How Much Money Shall I Carry?

Many students overseas are not sure how much money shall they bring with themselves while coming to Australia. If it is your first time to Australia then I shall suggest you to come prepared. It’s better to bring enough money with you because initial expenses tend to be more. Once you are settled and know everything then you can get quite a hold on your expenses.

Many universities arrange a free airport pickup for their students. If your university do not provide any such service and also you don’t have any friend or relative then you may need to hire a taxi or have to use some other transportation facility.

If you are staying temporarily in a university arranged accommodation, hotel, back packer or have already arranged through some friends or relative here then in all cases you have to pay your rent in advance, also may need to pay bond/security that will be refunded. In hotel etc., they won’t ask you to pay more security but some amount equal to your rent. But if you have got accommodation and are going to pay rent then most probably you have to pay equal amount as security also.

Obviously, you are allowed to carry limited luggage so you may need to do some shopping in start. Like you may need a pillow, mattress, in winter you may need a blanket, quilt. Also you may need to buy a computer if you didn’t bring any laptop; so your expenses may vary for these basic necessities.

You have to buy ticket that may be daily, weekly or monthly. I suggest you to go for a weekly ticket because you need to be familiar with surrounding and also have to go to university and searching for accommodation so you have to travel more. Also if you get an opportunity to do training for some job (which you can do without a work visa) then you have to travel to job place.

While applying for Work Visa, you have to pay some fee; I think it is $60 for that. It may be paid in advance using credit card or at the time of appointment using cash or debit card.

You mobile phone will surely work here but still you have to buy a SIM card that you can put in your mobile and can use it. The cost of connection may vary because mobile companies provide various kinds of plan and you may need to do payment monthly.

I think AUD $2000 will be enough to carry on, you can easily live here for at least 2 months what ever your situation is. The main money hungry thing is rent and travel expenses. If you are staying with some friend and paying rent around $200 - $250 then this amount will last for more than 3 months covering all of your expenses including bills, food, travel charges etc., On the other hand if accommodation is provided by university, or room rented in hotel then it will cost you too much.

Some students use to bring AUD $3000, its better to be on safe side because things may go wrong here. May be for some reasons you lose your accommodation or some other bad things happen to you, so its better to be on safe side.

There may be other expenses which I didn’t mentioned and an other thing is that it’s not easy to get a job straight away so you have to use your budget carefully and this budget is what ever amount you have brought with your self. Once you get a job then everything will go smoothly and the extra amount of money that is left will go to your savings, use it later on.