Mar 14, 2024
The costs of potentially going home as a family
Lately my husband and I have been talking in detail about what our next steps are as a family – how much longer we plan to be in Japan, whether it's worth trying to stay here longer, or whether it's time to start planning our return to our home country. This is made all the more difficult since we're both from separate countries (me, Australia, him, the United States), and he doesn't have residency in Australia yet – but I'm not enthusiastic about living in the United States again.
We started to look at the costs of moving back home – and it's so expensive that it's likely to keep us here a while longer. Alison Saeng/Unsplash
We started to look into the costs of moving, and applying for a partner visa in Australia is an expensive undertaking – it's close to $9000 Australian dollars just to lodge the application, and that doesn't include things like paying for medicals, police checks, and all the other various documents that need to be included for it.
There's also the important factor of our dog, who is as much a part of our family as the human members. Australia has some of the strictest biosecurity laws/requirements in the world because they don't have certain diseases like rabies present there, which makes things both tricky (a very specific set of instructions to follow) and pricey. There is a mandatory 10 day quarantine period if you opt to bring in a pet from overseas (plus obviously the cost of getting your dog onboard an aircraft), which would be another several thousand dollars in total. There are vet fees associated, too – you have to get things like a FAVN test (Fluorescent Antibody Virus Neutralization) to make sure your dog has enough of the rabies antibody in their system from their vaccinations before they'll be allowed in. It's a lot.
Then there's the part of selling or shipping all your worldly items. Realistically we'd probably offload a bunch of stuff, but there are costs associated there – typically you're not going to get anywhere near what you paid for furniture items, for instance, so you're always selling at a loss. Shipping though is eye-watering – we recently emailed a place for a quote just out of curiosity for when the time eventually comes, and a 20ft shipping container was about the equivalent of $8000 USD. On the wages we earn here, that's a significant chunk of change.
There are some extremely hard considerations because we've really set our lives up here as a family over the past almost 11 years, and moving back would probably cost us the better part of $40,000 or $50,000 when all is said and done. We're starting to think that we might be better to stay here until our dog eventually passes away (awful and painful to even think about), because that's such an expensive and complicated process just to get him into Australia.
Have you ever considered how much it would cost to move back home? Is staying here for longer partially motivated by the costs you'd incur if you did move?
4 Comments
Candiajia1
on Mar 15
Hiya! Long time!
genkidesu
on Mar 15
@Candiajia1 Hi!! How are you doing? I hope life is treating you well!
Frank2
on Mar 18
Hey, I've relatively recently done the move back to Aust after many years in Japan and feel like I could share what a similar experience. Slightly different situation - Aust + non-Aust partner + cat, but no kids. The lead up was complex, but we planned it out far enough ahead that it we could break it up into more easily handled tasks. The big ones were: Getting our cat prepped. The timeline was about 6-8 months before travel and to there were issues about making sure the local vet understood the Aust gov requirements. It wasn't clear how these requirements lined up with Japanese standards. I can see why people shell out for agents to handle this process, but it's ~JPY200,000-400,000. The visa. My partner ended up coming in on a working holiday visa & applying for a partner visa locally. I would recommend going through the process *before* coming to Aust (visa subclass 309) if possible. It took a lot of time and mental bandwidth during the already intense period of trying to figure out a new life. We sent 8x 20kg boxes back via seamail (~JPY95,000) and resigned ourselves to giving away or disposing of all our furniture and appliances. Like you mentioned, we couldn't justify the cost of a shipping container. Having to re-furnish an apartment here has really made me regret that though (FB BuyNothing groups made it possible). The biggest issues we encountered after returning were sorting out a permanent visa and finding somewhere to live. The housing crisis that grips the Aust has made finding somewhere to live an expensive and degrading process. All in all, moving country cost us $30,000, give or take a couple of thousand, and a year of our lives. I'm glad we came, but I'm in no hurry to ever do it again.
genkidesu
on Mar 18
@Frank2 Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and for the level of detail you included! It helps so much in trying to map out our next steps. I've heard the 309 visa can take anywhere from 3 to 24 months for approval, which certainly doesn't make the planning component very easy! In saying that, I think you're right that having the visa sorted out beforehand would eliminate a layer of stress. I grew up in Melbourne but spent most of my adult life before Japan in regional Victoria, so hopefully the housing situation there is a bit easier. I've heard from friends back home that some rentals in Melbourne have upwards of 50 people at a time looking at them...just crazy. Again, thank you so much for the kindness in reaching out with such a helpful reply. It's always good to know what we're up against!