Some home truths on NZ living

Chantelle Mitchell left a $90,000 salary in London to return to New Zealand.

For returning Kiwis and immigrants, one of the most testing times in their lives financially can be their move back to New Zealand after years abroad earning well.

Although they do their research, low salaries in New Zealand and high property prices can deal them a severe financial blow. Petrol and grocery prices, mortgage rates, and even the cost of books and clothes, are often higher than they are used to.

One disconcerting thing about the return home is that job hunting is by no means a slam dunk despite that precious overseas experience. If people have worked in large markets such as London or New York, they tended to work in specialist areas that might not even exist in New Zealand. So although they have international experience, it is not necessarily experience that is valued here. Sometimes it can take months to find a job for these highly qualified arrivals.

"Prior to making the decision to return home, the majority of expatriate New Zealanders are seeking professional advice as to how they can best capitalise on their skills, together with reassurance that they will not be taking a perceived backwards career step," says Richard Manthel, managing director of Robert Walters New Zealand. The company runs seminars for professionals coming to New Zealand and tries to manage their expectations about living conditions here.

Cliff Brown, a British banker, worked for a recruitment consultancy when he first arrived here 2 1/2 years ago. He is now back working in financial services. He says employers are more likely to go for someone with the exact local experience they want. They are less likely to take a punt on an interesting outsider.

He puts this down to the fact that New Zealand has no probationary system. Once they hire their new recruit they are stuck with them so don't like giving a non-local a go.

Brown is earning almost a third of his salary in London on the dealing floor doing a slightly different job. He knew his experience was not going to open doors for him here.

"Experience gained in the majority of the financial markets was not terribly well regarded here, was almost irrelevant in Kiwi eyes," he says. He is glad he and his partner had pounds to buy a house with. "If we were trying to buy our existing house on a local salary, we would not be able to afford it," he says.

Lisa Dudson, Acumen financial adviser, worked in Britain for several years and advises people to work in areas with some link to the job they want to do when they return to New Zealand.

A common mistake for Kiwis abroad is to live for the moment because they are only there for a certain time. "They get side tracked about their finances and say: 'I'll deal with saving when I get home'. Then their two years turn into seven. If you are overseas for more than two years you should start a savings plan," says Dudson.

There are two types of Kiwis returning - those who made good money and socked it away in property or savings and those who spent up large on travel and partying.

Chantelle Mitchell, 34, was in London for 10 years and came back this year to settle down. During her last couple of years there, she started saving. "Prior to that I spent my money on travelling. Either you go to work and have no life and save to come back, or you have a good time."

Mitchell has a job at ABN Amro which she heard about in London through Robert Walters. Almost her entire career in financial markets has been in London working in a high-pressure job doing settlements on 5000 trades a day. Here she does settlements in financial market operations.

"I'm nowhere near as busy in terms of volume of trades but I have so much to learn."

As for her salary here versus what she earned in London: "I haven't even bothered to compare it." She was earning £30,000 ($90,000) in London, not including overtime. Although she is happy with her decision to come back to friends and family, she is still getting used to the cost of living. While rents are pretty affordable, dining out and groceries are expensive. "I have booked a holiday to Rarotonga and it will the most expensive week-long holiday I've ever had."

Returned Kiwi Fiona Sherwood says she is loath to lure people back here from Britain under false pretences. "We tend to say 'come home, it's so much easier'. They've got to realise it's not like that."

The financial lawyer came back after six years in London where she had specialised in derivatives banking law, only to find no market for her expertise here.

"I expected a job to fall into my lap but it didn't," she says, admitting to a certain amount of arrogance when going for job interviews - something returning Kiwis can be guilty of.

The lawyer was told off by her agency after an interview.

"'Next time you go for a job don't expect that it's yours,' they told me. I was too pushy, I was telling then how I'd run it and had made the assumption that the job was mine."

Friends back home can be over-optimistic about the situation here and lure people back on slightly false pretences.

At Deutsche Bank in London Sherwood earned a total package of around £70,000 ($210,000) including abonus, and had very little financial incentive to come back to New Zealand. But felt too far from family after September 11, 2001.

The mother of a toddler, she enjoys the fact that she works four days a week and is just 15 minutes from the child care centre. She talks of a colleague in London who works Tuesday to Friday and because of the commute times doesn't see her child from Tuesday until Saturday.

More and more young Britons are making their way here for the easier lifestyle. For some it means a certain amount of sacrifice. Investment banker Adam Challinor has not been able to keep up his Financial Services Authority qualifications while here. He was warned by recruitment agency, Global Career Link, about salaries. "They said I would be in hot demand but not doing jobs that I would want to do," says the Essex-born Londoner. 'We were surprised by the salaries and the cost of living here. When you look at how much less you earn it's more expensive."

Recruitment companies such as Global Career Link try to manage people's expectations as much as possible. General manager Simon Swallow, who spent nearly six years overseas working as a management consultant, says: "Professional people will either come back and be completely disillusioned as their expectations are not met and they will leave again, [or if they] have had their expectation managed, come back and be more realistic.

"It is why we set up in London to sit down with people before they came back and talk about their options."

He says house prices shock incoming workers the most. He adds: "The longer you stay over in the UK the harder it is to find a job when you come back to New Zealand... the higher up you are the less jobs there are."

Challinor, 30, is working in product control for the BNZ in Wellington; he was an investment banker with Morgan Stanley in London. A cancer survivor, he's decided there was more to life than working 15-hour days on the dealing floor. He and partner, nurse Mary Kerr will try their fortunes in Sydney later this year. Both expect an immediate 20 per cent raise plus bonuses and superannuation. Challinor hopes to have more relevant work experience there to make his return to Britain easier.

They were amazed at how little nurses earn here.

"It's an absolute wonder how hospitals run in New Zealand when you see the nurses' pay here. She [partner] was earning more as a graduate nurse in the UK than she is here with seven years' experience."