So, You Want to Move to New Zealand

By Melissa Cox

Are you considering moving to New Zealand? Or looking to enjoy an extended vacation? This comprehensive guide will support you every step of the way! Written by a dual citizen of New Zealand and the United States, this book is packed with tips, resources, and perspectives from other American expats to help you start a new, exciting life in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

 

Whether you are looking to relocate permanently, or just want to spend a few weeks or months road-tripping across this stunning country as a tourist, this book is for you! Discover everything you need to know about Aotearoa New Zealand, including:

• NZ's 16 regions, their unique local cultures, economies, and features;
• Tips and tricks to make the immigration process less stressful;
• What to do with your possessions and pets;
• Advice on buying a car, landing a job, and finding a rental;
• An overview of New Zealand's rich history and culture;
• Te reo Māori pronunciation and quirky Kiwi slang;
• Deep dives into New Zealand's Healthcare, Education, and Housing sectors;
• How New Zealand became the only country in the world to abolish most lawsuits;
• Work/life balance, vacation time, childcare subsidies, and paid parental leave explained.

PLUS! Detailed chapters on United States Expat Taxes and Banking – crucial information for any American looking to relocate overseas!

Honest, easy to read, and chock-full of statistics and helpful resources, this e-book is an indispensable guide for anyone considering a move or visit to New Zealand!

 

Detailed Section Overview

• History, Government, and Politics
• NZ's 16 regions & map
• Planning Your Move: What to do with your possessions: what to ship, sell, store, or donate
• Immigration resources, links, and tips
• Immigration advisers, recruitment agencies, and how to avoid scams
• Special Banking and Retirement options for expats
• US Expat Taxes - strategies, pitfalls to avoid, and resources
• Why do I need to file US taxes at all if I live abroad?
• New Zealand slang and te reo pronunciation
• Kiwi Coffee Culture - say goodbye to drip coffee, and hello to the flat white
• Driving Differences - driving on the left side, how to choose a car, EV and hybrid subsidies, the price of petrol, driving hazards, and more!
• The ACC - accident-related healthcare for all (even tourists) and what it means for you
• New Zealand Healthcare - costs, benefits and drawbacks, who is eligible, private vs. public insurance, dental care
• How NZ abolished nearly all lawsuits
• Childcare - subsidies, cost, options, kindergartens and pre-schools, daycares, and more
• NZ Education System - public, private, home school, higher education costs and subsidies, universities & colleges, trade schools
• Work / Life Balance - vacation time minimums, sick and bereavement leave, miscarriage leave, domestic abuse leave, national public holidays
• The New Zealand Real Estate Market - average prices, laws, policies, and practices
• Cost of Living - tips and tricks on how to adapt to New Zealand's high prices
• Where to find your favorite American foods
• Managing Culture Shock and Homesickness
• "Conversations with Ameri-Kiwis" - quotes from other US expats who live in New Zealand, their perspectives and advice
• What is Tall Poppy Syndrome?
• Interesting Facts about New Zealand
• Resources section

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melissa Cox
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781738607303

Melissa Cox

Melissa Cox is a former journalist and non-profit writer. Born and raised in Delaware, she moved with her American husband to New Zealand with just two suitcases, her guitar, and dreams of a new life. Today, she is a proud dual citizen, mother to an adorable Ameri-Kiwi boy, lover of the natural world, enthusiastic gardener, and keen traveller. As a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, she pens poetic lyrics detailing the stunning beauty of New Zealand, Hawai’i, and beyond. More at http://www.MelCoxMusic.com.

Book preview

Land of the Long White Cloud

The pebbles on the shores of Kaikōura were smooth under my feet, and the ocean in front of me, a placid mirror. The setting sun cast an orange hue over the snow-kissed mountain ranges to the North, momentarily transforming the white peaks into a mirage of lava.

It was December 2012. My husband, Matt, sat at my side. We were just seven days into our three-week-long vacation around Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island. And in just seven days, something inside of me had fundamentally shifted.

I was born and raised in Delaware. Matt came from a military family, so he moved around a lot as a kid, finally landing in eastern Ohio. We met in college, got married after graduation, and bought a stoic brick house in Maryland with a garden and a cat. We had family and friends nearby, and stable, good-paying jobs. We were talking about having kids. We had the idyllic American lifestyle. Until...

2008. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the Great Recession. That’s when, as the Kiwis say, it turned to custard.

We watched in horror as family members and friends lost their homes to foreclosure, and saw their retirements slashed in half. Several of my family members shuttered their businesses. I witnessed people I loved get laid off from companies amidst mergers, acquisitions, and offshoring deals. The bailouts came for the banks. The rest of America was left to scrounge for whatever we could salvage.

Like many millennials, we had purchased our house at the height of the market, in August 2007. When the GFC hit, our house was suddenly under water, meaning we were forced to pay more than what the house was worth. In just one year, our home’s value had plunged 30 per cent, and never fully recovered. We had two mortgages with pretty high interest rates, and we begged the banks to let us refinance, but to no avail.

Then, in 2010, we received a letter from one of the banks stating our house was in a flood zone. Impossible, we said. The deed of the house clearly stated: Not in a flood zone. It didn’t matter to the bank, who cited outdated flood zone maps and force-placed a flood insurance policy on the house. Pay up, the bank said, or we will repossess your home. Young, scared, and unable to afford a lawyer, we took out a flood insurance policy we knew we didn’t need. Three years later, the flood maps were updated, and the bank admitted we were, indeed, never in a flood zone. But the damage was done: over three years, we paid over $10,000 in insurance premiums. The bank never refunded us. It was fraud in our eyes, but we never had the energy or the money to sue them. Who would?

In 2011, I started a new job as a marketing specialist for a major university. I worked with a lovely woman named Janine* who was expecting a baby. At her office baby shower, I learned that, per university policy, Janine had no maternity leave. None. Zilch. Nada. This major university—the alma mater of politicians, celebrities, and CEOs—did not grant any paid parental leave for new mothers or their partners. Instead, new mothers were expected to eat into their vacation and sick time. You could take up to 12 weeks off through the Family Medical Leave Act, but that was unpaid time off—a luxury many cannot afford.

Janine returned to work just four weeks after giving birth. One day, I discovered her at her desk, sobbing as she pumped milk with an electric breast pump. Her baby, just four weeks old, was in a daycare. It’s not fair, she said. I’m exhausted. I miss my baby so much. I should be with him, but I’m here. I shouldn’t be here. I stared at her, wondering how on earth a wealthy, world-renowned university could do this to their employees. But, of course, this was America, where the vast majority of private companies do not grant paid parental leave, because there is no law requiring them to do so.

And then, there was the Sandy Hook massacre. On December 14, 2012, days before we left for our New Zealand vacation, a gunman murdered 20 first graders and six teachers in cold blood at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.

I remember sitting on the floor, tears streaming down my face, watching the news coverage. President Obama, a father of two, wiped tears from his eyes as he gave a speech from the White House press room. They had their entire lives ahead of them, he said about the murdered children. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own...our hearts are broken today... As a country we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theatre in Aurora [Colorado], or a street corner in Chicago, these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children.

Only months prior, in July 2012, a man entered an Aurora, Colorado movie theatre at the midnight showing of Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. He set off smoke grenades and opened fire on the crowd, killing twelve and wounding 58. Matt and I used to live just six miles from Aurora, when Matt was temporarily stationed in Colorado for work. I remember picking up the phone the morning after the shooting and calling our good friend John to see if he was alive. John is a huge DC and Marvel Comics fan, and often went to exclusive screenings and midnight showings. He lived just minutes from Aurora, and I was terrified he was one of the victims.

Finally, John picked up the phone, and when I heard his voice on the other end of the line, I screamed Oh my God you’re alive! He told me he was fine, and that he had planned on going to that exact midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, but he was tired after a long day and decided not to go. I remember feeling a strange mixture of relief, intense anger, and despair when he told me that. What if he had gone? I didn’t want to think about it.

A year before that, in August 2011, my mom called to tell me that her friend’s adult son was shot twice outside of his church in Delaware, my home state. Luckily, he survived. It was shocking, but not surprising: Wilmington had insanely high murder rates. Indeed, ABC picked up the pilot for the new show Murder Town, starring Jada Pinkett Smith, set in my birth city of Wilmington, Delaware. At the time, the city had one of the highest murder rates per capita in the country—seven times the national average.

In 2008, my uncle committed suicide. He shot himself with a gun he shouldn’t have had based on his mental health diagnosis. I still wonder today if he would still be alive if he hadn’t had access to that gun.

And now here I was, in December 2012, on a pebble beach in far-flung Kaikōura, drinking in the sunset as seals jumped playfully in the water. In the first seven days of our South Island trip, we had learned so much about New Zealand’s culture, laws, benefits, and relative safety. We had come here for a holiday, for a fun frolic across Middle Earth, to see some dolphins and mountains and maybe a whale or two. But the faces of the children killed in Newtown kept creeping back into my thoughts. Beneath all of the fun and wonder we were experiencing in Aotearoa (the te reo Māori name for New Zealand), a current of anger, fear, and despair flowed through me.

Matt and I were talking about having kids in the near future. Could I send my son or daughter to school every day, wondering if they’d come back home that night? New Zealand wasn’t perfect, but the country’s first and only school shooting on record to date was one from way back in 1923. (Later, in 2020, a teenager’s plan to commit a mass shooting at a school in the Tasman region was prevented by authorities. And, after the horrific mass shooting in Christchurch in 2019, New Zealand’s Parliament banned all semi-automatic weapons and passed sweeping gun reform.)

As the sun disappeared behind us, I turned to Matt and said What if we moved to New Zealand?

He laughed. What? No. No way. Absolutely not. How would we even do that? No. Seriously?

I laughed, too. It was a crazy idea. I tried to put it out of my mind.

Two weeks later, we boarded a jetliner back to America. As the plane lifted into the sky, we looked down on the neon green hills and azure coasts of Christchurch. Tears stung my face. I didn’t want to leave. What I had experienced those last three weeks was soul-altering. I had seen a side of life I never thought existed, at least not in America.

Matt turned to look at me, and his eyes met mine. He was crying, too.

UPON RETURNING TO WORK in the United States, I was summoned into the office of the HR manager. She asked if I would be willing to cut my time back from 30 hours per week to 25 hours. I said no, I needed the money (to pay for that flood insurance policy). She insisted I cut back, so I asked her why.

Because I worked 30 hours per week, she explained, I was considered a full time employee under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which meant that the university would be legally required to cover my healthcare. The ACA, which was signed into law in 2010 by President Obama, had provisions that would kick in starting in 2014—provisions that required all major employers to offer health insurance to employees who worked an average of 30 hours or more per week.

Now, I had nothing against President Obama for passing the ACA. He was trying to help people who desperately needed health insurance by forcing large companies to do right by their employees. You would think a world-class university like mine would do the moral thing. Right?

Wrong. Instead, in an effort to dodge the new ACA provision, the university slashed the hours of many hourly workers. And yet, just a few years prior, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that our university’s president was, at the time, the second highest paid public college president in the entire country, with an annual salary of over $850,000. So it’s not like they didn’t have money.

I left the HR manager’s office and sat at my desk, tearful and fuming. I was an excellent employee. I went above and beyond my job description. I attended weekend events, sometimes without pay, and worked long into the night during the busy Homecoming and Commencement seasons. I was reliable and trustworthy. I got along well with my co-workers. I marketed the university’s achievements and brand with pride. And now they wanted to cut my hours, and the hours of so many other workers, rather than support their employees by following the new law.

My parents had taught me the fundamental philosophy of the American Dream: if you want to get ahead, all you have to do is get a good education and work hard. And that’s what Matt and I had done. We studied hard through college, we got great jobs, and we worked our asses off. And yet it wasn’t enough. Not enough for the banks who held us over a barrel. Not enough for the companies who thought it was okay for a new mother to abandon her baby at a daycare just four weeks after giving birth. Not enough for corporations and colleges who would rather pay their presidents and CEOs exorbitant salaries than give their employees healthcare. Not enough for the politicians who refused to do absolutely anything to stop children from being gunned down in cold blood in their classrooms.

The American system was designed to value profits over people. The American Dream, at least for us, was a mirage, like those lava pools on the snowy mountains of Kaikōura. I realized there had to be another way.

That night, I went home, jumped onto my laptop, and started researching New Zealand immigration policies and visas.

My American Dream was dying.

Maybe I could revive it somewhere else.

Disclaimers, Clauses, and Legal Stuff

Iwant to clear up a few things before we jump into this book together.

First: I am not anti-America. Plenty of people on both sides of the political aisle have come at me with comments like You hate America!  You’re unpatriotic!  Well if you don’t like it here, just LEAVE!

So, let me just say this: I love America. I just don’t like some things about it. I love New York City, and dislike Wall Street. I love Americans, their sense of humour, and their fantastic work ethic. But I really don’t like how corporations exploit that work ethic and pay their employees starvation wages in the name of profit. I love fireworks and barbecues and fireflies on a hot summer night, but simultaneously, and unapologetically, abhor America’s lack of common-sense gun control. I love and admire my family members who are military veterans, but that doesn’t mean I blindly support every misguided war America has ever waged.

The United States is the exception, not the rule. Historically, there has never been another country like it. But that does not mean that the USA can do no wrong. It does not mean America cannot do better. America is exceptional, but American exceptionalism should not lead to blind allegiance. And more often than not, that blind allegiance holds us back as citizens and as a country.

So, I don’t hate America. I love it. I love it enough to shine a light on its shortcomings in the hopes of making it better.

Second: I am not blindly pro-New Zealand. Aotearoa (the te reo name for New Zealand, which translates to land of the long white cloud) is awesome, but it is far from perfect. Just like America, New Zealand, though tiny, has some big problems. I plan on laying some of those problems out on the table for you, backed by statistics and citations, to give you an honest, clear picture of this country that you may one day find yourself living in.

Third: I am not an immigration advisor, tax accountant, lawyer, or consultant. NOTHING IN THIS BOOK SHOULD BE TAKEN AS LEGAL ADVICE. If you are serious about immigrating to New Zealand, you should seek the counsel of a licensed immigration advisor or lawyer.

Fourth: Information in this book may have changed since it was published.

Fifth:  Some names in this book have been changed to protect the identity and privacy of certain individuals.

Sixth:  I have not received any payments from any company or person mentioned in this book, nor does mentioning a company or person constitute an endorsement from me.

Seventh:  While this book is mainly for Americans contemplating a move to New Zealand, I encourage readers based in other countries to utilize this book. The information here can benefit people from all walks of life. The information in this book is also useful to anyone wishing to visit New Zealand as a tourist.

Eighth:  Great care has been taken to ensure that all of the information in this book is accurate. Any corrections will be made in potential future editions.

Ninth: While writing this book, I deliberately chose to utilize both countries’ styles of spelling and colloquial speech. You may encounter words like colour and organisation spelled the New Zealand (British) way, and you may encounter words less familiar in American dialect. Other times, I will opt to use the American spelling, either for context or because I simply prefer to.

Tenth: While I aimed to make this book as comprehensive and thorough as possible, I made a conscious decision not to cover certain hot button topics like New Zealand’s gang culture, racism, sexism, and inequality. Why? Because these sensitive topics take a long time to explain (I could write a whole book on just one of these issues), and because these problems are not unique to New Zealand—organized crime, racism, sexism, and inequality exist in the United States, too (albeit in different forms).

Yes, as an American living in New Zealand, you will encounter xenophobia, sexism, and/or racism, sometimes as its target, and other times as a bystander. My omission of these issues from this book, however, is in no way a denial that they exist in Aotearoa. On the contrary, racism and xenophobia in New Zealand is rather potent and often overt, especially against Māori and Pasifika peoples, people of Asian descent, and Muslims.

As a white woman, I am fully aware of my privilege; I have not been the target of racial and xenophobic attacks nearly as much as my friends of color have been. I try to speak out forcefully against racist and xenophobic rhetoric whenever I hear it (and trust me, I’ve heard some nasty things while living here). But I’ve also heard and spoken out against racism, xenophobia, and sexism in the United States, too. Unfortunately, these issues are not unique to one country. They pervade the world over.

As one fellow expat put it to me: Americans idealize New Zealand. They think it’s this perfect place, this Utopia. Then they get here, and they are shocked to discover it can be just as racist and sexist as the U.S. Indeed, one key to success and happiness is managing expectations. If you come to New Zealand thinking everyone gets along and no one is