Author name: Pheobe

When we landed in Australia in May 2016, we had a plan for our savings. We thought they would last around nine months. It was a careful plan. We had a young daughter with us, and nine months felt safe. It felt like enough. It wasn’t. I’m sharing our experience because I don’t want you

This winter, our electricity bill came in higher than we expected, and at first we weren’t sure why. Nothing dramatic had happened that we could point to. But the number was bigger than the one before it, and we wanted to know what had changed. In our living room, we’d been using the split system

When we moved into our first rental in Australia, our daughter was three. Money was tight, and every dollar already had somewhere it needed to go. Paid outings were not really part of our plans. But she still needed to play, explore and be around other kids. And honestly, so did we. What we found

In our first year here, we went out to eat on a public holiday. I don’t remember which holiday it was anymore. But I remember the counter. When you’re new, you do the sums in your head before you pay. You look at the menu, add up what you ordered, and get your money ready.

A few months after we landed in Australia, a letter arrived that we almost set aside without reading properly. We were still finding our feet. My husband was still looking for work. Money was tight, and neither of us was earning yet. So when a government letter showed up mentioning insurance, our first instinct was

In the early years after we moved to Australia, we barely sent money home at all. We were still finding our own feet, and building our life here took every dollar we had. There wasn’t much left over to send anywhere else. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to help. It’s just that helping wasn’t

In 2017, my husband and I walked into a car dealership in Victoria, not to buy, just to look. We had our eye on a new car and wanted to know what it would actually cost us month to month. We told the salesperson clearly. We were exploring options. We weren’t ready to buy yet.

When we first arrived in Australia in 2016, my husband qualified for a Health Care Card, and it arrived in our letterbox within our first few weeks. We didn’t know much about it yet. My husband was the one who ended up using it. For transport. He got a concession myki and used it to

How often do you actually get billed for your basics here? If you are new to Australia, you might assume every bill works the same way. We certainly did. We budgeted for our bills every month when we first arrived. Electricity, rent, groceries, all the usual things. It felt organised. It felt like we had

Is your superannuation actually going where you think it’s going? I didn’t ask myself that question for three years. In 2019, I finally sat down and filled out a beneficiary nomination form for my super. I split it fifty-fifty, half to my husband and half to our daughter. It felt fair. It felt like the