Update to "The Price of Milk"

Okay.

I haven't made this decision lightly, we have been mulling it over for a couple of years and with the ability to own a home out of our reach here now until the kids go to school, we think why the hell not have an adventure?

We will be moving to the Sunshine Coast, probably Nambour or surrounding districts. We have friends living in Nambour, one in Maroochydore, two in Mooloolaba, and about 8 in Brisbane, not to mention my brother who is living in Brisbane with his girlfriend and my other brother and his fiance are moving there in 6 months from Perth.

Blair is a carpenter and they are in high demand in Queensland.

We have been in contact with Centrelink and if Blair was on $25 an hour we would be entitled to nearly $750 a fortnight in family assistance, not to mention the subsidised childcare, whether I'm working or not. He is hoping to be on more but you still get rebates and family assistance at much higher incomes than you do here. We have seen all our friends who have left for Queensland go ahead in leaps and bounds since they departed our fair land.

Couple in Nambour have gone from nothing to owning their own joinery company, building and selling three homes, investment properties and now are living on 3/4 acre on their dream home - nearly freehold by the way, property being worth in the vicinity of half a million.

Other couple have set up business and both are earning double they could here.

Mate in Brisbane left here with not a cent, now he has bought a home in north side of Brisbane, this is a guy who struggled to get enough for the pub most weeks. As a builder here was earning $25 an hour, over there is getting $40 an hour with vehicle and phone to build stairs!!!

Those of you who got into the property market before the boom are sitting pretty. EG my sister and husband, one income, bought a three bedroom home in Christchurch worth $123,000. Mortgage $177 a week. Five years later, post boom, their property is worth $350,000 and they are on a fixed mortgage for next five years only paying $265 a week and at 7.8%. So yeah, sweet if you got in before prices shot through the roof.

I definitely want you to all know that there is no way I do anything without weighing up the pros and cons, doing the figures and mapping it out way in advance. Australia may seem like it has faults to those of you that live there, and granted the cities are diabolically priced, but for us, there is no comparison purely from a financial point of view.

And then there is lifestyle factors. Blair has shocking psoriasis and whenever we have visited Sunshine Coast his skin clears up due to the moisture in the air. My nose is sweet, usually have dried up nose that becomes booger infested every night due to a swelling in my turbinates (nose lining). When in Sunshine Coast that goes. And three of my kids get asthma and my doctor has told me we are living in the worst place for it, being polluted in winter and windy in summer. He told me about four years ago that the best place in the world we could go for asthma would be the Sunshine Coast of Australia.

And at the end of the day, as darling Becks says, home will always be there.