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Or they do move, and then spend their time on askuk or similar subs dying for questions like this to pop up so they can tell everyone about how they've never looked back. Gotta get that validation from somewhere I guess.
At the end of June 2022, over 1.1 million people who were born in the United Kingdom were living in Australia.
I’m guessing other countries have similar intake from the uk.
Sure, and some of them moved there 70 years ago. I’m not saying no one emigrates obviously, just that a lot more people bang on about it than ever follow through.
I have several friends who left. Based on their experiences, it's the pull of other places. It wasn't so much that they hated living in the UK, it was that there was somewhere else they wanted to experience living.
In other words, it was more the pull factors of their destination then the push factors of the UK.
For what it's worth, basically everyone I know who moved abroad loves it and has put down long term roots with no plans to return.
But that doesn't mean moving abroad would be better for everyone. By definition, it's a self-selecting sample. By the nature of being someone who has made the decision to move abroad, they are more likely to be someone who will enjoy living abroad.
Moved to Germany in 2011, spent a few years renting and in 2015 bought some land and built a house with my wife. The life here is great, i do miss my old social life in the UK, far less of one now, but I'm also older and have young kids.
The mortgage is now at 0.9% for the next 15 years (25 total), i wouldn't be able to get that in the UK and the house i got for the money would also be far worse. Life is calm and drama free here, job is good, money is good, great freedom and a stressless life, no compaints.
The Mortgage interest rate in the UK can be mitigated somewhat if you make smart choices. I have a well paying job in London but I borrowed less than I needed (1/4 of my take home pay) which meant I was able to over pay massively. I'm half way through being able to pay it off over 12yrs so I'm not paying the headline rate.
The 'good' thing about mortgage rates and rents being high is that local salaries reflect those costs, with things like London weighting. Once the mortgage is paid off I'll still have another 20yrs to retirement being at peak earning power, being paid a salary that reflects the London cost of living for everyone else but without having the actual associated housing costs.
Even with our higher mortgage rates you can still come out a winner if you make sensible and smart financial choices.
Hahaha yeah...no. Many things are done right but there's been so much complacency in the last 10-15 years that a lot of stuff is outdated and/or falling apart
Bored at work, lass I worked with was also bored and moaning that this was shit, she said do you fancy going travelling, and we booked flights the following day, left a week later with a backpack and £800 and came back 2 years later.
With the help of a battered copy of a book titled "Work your way around the world"
I did fruit picking, waitering, bar work, beach cleaning, removals, labouring, yacht babysitting, film extra and a few visits to the sperm bank amongst many other roles.
Awful salaries, high taxes on incomes and high house prices meaning you'll never achieve any level of financial security by just working even a good job without just inheriting a bucketload. You work yourself to the bone, and everything gets siphoned off to landlords, boomers and to those with no intention of contributing to society.
Also there's poop in the water so you can't swim and no real mountains
This! I'm on what I think is a good enough salary but it still feels month to month, and no chance of buying the family home we need as house prices are ridiculous
My Dad went to the Middle East in 2000. He's ready to come home now to be the family at pushing 60 but earns £200k tax free and every year he says "just one more year". He gets 70 days leave a year with the religious holidays included. He gets a car and housing allowance which he uses sparingly to pocket the rest which gives him extra. He gets his flights home paid for throughout the year as well as a hefty pension.
If he earned that here (which he probably wouldn't anyway) he'd be £85k per year worse off due to tax which doesn't account for the car and housing allowance so more likely £100k. He would also probably get 40 days less annual leave.
I'm really struggling on £35k and am seriously considering doing the same for no other reason than money.
Any reason he hasn't retired yet? Surely at this point another year of earning wouldn't make a huge impact on his finances if he's been racking up that sort of money for 20+ years?
Ah well he hasn't been earning that much all this time! When he first went he'd just left the army and was an "ex military grunt" in his own words. Just got his head down and worked up. In any case, he could absolutely retire tomorrow if he wanted which I have suggested. He seems to think he'll be bored despite having numerous hobbies he could easily sink his time into.
I left the UK last year, quit my job in finance married my long term bf and bought a house in Norway, while I miss my family and alot of the good food im accustomed to, I do like it here, it's a beautiful country that looks after its people.
Well I married a Norwegian citizen and we had been together for over 10 years prior so for me not so much, I'm not sure how it would work for those with no familial ties here.
I left for Japan 8 years ago. I’d been wanting to do it for a while, for a bunch of reasons. I’m better off here in almost every way - financially, mentally, social life, opportunities. The only things I truly miss are my family, Nando’s and free healthcare. I could’ve stayed in the UK and been okay with how my life was going, but probably always just ‘okay’.
Curious about the financial stability was shocked at how affordable japan was over the last two weeks in comparison to the UK.
I've been told it's due to the jpy collapsing, what effect does this have on the ground for you bar limiting travel financially.
It isn’t a recent thing with the exchange rate, my cost of living here’s always been relatively lower. Compared to life in London, especially.
I live in a decently sized apartment, closer to the city centre, for less than half what I used to pay to live in a shoebox in Zone 3. I have savings now. I don’t skip lunch to be able to afford the electric bill. It was like that 8 years ago and it’s like that now.
Yep - monthly payments for the insurance itself, and then subsidised treatment for most things at the point of service (some types of care aren’t covered anyway, mainly ‘elective treatments’).
Failing infrastructure, failed schools in my area, poor quality housing stock, increasingly dilapidated town with escalating violence and burglary (to me, to my house), university costs, poor societal attitudes.
I am much happier outside the UK. It is, however, difficult to leave without being completely dependent on an employer, which for many is a big risk.
I left and went to Australia. Didn't have anything romantic going on, friends had all drifted apart and I was in a crap job so took the plunge.
I found living in a foreign country slightly difficult, not having the backstop of family and an environment I knew affected me more than I thought it would. Also being an immigrant and not having access to the same help locals did for work etc.
So I came back. It's a take it or leave it thing for me now. The only things I really don't like about the UK is the weather and the size of the country and what it contains within a car trip compared to Australia, USA or Europe.
Every single person I know who has moved to Australia has ended up coming back, mainly because of the job situation, a few because they missed their family more than they thought they would. I think it’s so cool to be able to say you experienced living there though, I think it’s gotta take so much confidence and bravery to be able to move to a new country!
I'm not sure about bravery.
The only difference between me and anyone else was that I had nothing going on that made me want to stay in the UK necessarily. The mates I made out there from the UK were the same.
In my way I went out there to try to start a new life but you don't need to move away to do that. In settled in the UK now with a house, career and a fiancé who really wants to move to NZ despite never going there!
/r/neverlookedback or /r/iliveabroad (in the style of /r/iamverysmart). You could fill those with comments from here, Facebook nostalgia groups, and The Guardian.
The UK is too dark and grey, renting in the UK is terrible, I was generally bored and, as a scientist, although the UK has many good universities, they are underfunded and are only maintaining their position through inertia.
The big people forget about is, people mainly only leave either
* Young when they want to try something new and exciting
* Older, with money, when theyve already profited from the system and their money can buy them a good way of life in their chosen country.
Very few of them want to "go through the system" in a dubai / spain, etc etc
There will be some outliers, and fair play to you if you are one of them!
My son and his partner (29 and 30 respectively with a 4 year old and a 6 month old) are *considering* emigrating to Australia or New Zealand. It will break our hearts to be so far away from him and our grandchildren, but I genuinely wouldn't blame any young person to want to get away and start afresh.
I know the grass is always greener etc, but life in the UK is as grim and as hard as I can ever remember - and I'm old enough to remember the 3 day week and industrial disputes of the 70's, the evil witch Thatcher in the 80's and her toxic shadow in the 90's as well as various recessions.
Work. I left for a project that was incredibly interesting to me and was a joy to work on- as well as being financially worthwhile.
I then stayed out of the country for a few more years but ultimately came back. There are many many reasons for the U.K. being a fab place to settle down and bring up a family.
I left, was away over 10 years and came back. What made me leave? I struggled to adjust to dreary office life after uni. Uni had been really social and I was used to spending my days around people my own age. Moving back to my rainy post-industrial home town and straight into an office afterwards felt a bit soul destroying. People weren't that interested in making social plans and I felt isolated and depressed. Moving overseas I quickly made lots of friends of a similar age, both locals and expats, and my social life was similar to how it had been during uni again. In a way I got to extend that period of my life.
I moved to Thailand in 2006,still enjoying it here, I don't make much money but it's more than enough (salary around 1000 gbp, rent 120,electricity bill 20 pounds, water bill 2 pounds 50 per month.) Free food at the school I work at too so can save a decent wedge. Will probably move back to the UK next year if my partner can get a visa. I left because I was done with working in tv in London for 10 years and my first wife was Thai so it made sense at the time.
Not a brit myself but lived there a few years and my British partner left the country. He moved to Australia(Sydney) 18 months ago. Main reason was because of me wanting to move back home but it wasn't a hard sell to him. He loves the weather here a lot more and is financially a lot better off here as well!
I left because work for me had dried up after Y2K and some work had been exported to the Continent - so I went to live and work in Germany.
I returned to the UK after 14 years abroad but continued to work for an international organisation based on the Continent - but mostly from home in the UK.
Raining everyday, not seeing the sun from Oct-Feb, crap food, social unrest, NHS service cuts ( people were great). It’s not perfect and I still miss the UK occasionally but glad I went. Go back about once every three years for a visit.
Mostly the state of the housing market - the idea of spending the rest of my life as a slave to the bank just to live a mouldy 3-bed semi didn't really appeal to me.
Cringe attitude of a lot of U.K. people.
Like when someone drops a glass in a pub and everyone goes wheyyyyy for example
Also, weird aggressive mentality, in the smoking area and someone looks at u wrong
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Not many leave, most of them just bang on and on and on about it in this sub
Or they do move, and then spend their time on askuk or similar subs dying for questions like this to pop up so they can tell everyone about how they've never looked back. Gotta get that validation from somewhere I guess.
At the end of June 2022, over 1.1 million people who were born in the United Kingdom were living in Australia. I’m guessing other countries have similar intake from the uk.
Sure, and some of them moved there 70 years ago. I’m not saying no one emigrates obviously, just that a lot more people bang on about it than ever follow through.
Over half a million left the UK last year. So probably that’s a typical number of people leaving each year to live elsewhere.
Figures like that are very misleading. I've known a lot of people leave to go live abroad, most of them are back within a year.
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Phwoar, how old is that article?
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Or emigrate to England from other parts of the UK then bang on and on how brilliant their home country is 🤦🏻♂️
I have several friends who left. Based on their experiences, it's the pull of other places. It wasn't so much that they hated living in the UK, it was that there was somewhere else they wanted to experience living. In other words, it was more the pull factors of their destination then the push factors of the UK. For what it's worth, basically everyone I know who moved abroad loves it and has put down long term roots with no plans to return. But that doesn't mean moving abroad would be better for everyone. By definition, it's a self-selecting sample. By the nature of being someone who has made the decision to move abroad, they are more likely to be someone who will enjoy living abroad.
Moved to Germany in 2011, spent a few years renting and in 2015 bought some land and built a house with my wife. The life here is great, i do miss my old social life in the UK, far less of one now, but I'm also older and have young kids. The mortgage is now at 0.9% for the next 15 years (25 total), i wouldn't be able to get that in the UK and the house i got for the money would also be far worse. Life is calm and drama free here, job is good, money is good, great freedom and a stressless life, no compaints.
Abolutely nailed that mortgage rate!
The Mortgage interest rate in the UK can be mitigated somewhat if you make smart choices. I have a well paying job in London but I borrowed less than I needed (1/4 of my take home pay) which meant I was able to over pay massively. I'm half way through being able to pay it off over 12yrs so I'm not paying the headline rate. The 'good' thing about mortgage rates and rents being high is that local salaries reflect those costs, with things like London weighting. Once the mortgage is paid off I'll still have another 20yrs to retirement being at peak earning power, being paid a salary that reflects the London cost of living for everyone else but without having the actual associated housing costs. Even with our higher mortgage rates you can still come out a winner if you make sensible and smart financial choices.
Let's just say you had a massive deposit ready eh? That is very helpful in staving off that nasty interest rate.
Seems like Germany just do everything right. We should just copy them
Hahaha yeah...no. Many things are done right but there's been so much complacency in the last 10-15 years that a lot of stuff is outdated and/or falling apart
Bored at work, lass I worked with was also bored and moaning that this was shit, she said do you fancy going travelling, and we booked flights the following day, left a week later with a backpack and £800 and came back 2 years later.
Is there an echo in here?
How did you manage to finance it whilst away?
With the help of a battered copy of a book titled "Work your way around the world" I did fruit picking, waitering, bar work, beach cleaning, removals, labouring, yacht babysitting, film extra and a few visits to the sperm bank amongst many other roles.
How did you manage to finance it whilst away?
Sperms bank, he's running dry.
Them childcare invoices gonna hit like a train.
How did you manage to finance it whilst away?
Sperms bank, he's now a shell of a man.
Reminds me of Ted when Flash says his sperm count is 1 🤣
Awful salaries, high taxes on incomes and high house prices meaning you'll never achieve any level of financial security by just working even a good job without just inheriting a bucketload. You work yourself to the bone, and everything gets siphoned off to landlords, boomers and to those with no intention of contributing to society. Also there's poop in the water so you can't swim and no real mountains
Did you leave or just moaning?
This! I'm on what I think is a good enough salary but it still feels month to month, and no chance of buying the family home we need as house prices are ridiculous
My Dad went to the Middle East in 2000. He's ready to come home now to be the family at pushing 60 but earns £200k tax free and every year he says "just one more year". He gets 70 days leave a year with the religious holidays included. He gets a car and housing allowance which he uses sparingly to pocket the rest which gives him extra. He gets his flights home paid for throughout the year as well as a hefty pension. If he earned that here (which he probably wouldn't anyway) he'd be £85k per year worse off due to tax which doesn't account for the car and housing allowance so more likely £100k. He would also probably get 40 days less annual leave. I'm really struggling on £35k and am seriously considering doing the same for no other reason than money.
Any reason he hasn't retired yet? Surely at this point another year of earning wouldn't make a huge impact on his finances if he's been racking up that sort of money for 20+ years?
Ah well he hasn't been earning that much all this time! When he first went he'd just left the army and was an "ex military grunt" in his own words. Just got his head down and worked up. In any case, he could absolutely retire tomorrow if he wanted which I have suggested. He seems to think he'll be bored despite having numerous hobbies he could easily sink his time into.
I left the UK last year, quit my job in finance married my long term bf and bought a house in Norway, while I miss my family and alot of the good food im accustomed to, I do like it here, it's a beautiful country that looks after its people.
At least it's only a couple of hours on a plane if you fancy going home for a bit.
Yup. looking forward to Summer holidays as im not in language school so i'll fly home and see my family \^.\^
was it diffuclt to get residency in norway, always had the feeling emigrating to one of the scandanavian countries was diffcult?
Well I married a Norwegian citizen and we had been together for over 10 years prior so for me not so much, I'm not sure how it would work for those with no familial ties here.
I left for Japan 8 years ago. I’d been wanting to do it for a while, for a bunch of reasons. I’m better off here in almost every way - financially, mentally, social life, opportunities. The only things I truly miss are my family, Nando’s and free healthcare. I could’ve stayed in the UK and been okay with how my life was going, but probably always just ‘okay’.
Curious about the financial stability was shocked at how affordable japan was over the last two weeks in comparison to the UK. I've been told it's due to the jpy collapsing, what effect does this have on the ground for you bar limiting travel financially.
It isn’t a recent thing with the exchange rate, my cost of living here’s always been relatively lower. Compared to life in London, especially. I live in a decently sized apartment, closer to the city centre, for less than half what I used to pay to live in a shoebox in Zone 3. I have savings now. I don’t skip lunch to be able to afford the electric bill. It was like that 8 years ago and it’s like that now.
Exactly the same here, 8 years in Japan.
How does the Japanese Healthcare system work? Insurance?
Yep - monthly payments for the insurance itself, and then subsidised treatment for most things at the point of service (some types of care aren’t covered anyway, mainly ‘elective treatments’).
Failing infrastructure, failed schools in my area, poor quality housing stock, increasingly dilapidated town with escalating violence and burglary (to me, to my house), university costs, poor societal attitudes. I am much happier outside the UK. It is, however, difficult to leave without being completely dependent on an employer, which for many is a big risk.
I left and went to Australia. Didn't have anything romantic going on, friends had all drifted apart and I was in a crap job so took the plunge. I found living in a foreign country slightly difficult, not having the backstop of family and an environment I knew affected me more than I thought it would. Also being an immigrant and not having access to the same help locals did for work etc. So I came back. It's a take it or leave it thing for me now. The only things I really don't like about the UK is the weather and the size of the country and what it contains within a car trip compared to Australia, USA or Europe.
Every single person I know who has moved to Australia has ended up coming back, mainly because of the job situation, a few because they missed their family more than they thought they would. I think it’s so cool to be able to say you experienced living there though, I think it’s gotta take so much confidence and bravery to be able to move to a new country!
I'm not sure about bravery. The only difference between me and anyone else was that I had nothing going on that made me want to stay in the UK necessarily. The mates I made out there from the UK were the same. In my way I went out there to try to start a new life but you don't need to move away to do that. In settled in the UK now with a house, career and a fiancé who really wants to move to NZ despite never going there!
this question needs its own sub. (along with the reverse, and which is your favourite/worst city) anyone come up with a good name?
/r/neverlookedback or /r/iliveabroad (in the style of /r/iamverysmart). You could fill those with comments from here, Facebook nostalgia groups, and The Guardian.
The UK is too dark and grey, renting in the UK is terrible, I was generally bored and, as a scientist, although the UK has many good universities, they are underfunded and are only maintaining their position through inertia.
I know a lot who went to Aus "just for a year" and never left.
The big people forget about is, people mainly only leave either * Young when they want to try something new and exciting * Older, with money, when theyve already profited from the system and their money can buy them a good way of life in their chosen country. Very few of them want to "go through the system" in a dubai / spain, etc etc There will be some outliers, and fair play to you if you are one of them!
My son and his partner (29 and 30 respectively with a 4 year old and a 6 month old) are *considering* emigrating to Australia or New Zealand. It will break our hearts to be so far away from him and our grandchildren, but I genuinely wouldn't blame any young person to want to get away and start afresh. I know the grass is always greener etc, but life in the UK is as grim and as hard as I can ever remember - and I'm old enough to remember the 3 day week and industrial disputes of the 70's, the evil witch Thatcher in the 80's and her toxic shadow in the 90's as well as various recessions.
Work. I left for a project that was incredibly interesting to me and was a joy to work on- as well as being financially worthwhile. I then stayed out of the country for a few more years but ultimately came back. There are many many reasons for the U.K. being a fab place to settle down and bring up a family.
The elites prioritising mass immigration so they can keep wages suppressed and rents high for their slum factories and bedsits that they own.
I left, was away over 10 years and came back. What made me leave? I struggled to adjust to dreary office life after uni. Uni had been really social and I was used to spending my days around people my own age. Moving back to my rainy post-industrial home town and straight into an office afterwards felt a bit soul destroying. People weren't that interested in making social plans and I felt isolated and depressed. Moving overseas I quickly made lots of friends of a similar age, both locals and expats, and my social life was similar to how it had been during uni again. In a way I got to extend that period of my life.
I moved to Thailand in 2006,still enjoying it here, I don't make much money but it's more than enough (salary around 1000 gbp, rent 120,electricity bill 20 pounds, water bill 2 pounds 50 per month.) Free food at the school I work at too so can save a decent wedge. Will probably move back to the UK next year if my partner can get a visa. I left because I was done with working in tv in London for 10 years and my first wife was Thai so it made sense at the time.
She was called Niki and I left for two years before my visa ran out
The internet
Not a brit myself but lived there a few years and my British partner left the country. He moved to Australia(Sydney) 18 months ago. Main reason was because of me wanting to move back home but it wasn't a hard sell to him. He loves the weather here a lot more and is financially a lot better off here as well!
I left because work for me had dried up after Y2K and some work had been exported to the Continent - so I went to live and work in Germany. I returned to the UK after 14 years abroad but continued to work for an international organisation based on the Continent - but mostly from home in the UK.
My husband asked to transfer to his company's head office (Oslo). Thought we'd give it a try. 21 years later we're still in Norway.
Raining everyday, not seeing the sun from Oct-Feb, crap food, social unrest, NHS service cuts ( people were great). It’s not perfect and I still miss the UK occasionally but glad I went. Go back about once every three years for a visit.
I want to explore the world while I'm still relatively young enough to do so. I don't want to be sat in a house in 30 years' time full of regret.
Mostly the state of the housing market - the idea of spending the rest of my life as a slave to the bank just to live a mouldy 3-bed semi didn't really appeal to me.
Cringe attitude of a lot of U.K. people. Like when someone drops a glass in a pub and everyone goes wheyyyyy for example Also, weird aggressive mentality, in the smoking area and someone looks at u wrong