For those who are interested in moving to Australia (specifically Sydney), I will try to document our experiences, hoping it might help you get settled in. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask 😉
Financial stuff we’ve sorted out so far:
- TFN = tax file number. In theory it’s not mandatory to have a TFN, but in practice, if you want any tax advantages (and not pay the full bill) you will definitely need this… good news though: it’s basically a 1 step on-line application here. You can apply for a TFN as soon as you’ve entered the country (it is linked to the department of immigration so)
I must say the Australian Tax Department’s website is very useful, good navigation and all the information readily accessible, go Aussies! - Open a bank account. There are quite a lot of different banks here. Like Belgium they have transactional and saving accounts. However, banks charge a lot of different fees (monthly usage fee, usage of own/foreign ATM, deposits, withdrawals, credit cards, …). Basically the big 4 are NAB, CBA, Westpac and ANZ. Their websites are a bit cluttered to be honest and a description of their specific fees can only be found in documents (usually after having navigated at least through 6 pages of “hey, we are the cheapest” BS). A good website for consumers to compare stuff is Choice and specifically for banking there is InfoChoice. I narrowed it down to Nab’s eBanking, HSBC and Bankwest Hero’s account. The latter won in the end because there is no monthly fee if you deposit a certain amount monthly etc. I can only recommend to look at the bank websites and for your specific situation compare the accounts which suit you best.
- International money transfers. Unfortunately I haven’t found a cheap way around all the fees that come with these transfers. So for now we’ve arranged for one big transfer from our Belgian to our Australian account. If anybody knows of a way to bypass all the currency and transactional costs, please let us know 😉 . Especially those Swift employees :p.
I’ll try to add to this post as we go along.
Will also post about moving (ie transport or stuff) and visa stuff later…