New Zealand - British Expat Forum

Hello everyone,

I have the chance to work in New Zealand as a fibre engineer for the new super broad band thats being roled out. The company have said that they are sending me my offer and contract this week!
Could anyone tell me the type of salary for this type of work.

Also the company is based in Auckland were is the best place to live in or around Auckland.

Thankyou

Hi, Stanley2012, and welcome.

Your question about where to live belongs on the "Which area?" board - could you ask it there, please? As we explain in the posting guidelines, things get very muddled up if you ask multiple questions in the same topic.

Hopefully someone will be able to answer your question about salary soon. Best of luck!

Thanks for the advice.

Welcome to the forums Congrats on getting the job, and I hope it works out really well for you! The Ultra fast broadband is going to be great (though I am presuming it is likely to be a slower speed than you will be used to in the UK - there are still some folks here out in the rural areas who are on dial up!)

I don't know how much a fibre engineer will get (not sure exactly what you'd be doing - designing? laying cable?), however, you can get a good indication of what to expect by Googling: Salary Survey New Zealand.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/jobs/salary-guide/it.htm
gives a list of IT based jobs which gives quite a range for networking and systems, and without knowing what you are doing (i.e. the skill level, your experience level, what hours you are working etc), I wouldn't want to give you false expectations (in either direction!)

A number of the other results that come up (Hays, Robert Walters etc.) need you to register to get the pdfs - it's a free registration, but you can do that just as well as me (particularly as I'm not about on the internet a huge amount at the moment - damn real life kicking in!).

When you do get your offer etc, then I'm very happy to give you an indication of cost of living based against a salary range (I wouldn't expect you to give out your salary itself, but the rough area that it is in would be a help - e.g. I earn between $80 and $90K p.a.). Bear in mind that I'm based in Wellington, rather than Auckland, and the cost of living is a bit higher up there...

Thanks Toonster,

Still waitin for my offer, not be too long i hope. I will be splicing( installing) the fibre & Testing all the works! I earn about 48,000 in the uk and they know this so hope the offer will be around the same. Will this be a comfortable wage in New Zealand to live on with a wife and 2 kids 15 & 8?

Thank you very much for replying.

If it is an exact parity with the £48K, then you'd be in the region of $96K, however, don't expect it to be exact; the cost of living here is slightly lower.

My husband and I (no kids) have a combined income in the region of $120K, and we are able to save about half of this, depending on whether the car needs repairs or not (three new tires at our last warrant of fitness!).

A rough idea of prices for budgeting:
We put aside about $150 a week for food; this is broken down into the fruit and veg market, where we spend $25-$30, depending on whether we need to buy eggs and potatoes or not (we buy those in bulk every month or so), and the supermarket; we spend the higher end when we are buying wine or beer, otherwise, a typical shop ranges between $60 and $80.
We fill the car up 3/4 a tank of petrol for about $70 - it's an old car, so isn't the most fuel efficient - we fill up about once a fortnight.
We pay electricity in advance, and that's about $30 a fortnight (though our first winter electricity bill ate a good chunk of our reserves, so I'm expecting this to be raised to $50 a fortnight shortly)
Our mortgage is $800 a fortnight - we were paying $310 a week for a two bed rental place.
Our various house/health insurances are about $150 a month (as and when we get mortgage protection and life cover, that will be another $170 a month, but we are having a few issues with the insurance company...)
The phone bill is $85 a month for just the line rental and internet - we very rarely call out (we both have PAYG mobiles that we top up $30 every couple of months), so we don't often pay more than the minimum.
Our two train tickets (combined) are $408 a month, though this is going to go up in September
Rates are about $1500 per annum, split over five payments (not sure exactly on the amount, as they are going up again this year, and we haven't yet had the payment schedule)
Car tax is $288 annually (you can make smaller payments of three or six months that come to a slightly higher total over the whole year; you don't get any refund if the car has to be scrapped midway through a year, so some people prefer that against the risk)
The car insurance is $385 a year
You have a warrant of fitness twice a year, and the base cost of that is about $85, but obviously higher if you need something done.
Roughly, our outgoings for the two of us are about $3,000 a month, higher when the larger rates etc bills are due.

We are also members of a number of clubs and societies, which have varying annual fees.

We don't pay anything for our bank accounts or credit cards, but some accounts will charge you.

Bear in mind that as you have school age children, there will be all of the school expenses.

Doctor's visits can cost in the region of $35 each; I've had a few health issues over the last year or so, which has ended up being quite expensive (the issues started just before I got the health insurance sorted out, which has been a major pain), as I've had to pay for a number of the tests. Prescriptions are currently cheaper than in the UK at $3 each, but there are mutterings that this is likely to increase soon.

I hope that this is of some help - I don't know how much extra you'd spend with two children.

Thank you very much that is a massive help. Its a very good break down to what we will need to put aside.

Is coming to New Zealand a good move i keep getting worried i will not settle.

Ah - the $1,000,000 question!

From my point of view, yes, moving here was the best thing we ever did.

However - both my husband and I are highly independent (we saw our family about three times a year when living in the UK), and very socially active. Since arriving in New Zealand, we have joined our local orchestra (and I am now the publicity officer on the committee), two sci-fi groups (my husband is vice-president of one), and I am goalkeeper for one of the ladies' teams of our local hockey club. I was also a member of our local tae-kwon do group until health issues forced me to leave.

I feel that taking part in social groups is a critical part of settling in. You need to be able to make friends outside of work, and, particularly if she isn't working (I have made a huge assumption here!!), your wife will also need to be able to get out of the house and away from the children on a regular basis - a lot of the people who I've come across who haven't settled properly are those who don't actually know anyone aside from their immediate neighbours! Doing things as a family, if you have similar interests also helps - local sports teams are excellent for this.

On the whole, I have found Kiwis to be incredible helpful and friendly, as long as you are prepared to meet them half way. (so, for an example, we don't actually *know* our neighbours since moving house, because we haven't made a huge amount of effort to go door knocking and to see them - we have just been far too busy!) I haven't met anyone who is deliberately unpleasant or racist (I do get the occasional good natured ribbing about being a foreigner, but it is not in any way intended to be mean or nasty).

Skype is a very good way of keeping in touch with friends and family, as is Facebook. We speak to, and thanks to Skype, see, each side of the family about once a week, which is actually more often than we did when we were in the UK!

You do need to be aware that things are not perfect here - please don't see NZ through rose-tinted spectacles. There are issues here, just as there are everywhere else. There are areas of massive deprivation, particularly amongst Maori, there is crime, and there are fatal car accidents. Politicians lie just as much as they do in the UK, and we even had our own expenses scandal at the same time as the "duck house" one in the UK - an MP put some porn on his work credit card, and then paid it back - the scandal was that he had done it at all, not that he had tried to hide it or refused to reimburse the tax payers! There is far less choice than there is in the UK - a population of 4.5m does not always support multiple versions of the same thing, so, for example, I like having tube-pasta once a week - I have the choice of shop's own brand or one brand name, and both in small-pack versions.

Having said that, I *adore* living here - I wouldn't go back to the UK now apart from for visits. I live in Upper Hutt, a city about 40 minutes drive / train ride north of Wellington. Within a short time, I can either be in the city, or over the hills in the Wairarapa, a huge wine growing region, I can be out by the sea at Porirua or Petone, and within a short walk from the house, I can either be by the Hutt River, or out in the hills. We have been able to afford our own house, with a garden, within two years of arriving here (and that includes the fact that we almost completely drained our savings moving out here).

I have a great job - one that I wasn't expecting when I moved here (the job that I'd come out here for, and was having my final interviews when I arrived then fell through a week or so before Christmas), which is going to lead to a full blown career, rather than just being something which pays the bills (I'm taking professional qualifications at the moment). My husband's job situation is a little bit more precarious - he's on a fixed term contract which will last until September, and he's then job hunting again. However, as I said in my post above, it isn't going to be critical if he is out of work for a few months, as we are able to set aside savings at the moment, so can pull ourselves back if need be.

One of the things that we said when we moved out here was that we had two years to get our indefinite resident's visas (I know the terminology has changes slightly since then...) - whatever happened, we were going to stick it out for the two years (unless we ran out of money completely - it took me three months to find a job, and we did actually have a countdown to when we'd have to buy our plane tickets back to the UK. That was mildly stressful...), so that we could then come and go as we pleased if we decided that we wanted to return to the UK. This helped us get through the occasional bad patch, because we knew we had an opt-out clause, and we also had to give it the two years to make a proper go of it. By the time the two years came around, last November, neither of us could even conceive of returning - New Zealand is our home now, and will be for the forseable future.

Again - possibly a bit more of an essay than you were expecting, but I hope it's given you a bit of a picture, and can help you see where we are coming from!

Hey Stanley

Wages in NZ are a lot less than in UK.

Purely down to the amount of people that live here.

I found this the other day that was really insightful.

It's an infographic about how much kiwis earn. Might be use to you.

[Link removed by Site Admin.]

joemcgowan, I've banned you.

If you'd bothered to read the posting guidelines, you'd know that we don't allow newcomers to link to other sites, with the exceptions of government and academic websites.

Normally, we wouldn't ban people for a first offence, particularly if it's an innocent mistake. But you've claimed to have found an infographic, whereas in fact you (or your company) created it and are hosting it on your own commercial website. We're not mugs, and we don't appreciate being lied to.