? Yup, packagable too. But if you go on a holiday with a tour group, you'll have to ask your agency to separate out the cost of accomodation for you. If you go on a cruise, there's no way they can spilt it. So they just package the entire sum. My colleague went on a cruise for $13k. Can you imagine how many months where she doesn't have to pay a single cent of tax?

We also get novated car leasing. I'm not too sure how it works, just that they calculate the cost of the new car, how much fuel you use, insurance etc & take this sum pre-tax out of your salary. I've used their calculator before & say if I buy a new lower range car, like Jazz or Yaris, I'll be packaging $300+.

Can you see where I'm going? If I have novated car leasing, I'll be paying tax based on $1.4k of earnings per fortnight based on the initial scenario. I was paying close to $1k tax before Smart Salary. Now I'm paying about $600. In a year, I'm saving about $5k in tax. Not bad eh?

Mental Preparation For Migration

Recently, I've seen a lot of questions that I myself asked when contemplating the move, mostly along the line of money; whether it's easy to find a job, how much money to bring, etc. That's understandable for if we're going to invest 20, 30, 40k or more obtaining the visa & getting settled here, we need some reassurance that our investment will pay off. But of course, as in life, nothing is ever guaranteed. Before I came over, everybody I spoke to painted a pretty picture. Lesser hours yet higher pay, less patient to nurse ratio, less workload, better work life balance. Imagine my shock when it didn't turned out the way I thought it would be initially after I've landed on Aussie ground. Yes, the pretty pictures are all true. But I'm going to tell you the bad & if you feel you still want to take the risk then you've pretty much made up your mind & just make the jump. Nothing will ever adequately prepare you for what's to come. No matter what any of us say, they're our personal experiences. Your experience will definitely be different from mine.

If you apply for a job as a nurse in Sg, you have very high chance of getting it regardless of experience. My good friend Dolly successfully got the job as a dental nurse even though she has done ophthalmology for so long. I have no doubt she will have no problem landing a home nursing or clinic nurse or ward nurse position if she chooses to now. The situation is very different here, at least in Perth. Employers want to see experience. I'm an ophthalmology scrub nurse & have been for the past 6 years prior to the move. I wanted to go back to Major Operating Theatre where I worked a decade ago. Guess what? None of the major hospital wanted to hire me. I know myself. I have no doubt I can pick the skills back up with a snap of my fingers. As much as I try to sell myself as a fast learner, I couldn't even get offered a job. You know why? Everybody says they're fast learners. So between me & other people who have recent experience in MOT, the employers are going to choose them over me. My applications to aged care (supposedly the easiest to get into), general ward, clinic, even agency nursing simply yielded a "You're not shortlisted." reply. Did my Australian degree with high distinctions on every module matter? No. They want experienced staff. Period. So your chances of getting a job depends on whether you have the experience for the job you're applying for.

Sometimes it boils down to pure luck or good fortune as I like to call it. It should be impossible for me to land a job since I'm so specialised, isn't it? I've said this before, I was going to pack up & go back to Sg once my savings drop down to 5k. I had 6k left in the bank when I was finally offered my current job. That's only 1k difference. Not even enough to survive another 2 weeks since my rent was $860 per fortnight. I suspected I had a good chance when I was the 1st to be interviewed. I was offered a part time position with a contract of 20 hours per week. In the end, I ended up back in ophthalmology. Becoz I'm already experienced & we all know what working in Sg is like, I'm so good in my job that my manager upped my contract hours to 30 hours a week after 3 months. When she was going to retire 6 months after I've joined & needed someone to take over her position, she asked if I was interested. My passion is in scrubbing. I don't like to do admin work or manage people. So I turned her down even if it means getting a $6-8 raise per hour. I came here to enjoy what I love to do. I didn't come here to climb some career ladder. As I said, good fortune played a part. I got this job only becoz a staff went on maternity leave the same time I was looking for a job. I was up against many other scrub nurses from MOT. But my manager chose me becoz I had the right experience.

The world is very small too. Turned out that 1 person who got rejected worked as an agency nurse in an aged care facility with a friend of ours. When she found out that the job was given to me, a non Aussie, she was livid. I was once asked by a patient's relative how long I've been employed in my job. At that time, I was only 1 month old in my job & 2.5 months old in Oz. Subsequently, I overheard her saying that we migrants are taking away all their jobs. (She is a nurse as well & has been unsuccessful in her search for a job for several months.) So do be prepared to encounter Aussies who feel that they're more entitled to the job than you are becoz you're merely a PR or someone with a work visa. They will not say it to you in your face coz I think that's considered racist or something. But if you look online, in FB, they say what they really think or like me, just round the corner when they make that sort of remarks.

With regards to how much money you need to survive here until you land a job is just too variable. It really depends on your spending habits, whether you're comfortable with much much less & whether you can even find a job. If you're not frugal & are unsuccessful in getting a job, you'll eventually run out of money even if you brought 100k over. If you can't drop the Singaporean mentality that everything must be good & new, then it'll be really hard. You're only going to run yourself into debts. Us, we bought our furniture from 1 of those budget furniture shops. (Becoz rental houses don't usually come furnished & if they are, the rent is higher.) $799 for the basic sets which we're still using until now. Of course, quality is worse than that of Ikea but until they've all broken down, I have no intention of changing them. We bought our TV & fridge off a garage sale for $150 (I think, can't remember) & a vacuum cleaner for $10, all of which we're still using. My $2250 car has served me well for over a year, no major problems, though do requiring some wear & tear fixes. I'm not saying that you can't buy new. But don't do it before you even got a job.

Once you land a job, the focus turns from survival to that of planning for the future. When you've got a stable income & begin to save up a sizable fortune, you can think of other things like buying a place rather than renting. For some, that can be several years away. So I'll just talk about some other day to day stuff that you need to be prepared for.

It's no secret that I love the cold. But for probably 5 months (3 months of summer & 1 month before & after) of the year, I have to put up with the heat which will definitely hit 40s. I work in an air conditioned environment. But if you're like hubs who works in a warehouse, you're going to suffer big time. The warehouse is sheltered but open. It creates a greenhouse effect & directs heat to people working under the roof. The worst thing to have during summer is a maggoty bin. Waste collection is only once a week so be really prepared for a stinky bin of decomposing food waste & having to wheel that stinky bin onto the verge for collection. I've not found a foolproof way to prevent maggots in the bin yet. Double bagging doesn't seem to help much. The only thing we can do is keep spraying insecticide whenever we see maggots. Then you're trying to wheel the bin out & watching out for maggots crawling onto your hands. Thank goodness that's hub's job. I refuse to go anywhere near the bin. I like my weather overcast, no sun. But many people find that depressing. That's the way most of the winter is. Sun sets early (5.30 pm) & rises late (7.15 am). So you get a lot of dark & people who are prone to depression are more likely to fall into a depressive cycle during this time. Summer is the complete opposite. Sun sets late (7.30 pm) & rises early (5 am). So you get sunlight streaming into the bedroom way before you're due up unless you have black out curtains.

It's best to have a hobby to fill your nights. Shops do close at 5 pm save for the big chains like Big W & supermarkets which closes at 9 pm on weekdays. There's late night shopping on Thursdays in the urbs & Fridays in the city. The shops still closes at 9 pm thought. On weekends, everything closes at 5 pm. Read, gaming, craft works, whatever that suit your fancy. I don't have a problem on weekdays coz I usually get home from work around 7ish. By the time I'm done with dinner & shower, it's time to go to bed. I fill my weekends with cooks & sewing.

Most important of all, just be patient. We're used to the internet being connected days after we've signed up in Sg. But it's normal for the internet to be up 1 month after you've signed up for it here. Calling & yelling at the poor operator working for the internet service provider isn't going to help. When we were in Victoria 3 years ago, we sat down at a restaurant for dinner. He asked the waitress where was our food when it hadn't been served 45 mins after we had placed our order. (We didn't order entree which was supposed to give them time to prepare the mains.) She got pissed off & asked, "What's your hurry?" Now, we just order a drink & entree on top of the main. Then we chat & watch the scenery while waiting for the food to arrive. If you send off an email, it may take days or weeks for them to reply. If it's urgent, it's best to call them. So, what do you think? Still up for it?

Reading The Time

When I 1st started my job here, I couldn't get used to the way they read the time. Since I work in an operating theatre, we frequently need to agree on the surgery time start & time end so it tallies on both the casenotes & on the computer system. I did this in Sg as well but we always say the time as it is. 10.10 am is ten ten. 4.25 pm is always four twenty five. But over here, up to 30 mins past the hour is always read XX past. 15 mins past the hour is always read as quarter past. 30 mins is of course half past. Anything after the half hour mark is always XX to. 45 mins past is always quarter to.

After a while, I came to realise that this is the Australian way of reading time. I was giving out appointment time when I was working in recovery & I said eleven fifty (11.50 am). The patient repeated the time back to me as ten to twelve. When I thought about it, it occurred to me that it is always the same on the radio. The DJ will always read the time as twenty seven past six (6.27 am) or thirteen to seven (6.47 am). Although we were taught briefly in school as a kid, it did take me a while to get used to this way of reading the time. But when I read the time, I'll unconsciously use the SG way like I did with the patient in recovery. It's not easy to undo 30 years of conditioning.

Dead Battery

The day started off as usual. Woke up at 5 am, did my morning gongyo, drank my shake & left the house at 6.10 am. Unlocked the car, toss my bag onto the passenger seat, settled in, key in ignition, crank, nothing but clicking sounds. Repeat several times, gave up. I gave work place a call & was told to take personal leave for today. Later in the day, D&J came & jump start my car for me. He found that the negative cable was loose & told me that was probably why the battery wasn't charging. As advised, I left the engine running for a while & even took Ton Ton for a spin.

When hubs came back, I was doing my daimoku. I wasn't done till 4.35 pm. I thought I would try starting my car again just to make sure it's working. Luckily I did coz it wasn't. The clicking noises were not even present, just nothing. We tried to jump start mine with hub's car but the cable he had was too short. With the battery totally flat now, I couldn't put the car in neutral to reverse it manually so he could reach it. It wasn't safe anyway coz the cable was missing the rubber handles as well & threw off sparks. It was getting late & I told him that we'll just drive down to the auto shop in his car or they're going to close. We got there at 5.15 pm, 15 minutes to go before they close for the day.

I went straight up to the cashier & asked for assistance. The battery costs me $155, plus a new jump start cable for $30. Changing the battery looked easy enough. I think I'll be able to do it myself if there's a next time. Hubs called this the moment of truth. I cranked the engine & with pleasure hear it roar to life. Still, I better wake up even earlier to check again before hubs leave for work at 4.50 am. That way, at least I still can jump start my car if needed & leave for work earlier. Then I'll worry about getting home later.

There's a sequence (for safety), be it attaching cables to the new battery or attaching the jump start cable. This was told to us by the cashier who served us. Hubs remembers it as NPPN. Negative off, positive off. Positive on, negative on. So positive cable is always the 1st to go on & the last to come off.

Cost Of Owning

Despite our chances of getting the house being very low, we decided to take a gamble & make an offer for it. We don't lose anything anyway. If seller decides to award us & the finance part of it is successful, we'll have our own place. If it doesn't, we'll be refunded our deposit. If the seller decides to award to somebody else, we don't even have to pay deposit. It's definitely a good experience & the knowledge that we've acquired will surely come to good use in the future.

We met up with the agent yesterday after work. He could only make it at 4 pm & I had a list of 16 surgeries to do. Even though the surgeon is very fast, I have no guarantees that he would be done by 3 pm. So I told hubs to go ahead if I couldn't make it. Time end for last case was 3.05 pm. By the time I'm done cleaning & locking up, I signed out at 3.15 pm, made my way to the carpark & shimmied with the morning shift ward staff getting off work. I managed to get to the agent's office with 5 minutes to spare. Although the information of what others have offered is confidential, up front, he told us that our chances of being awarded the house is very low. Including ours, there're a total of 5 offers & they have pre-approval from the banks while we don't. He suggested an old villa unit in Tuart Hill asking for $409k to $419k. He said that it's very close to the city & the value will surely go up more than the 1 in Ellenbrook ever will. There're no offers as yet & he's pretty sure the owner will be willing to consider $399k. Hubs is adamant about his choice & on my part, a $350k loan is the highest I'll go. He said if we're going to pay $399k for an old villa that requires renovation, we're better off buying a turnkey villa which construction is due to start in Ellenbrook that is selling for $379k. I think hubs loves Ellenbrook.

I managed to get some of my questions answered:

1. Strata fees are applicable to villas or units & is on top of council rates (aka shire rates) & water rates. But paying strata means that you don't have to buy your own house structure insurance coz it's covered (home contents insurance is still your own responsibility though). Exterior maintenance, lawn care if any are covered by the strata fees. Generally around $1.2k mark.

2. Council rates differ from suburb to suburb. It is based on the Gross Rental Value (GRV) of your property. If the GRV goes up, your council rate will go up. Same for the reverse. You have to pay an Emergency Services Levy & Rubbish Service as well. For both the Ellenbrook & Tuart Hill 2x1 that I've seen, council rates comes to about $1.7k. I've seen on FB people paying over $2k for their property.

3. Water rates are generally around the $800 mark.

So if you're looking at a villa or unit, you're looking at around $3.7k per year on top of your mortgage. If it is a house, it'll be around $2.5k if you're not taking up a structural insurance (I'm told this is roughly $800 a year). Divide it up & we're looking at an additional of $200 to $300 per month. That's the cost of owning your own place. Bills (bills come bi-monthly) depend on your usage but so far our electricity is about $80, water about $20 during winter coz reticulation needs to be switched off totally & about $80 during spring to summer. These bills are pretty constant & varies by very little. Gas is the most erratic 1, due to the amount of cooking I guess. I've paid between $60 to $80.

Renting is cheaper. You'll save $2.5k to $3.7k per year compared to owning your own place. But if you don't have the deposit, you don't really have a choice. At my current rental of $430 a week, I'm blowing off more than $22k per year. This is money that could have been paying off my mortgage. But of course, having another year to save will be ideal. No guarantees I can meet the 20% deposit but 10% is definitely possible provided the property prices don't go up. It's alright. Be it near or far, it will become a reality without a doubt.

Home Loans - The Very Basics

I found the perfect home for us. It's a very new (1.5 year old) 2x1 with double garage. No lawn, the back of the house is paved. The owner is selling as they're migrating & asking for $339k to $349k. I've done the calculations before & any loan above $350k is beyond our means. Becoz it's a small place, the water rates & council rates are lower than the other houses in the same suburb. To build a house of the same size in the same suburb now is $379k. Established houses of the same size in the same suburb (further up north in fact) are asking more than $349k. It's only becoz they're in a hurry to sell that they reduced the price. So you can see why I think this is a good deal.

I've gone to the banks & none of them are willing to drop the required deposit to 5% for us. So it doesn't matter how much we're eligible to loan. If we don't have 10%, everything else is moot. If I have another 6 months, I would have made the 10%. But the house isn't going to wait 6 months. I even called Keystart as they require only a 3% deposit & you don't even have to pay for mortgage insurance. Unfortunately, becoz I have a property in Sg, I'm not eligible. I have 1 more bank to go to as my appointment is at 3.30 pm. But I'm not hopeful coz I'm sure all banks work pretty much the same way. Nevertheless, we'll still go for the home open tomorrow even though I'm sure it'll tug at our heartstrings to view something we know we don't have a chance with. Unless of course, we somehow win the lottery & I don't even buy. Maybe I should, huh?

So here's what I've learnt. 

1. When working out the loan amount, the banks will consider casual employment. But you must have worked in that position for a minimum of 2 years. 

2. For permanent employment, be it full time or part time, you need to have worked in the same company for 6 months to be eligible for a loan.

3. Anything below the minimum of 20% deposit will incur a mortgage insurance, which in my opinion isn't a bad thing as your mortgage will be paid for should you lose your income due to loss of job or death or disability. Based on $350k loan, minus $35k deposit, my mortgage insurance with ANZ comes to $6627. My fortnightly repayments will be $877 which is basically the same amount I'm paying for rent now ($860).

4. Even if you don't qualify, you can still try your luck & put in an application subjected to approval. But if you get rejected, it affects your credit rating & decreases subsequent chances of getting a loan approved. Bottom line I get from the bankers: don't try unless you meet all their criteria.

5. If you have a credit card or loan & make regular repayments, the bank will consider loaning you 95% of the purchase price. According to D&J, it will have a big effect on your loan amount as well. D & his colleague in the same job, with the same pay went to the same bank for assessment. D was allowed to loan $100k more becoz he had taken up loans before & didn't miss the payments.

Buying A Car From A Private Seller

"Gumtree is your friend.", everyone says. Who doesn't want a shiny new car or 1 that's relatively new? In Singapore, with the additional cost of COE, a car can easily cost above 100k. So to fork out 10-20k for something pretty new or brand new is considered a steal for Singaporeans migrating to Australia. But for piss poor people like us, that amount is equivalent to asking for the sky. Heck, anything more than 3k is an astronomical sum. You won't be able to get anything decent from the dealers at this price. The only option left is to go to private sellers. 

The 1st decision you have to make is the exact car you're after. It definitely narrows down the search & make it more conducive. When we 1st got here, hubs couldn't decide what he wants & we would get hundreds and hundreds of hits on gumtree. There's no way you can go through every single ad. Even when he finally decided on a Mit Lancer (somehow all guys I know like this car), we're still getting lots of hits. 

2nd thing is to determine your budget. Under Nix's influence (we haven't met up with him then but through reading his blog, we knew getting a car around 2k is possible), we made the cut off point at 3k. There won't be that many cars in an acceptable condition at that price. So now is the time to go through all the ads, read the specs & decide if you can accept the mileage, exterior, interior condition etc. If you can, it's time to contact the seller. You can check if the rego has lapsed here.

It'll be wise to consolidate a list of all "acceptable" cars & contact all the sellers at the same time. You'll encounter people who refuses to reply (coz they've sold the car but didn't take the ad down & don't have the decency to tell you so) or who are not available for you to view the car until a later date. It's not uncommon to only be able to view & test drive only 1 car out of a list of 10 on the day itself. There're only 2 days to the weekend & most people have to work during weekdays. You don't want to view the car in the night. So squeeze in as many viewings as you can to increase your chances of finding 1 that you can actually buy.

If you have someone who knows cars, bring him/her along. We're very fortunate to have D checking the cars with us every single time. This is what D always check though I don't know the rational. Always test the car with a cold engine, preferably not having been driven at all that day. If there're problems, it usually shows up with a cold engine. Pop the bonnet & start the engine. It should not have a "click click click" sound when the engine is running. Open up the radiator cap (this is why the engine has to be cold coz you can't open it with a hot engine) & you'll see the coolant. Trigger the catch to rev the engine. Some overflow of the coolant is acceptable but it should not shoot up into the air. Repeat several times. Check around the engine for oil leaks. There're other basic stuff like check the engine oil & ATF. Get down on your hands & knees & look under the car to make sure that there's no oil leak. Go to the back & have a look at the exhaust pipe. It should not be emitting water or smoke. Make sure the tire threads are not worn off. 

Time for a test drive. I've never gone with them for a test drive before so I don't know what to look out for. But I do know on a manual, clutch pads need replacing if the car jerks when changing gears (exclude insufficient revs) & CV joint needs replacing if there's a "cluck cluck cluck" sound with full turn of the steering wheels (early wear) or when moving off from a stop position (advance wear). You also get to check the brakes & whether the car is giving out excessive smoke while driving.

If you're satisfied with the condition of the car, make an offer, citing various required repairs to push the price down. If the deal falls through, both seller & buyer have to fill up the transfer forms. You can mail the buyer form to the licensing centre & wait for the letter asking you to make payment of the transfer fees. We usually just head down to the centre & get it done on the spot. That's all there is to buying a car from a private seller.