Hawaii Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
**redshoegirl / other Aussies?**
Hey Lisa,
I was wondering, around how much more expensive is Australia than the U.S.?
What is the currency/ is there an exchange rate, or do you guys use the American dollar? I'm woefully uninformed about this.
Would you say things are about 1 1/2 times more expensive than here? And here, like regular places, versus here like Manhattan or maybe SF?
My brother is thinking about moving to Australia, and I thought I'd try to find out a bit more.
Thanks!
Re: **redshoegirl / other Aussies?**
Yaaaay, I love Australia questions!
The currency here is the Australian dollar - here's what the different bills look like (I tried to find a good site for the coins too, but couldn't - they have coins for $2, $1, $0.50, $0.20, $0.10 and $0.05).
The exchange rate is pretty strong at the moment - $1USD will get you $1.09AUD...usually the Aussie dollar is worth about 75 cents to the American dollar, so 92 cents on the dollar is pretty high.
It's hard to estimate how much more expensive things are on average. Clothes are very pricey (a pair of no-brand jeans is usually over $30, Levis are around $100, luxury brands are forgetaboutit), as is food, both in grocery stores and restaurants (you saw my post a couple days ago about grocery shopping). Gas is also quite high - we're currently paying around $1.17 per litre, roughly $4.60 per gallon, and this is the cheapest it's been in years (a couple of years ago it was $1.75 litre/$7 gallon). Housing tends to be expensive, although that depends on where you live - but I'm presuming he'd want to move to one of the large cities, in which case it's probably comparable to renting in New York City.
Generally speaking, he should probably consider it the same as moving to a HCOL area in the States, maybe NY or SF. One thing I've noticed though is that salaries are often lower than they are in the USA for comparable jobs (even in HCOL areas), so although we often pay more for goods and services, we don't earn quite as much. This isn't always true - for example, if he worked for an American company and was transferred here, he'd probably earn more.
That's weird, because I've found that salaries are higher here in Aus than they are in the States.
Now, I haven't delved extensively into it but I know that, for example, my profession (before I became a SAHM) would pay me $26 per hour. In the States, for the same role, I would be paid $10-12 per hour and likewise in Canada (when I worked and lived in Canada).
If he were to, say, rent a one bedroom apartment in a trendy inner city suburb of Melbourne, he'd be looking at paying around $250 - $300 Australian dollars ($230-$275 US Dollars) per week on average.
Of course, he doesn't have to go for the trendy inner city areas. There are cheaper suburbs to live in that are also good neighbourhoods.
However, yes, in general it is more expensive here than in the US. This is most likely due to the costs of importing.
Another example, if I were to stop at a sandwhich bar in a mall somewhere and buy a grilled cheese sandwhich, it's usually around $5 - $6. Gah. That's why I appreciated living in North America, where things were more affordable. Again though, it evened out anyway because I was earning a lot less in North America then I did in Australia.
Really? This is so interesting! Maybe I'm comparing too limited of a field - most of the people I know in the USA work in the IT industry in California, and although IT guys can still get pretty good money here, it's often a fair amount less than the people I know overseas. So I guess my statement wasn't true for all jobs - just some of them.
I probably also should have said that any service oriented job (I don't know what the brother does?) will pay more here as well. For example, my hourly wage when I was waitressing was MUCH higher than it would have been in the USA - but then, you don't really get tips here, so maybe it evens out?
I'm wondering if it depends on the industry, also. Like, for specialized professions at the top end of the spectrum, the US companies pay more as opposed to, like you said, the service industries. Interesting.
I always thought that generally Australians earned more across the board and that helped eased the 'pain' somewhat of the higher expense of living here lol. However, like I said, I haven't really looked into it. It may just be a case of variation (who pays more: Aus vs US) depending on the job.