Tia's 5 years in NZ (one more than Sam B...)

[Tia Maria]

I never wrote a 6 months, 1 year or 18 months post as I felt very unsettled and didn’t think I could offer much apart from a whole mass of confusion and contradictions. I never wrote a 2 or 3 year post as, although more settled, I was constantly looking for something new and thought things would change any moment. And I never wrote a 4 year post as by that point emigrating seemed so far away I wasn’t sure which things to write about. But now that we’ve hit the 5 year point I feel like I should put a little something down.

I’m going to go with a ‘Top 10 helpful Tips’ format, although I must confess they are probably the Top 10 that spring to mind first, as opposed to the most important.

Top 10 Tips

1) Have an emergency fund, ideally to the value of 3 months wages and a flight home. You can’t put a price on the security that comes from knowing you don’t have to take the first job/rental you find, or being able to pop back when you feel homesick or a relative gets ill/gives birth…oh hold on you can…

2) Take advantage of stopovers on the flight out; first take a week somewhere relaxing to recover from the stress of packing up your home and leaving your friends and family behind. Then do a whistle stop tour of other possible places in NZ you might live/like. That way when things are tough and you think ‘maybe we should have moved to Christchurch instead of Auckland’…you’ll already have a feel for what that really means.

3) Flexibility will make settling easier…whether it is with job, area or state of mind….actually a flexible attitude is one of the most important things you can take on the plane with you.

4) Discuss what you will do if one of you wants to stay and the other doesn’t. This is not covered by ‘oh we’ll just agree to give it 2 years’….it needs to be a long thought out discussion involving much wine and ice cream. This is one of the saddest and commonest occurrences amongst expats and yet no one prepares for it, they all assume it will happen to someone else.

5) Choose your house with care; do not underestimate how much a cold, damp home can affect your mental health as well as your physical health.

6) If you’re in IT one of the best ways to get a pay rise is to change jobs, one of the best way to change jobs is to get to know others in IT. Network people, NZ is a small place – Network!

7) Travel is expensive, it will cost you several months’ wages – most of you will not have several months’ wages to spend. Most of you will not travel as much as you thought.

8) On arrival make friends with anyone and everyone, join clubs, go out, coffee mornings etc…..open your mind to meeting people and doing things you’ve never done before. Then work out who you can get on with in the long term and be choosier. Remember true friendships take time and require shared experiences, so that you can say things like, ‘remember when you tripped over that sheep?’, and all have a good laugh.

9) If you hate everything with a vengeance then you are probably suffering from culture shock/homesickness. This doesn’t mean you would love these things otherwise; they just wouldn’t stress you out quite so much. Not much you can do about this except recognise it for what it is.

10) Success is not only defined by moving out here, loving it and living the dream. Although this may be your initial intention, for many, NZ will just be a stage in their life, in this context success is enjoying your time, learning from it and having something worthwhile to look back on. For others NZ will simply be OK, finances and family may mean they have to stay, in which case a little extra effort may be needed to gain something from the experience but as long as you gain something you’re doing alright.


There will be plenty of people that didn’t follow most or all of these tips and are doing just fine. You don’t need these to make a life in NZ but they do help make the process a little easier.

I fall into the OK category and we will be going for citizenship as we’ve made a very nice little life for ourselves but I’ll still be hoping to win the lottery so that I can travel the world……..

[Janey]

well said wish you had wrote this early I agree with every point, having said that our return to the UK in 2010 sealed that we definatlry wanted to be here for now

Anorther word of wisdom is do not commit forever go with the flow!

[Mgee]

Oh WOW Tia Maria! What an EXCELLENT post!!!

‘remember when you tripped over that sheep?’ -is there a story you'd care to share with us?

[sophiedb]

Thank you for sharing, that's brilliant Haven't been here anywhere as long, but can definitely agree with a fair bit of what you've said already - the rest, like the size of our emrgency fund - might be adjusted a little as a result...

2) Take advantage of stopovers on the flight out... Then do a whistle stop tour of other possible places in NZ you might live/like.

We did the former and are so glad - it was manic as we left the UK, and manic again as soon as we arrived. Time to R&R in Sydney was precious and wonderful. I'm almost sad that the job market was as curiously active as soon as we landed though - we'd talked about turing the SI at least, visiting hubby's cousins, but we both kept getting interviews dagnamit, and then jobs! Now we're kind of stuck but that's ok, because we already had a gravitational family pull to Chch.

5) Choose your house with care; do not underestimate how much a cold, damp home can affect your mental health as well as your physical health.

Oh yes. We were quite paranoid about this, so used to drag MiL and her partner to houses we quite liked to see what they thought - having far greater experience with Kiwi homes than us.

It's worth noting that Kiwis get this part wrong too though: FiL and his wife live in the coldest house I've ever known (in the developed world), with the worst heating (coal-burning potbelly that burps and farts), because they've prioritised space over comfort. That's their decision, much as they also complain about the place. Strangely, BiL - who makes sure to distance himself from FiL in as many ways as possible - has done exactly the same thing, but with a cheapo new build that creaks all night and makes their kids think it's haunted.

I live in hope that we've checked our new house over enough for it to be nice enough that we're happy there. I'm not expecting perfect, but warm and comfy will do nicely *fingers crossed*

[Sun777]

Very good post Tia, quite useful and I'm going to save a copy of it

[Moomette]

Thank you so much for your excellent post Tia. We will be moving to Auckland (most likely the North Shore too) in the end of March, and your post has given me a few things to consider that I wouldn't neccessarily have thought of otherwise.

[Familyofmonkeys]

As always, your posts are very wise

Unfortunately I have to spread the reputation around a bit more before I can give you any for this post, but you deserve plenty!

[Sam B]

Tia's 5 years in NZ (one more than Sam B...)

Sigh ... SO competitive.

[JulieWM]

Choose your house with care[/B]; do not underestimate how much a cold, damp home can affect your mental health as well as your physical health.

I so agree with this comment. Rent or buy with extreme care! I know someone who blamed his unexpected eczema on a damp house in the winter.

[Nienke]

Tia's 5 years in NZ (one more than Sam B...)

Sigh ... SO competitive.