GETTING MORE BANG FOR YOUR AUSSIE BUCK!

If we ever needed a reason to be thrilled about being Aussie travellers, the increasing strength of the Australian dollar is definitely a good one!!

For years, those of us that call Down Under home have suffered for our love of travel because not only did we have to travel further (much further) than those from other countries who wanted to explore the world, but as soon as we landed at our destination our pockets felt ridiculously empty... before we’d even bought our first tacky souvenir for Nanna! The weak Aussie dollar meant that we had to cut our trips shorter, stay in dodgy hostels, eat cheaply and avoid the more expensive and exciting options on our trip itineraries. Well as the dollar booms, Aussies get more chances at seeing more, doing more and experiencing more overseas.

To put it into perspective, if you are planning your trip to the US right now, one Australian dollar is worth around US$0.92 so it is running almost dollar for dollar. Had your big American trip taken place in say, April 2001 you would have had your savings cut in half! AU$1 was worth US$ 47.75 and that really hurt!

Taking a trip down memory lane, at the beginning of 2005 I signed up with IEP and jet-setted over to the UK on my working holiday. Now I was a little disheartened to see my hard earned proof of funds of around AU$6000 diminished to around £2500 as the dollar at the time was around AU$1 to £0.42. Now in 2008 we are looking at the British pound being about double our dollar so little by little we are getting more bang for our buck.

While we are on the important topic of money, one question we do get asked frequently is “what will the pay be like?” The truth is, depending on the job, you could very well find the pay sub-standard compared to what we earn here in the lucky country.

I was earning a measly £5.50 (AU$13) an hour at a live in pub job and in many of the Canadian resort jobs it is not uncommon to be earning around CA$8 an hour with subsidised housing. However, when applying for work and comparing pay rates you need to take into consideration living costs.

Despite not earning millions I paid very little or no rent and I often got free meals so I was never spending very much and was able to save what I earned. Friends of mine who were earning £10+ an hour were spending £200 a week on a small, private bedroom in a house with 5 other people, at the time that was AU$480 a week!!!

When you move to a new country you often need to adjust your habits to suit your new life and living conditions over there. You will no doubt find yourself comparing the costs, quality and quantity of different things overseas and some will be better than what you are used to in Oz and others will shock you.

IEP’s Work Australia staff often get caught up in discussions with American and Canadian IEP members about what they consider the exorbitant costs of basic items in Australia. With purchases like shampoo, chocolate bars and clothes often costing double the amount they do in the USA.

We used to placate these members by blaming the exchange rate but these days, with our currency worth basically the same all we can do is smile, nod empathetically and secretly be thrilled that when we travel everything will seem so much cheaper!

Of course with the great news of the booming Aussie dollar comes a downside... as we all eagerly pack our bags to go overseas and spend up big, travellers from other countries are hesitant to come Down Under and don’t want to experience the ‘empty-pocket syndrome’ we Aussies are so familiar with. Australian Tourism is suffering and if Lara Bingle was still asking “Where the bloody hell are you?” our answers would be:

“The USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland... somewhere on the other-side of the world living it up on a working holiday!”

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