Do you know any one who has emigrated??

[maumau]

Life here's OK the rand weakness peeves me. Especially when I see foreigners flocking to the world cup to support their teams.

How many south africans could afford to do that.

 

[Nicodeamus]

Life here's OK the rand weakness peeves me. Especially when I see foreigners flocking to the world cup to support their teams.

How many south africans could afford to do that.

It is not the average foreigner that can also come here, many of them also had to save up for the trip. Some of my family members last month did a trip through the entire USA (with the exception of California). The average American will probably not be able to do that in their life time.

I have also traveled to every province in SA and each Southern African country, that is more than most Europeans or Americans will ever of their neighbouring countries.

South Africans often take their standard of living for granted.

 

[HavocXphere]

It is not the average foreigner that can also come here, many of them also had to save up for the trip.

I disagree. Some of the countries have min wages that are sky-high. Between that and favorable exchange rates travelling is a lot easier from that side.

Assuming single person willing to wing it, not taking family on a tour type deal.

Friend of mine pulled off touring a couple countries with min wage earnings working at a cinema. Work in a cinema here and you might be able to pull off buying a big mac on a good day.

 

[cguy]

On the above topic: one of the benefits of living in a high cost of living country and/or city is that income tends to be higher to match (usually not quite, but almost), while items of constant cost such as travel and holidays become marginal costs (or even less in the case of things like petrol, cars, internet and electronics). In my experience, once one gets over the hump of paying for the basics (food, rent, clothing, utilities, some eating out, etc.), the purchasing power of the disposable income is phenomenal.

 

[Sinbad]

It is not the average foreigner that can also come here, many of them also had to save up for the trip. Some of my family members last month did a trip through the entire USA (with the exception of California). The average American will probably not be able to do that in their life time.

I have also traveled to every province in SA and each Southern African country, that is more than most Europeans or Americans will ever of their neighbouring countries.

South Africans often take their standard of living for granted.

Nope.
When I lived in the UK I travelled a lot more than I can here. I even took my wife and her mother to Egypt for two weeks, on a single salary. Including flying her mom from SA to London, and back,

 

[Willie Trombone]

I love the UK but can't live in a shoebox with no yard while paying through my nose for it.

 

[ponder]

It is not the average foreigner that can also come here, many of them also had to save up for the trip.

Nah, much easier for them.

 

[bwana]

I love the UK but can't live in a shoebox with no yard while paying through my nose for it.

Then don't? There are places to live outside of London after all.

 

[Willie Trombone]

Then don't? There are places to live outside of London after all.

I have no doubt, but London isn't the only part of the UK with tiny properties. Consider how they fit 63 million people into 243 000 sqkm
Unless you're ultra wealthy...

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/how-big-is-a-house
https://www.google.co.za/search?q=average+property+size+uk

Oz on the other hand...

 

[FlashSA]

Sounds like the suburbs in East London

My job requires that I spend a fair amount of time up there and tbh it's nothing like the suburbs of East London. East London might work for you but for what I do it's a dead end.

If I was still in IT, EL would be a dead end for me unless I got into the Merc plant...

Being involved with a family business (self employed-ish) I would struggle to match the quality of life we have if we emigrated. The coastal weather suits us and living in Gonubie is fantastic once you get through the traffic. My 3yo daughter and I just got walked back from dropping the car at the car wash which is pretty unthinkable in Gauteng.

My wife wants to move to PE or Cape Town because of how rife municipal corruption is here in EL and I don't disagree with her. Problem is that our business has a long heritage here and I am nervous to start from scratch in a different town and away from both sets of parents...

We have friends in Oz and family in the UK and things are not as peachy as they first seemed. The guys in Oz are definitely not living as comfortable as they did when they were here and the UK peeps miss the family this side terribly!

While I am infuriated by corruption and white bashing by our members of government, I like to live positively in denial and live life as though everything is awesome. Of course the electric fence around our property after last years break in does remind us that SHIZ can get real!

 

[XennoX]

I have family members who emigrated to Kenya, gained experienced, came back and a year later they emigrated to the UK. They have been there for 5 years now and have zero intention of coming back to SA.

I am also seriously considering emigrating because of the tension that is currently in SA. If **** hits the fan, I am trapped. I have no passport and thus need to get hold of one so I can get out. I need an exit strategy and that is why I am looking at the UK, Oz or NZ.

 

[atomcrusher]

I am approaching my mid-60's ... I was born in the UK, but my folks, and my brother & I, came to Africa back in the mid-1950s (I was only about 5 years old then). I grew up in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. In the mid-1960s we left Zambia, and came to SA.

I went back to Rhodesia from SA in the early 1970's, and joined the Rhodesian Army. I then left there in 1977 to head back to SA.

My folks left in 1984, and went back to England. My older boet & I are still here in SA, but we live far apart.

I actively encouraged my two sons (both born in SA), once they were finished school & tertiary studies, to get out of South Africa. The writing was already written in bright red blood on the walls of SA's economy.

My wife, & their mother, died after a long illness in 2001) and that seemed a good time for them to go abroad. I had already made sure they had both SA, and UK, passports, and they left SA in 2004/5.

One went to England and the other to Ireland (I bought them one-way tickets :twisted. They are both now in Dublin, Ireland, one married, one in a relationship, and between the two of them & their wives / girlfriends I now have 3 young grand-daughters.

Both sons have good jobs, earning REAL money, with international corporations, and they and their families can afford to visit me in SA every couple of years.

So with my only local family remaining i.e. my older brother here in SA, I have thought of moving back to UK, or perhaps to Ireland. But frankly, I have a good life here in SA, with my investments over my working-life providing me with an adequate income, which enables me to have a comfortable, but not extravagant, retirement lifestyle in SA.

If I moved overseas, and converted my entire net worth from ZARs to Euro or GBP, I would not be able to enjoy anywhere near the quality of the lifestyle I currently have in SA ... And finally the thought of that miserable UK / Ireland weather also frightens the kuk out of me.

But if I was 20 to 30 years younger than I am now, I would have left this beautiful, but politically sad, farked-up land, without a backward glance.

 

[MKFrost]

Guess I'm one of the few odd ones in that I'm able to go whenever I want/need to but love this place and still call it home. We had dual citizenship but our SA citizenship fell away [long story] so we are no longer SA citizens even though we were born and raised here. Make no mistake, I still pay my backside of on taxes even though I'm not allowed my SA citizenship. Guess I'm still good enough for tax purposes.

We own property both here [in process of selling] and abroad and have a number of family members in both the UK and Europe so we spend quite some time there each year but both of us still call this home. My son will be leaving SA next year to go study abroad and I guess he will follow in the footsteps of his cousins in that I doubt he will ever come back. We will most probably also start to spend more and more time that side once he's there.

Point I'm trying to make is that the present government is alienating the very people who in some way or form keep the wheels turning through either their tax contributions, knowledge or whatever else they are contributing. Fact is that those who are leaving are those who were not or are not dependent on the government and thus not a burden for the government.

There might not be a brain drain but I can assure you that there is a massive capital drain. Over the past three years I've moved everything I had, except for the essentials, offshore and from end of next month I will also stop 'working' within the borders of the country resulting in me no longer contributing to the tax coffers as I did in the past. This was not done in 'revolt' but because of our exchange controls and other regulations which made it near impossible to operate efficiently from here. Much easier to setup offshore and the one thing just led to the next.

So in our greater family group there are at present 6 in SA on a permanent basis, 8 nomads like us and 18 who have been abroad for three or more years and I doubt they will be coming back except for the odd holidays.

Make no mistake, there might not be queues at the airports but people are leaving....

 

[Mila]

Yes, friends and family.

UK, USA and scattered all over Europe.
One friend returned after 10 years from the USA because she remembered what school was like when she was here and didn't like the USA schools. They went back when the first opportunity arrived.
Do I know people that went and came back, loads. Some outstayed their holiday visas others went for holidays and au pair work.

 

[biometrics]

Has anyone considered Mauritius?

 

[HavocXphere]

Has anyone considered Mauritius?

Doesn't seem like an upgrade over SA to me.

 

[Willie Trombone]

I am approaching my mid-60's ... I was born in the UK, but my folks, and my brother & I, came to Africa back in the mid-1950s (I was only about 5 years old then). I grew up in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. In the mid-1960s we left Zambia, and came to SA.

The copperbelt was a good place back then.

 

[^^vampire^^]

Has anyone considered Mauritius?

Very hard to get citizenship there unless you buy one of the properties that give you automatic citizenship.

Also not many nice jobs there. My GFs uncle and aunt run a very successful restaurant there yet the government still deny their citizenship even though they bring in good money and employ locals.

Also it's very hard to run a business there if you rely on local staff as there are more jobs than people which results in them generally working for a month then sitting and getting drunk for a month so staff turnover is extremely high.

I saw in the main towns there are a few big companies but I think choices are quite limited (skills dependant obviously).

 

[w1z4rd]

If I was still in IT, EL would be a dead end for me unless I got into the Merc plant...

Thats a *** place to work in IT in EL, if you are going to work for someone in EL then rather go for Didata or one of the bigger guys. There are plenty around. There are many government systems that need to be fixed

The only problem with EL is you are either a business owner, or a business owners bitch. Very little in between... so its not ideal for corporate climbers. Great space for entrepreneurs though.

 

[pimpmycode]

I love the UK but can't live in a shoebox with no yard while paying through my nose for it.

Then don't? There are places to live outside of London after all.

+1 That is only the case if you live in London.
I own a new home in the South West of England, 3 bedrooms, large front and back yards, beautiful countryside, neighbors that all own their homes too. Much better place than i could afford to own in JHB or CPT even on a decent salary.