We've been talking about whether to move overseas or not. There's increasingly becoming less and less to keep us here. Don't get me wrong, we live in a beautiful country and given the choice I'd rather be here, but the money is crap compared to how much its increasingly costing to live here. It's just becoming too hard now, petrol's just gone up again, local rates have gone up 10%, more compliance charges for things, ARC rates have gone up, food has gone up 30% in recent months - it just seems like theres no end to it. How are we left to manage this, I get a mediocre 2% pay increase from work. I've just recently dodged the redundancy bullet, and ironically I've been given more opportunities now to do development work instead of support work which I've been becoming increasingly tired of. But theres no more pay, no recognition, no modification of my contract, so I'm kind of confused now as to what's going on. Seems like I've been handed more work to do, and I'm supposed to be happy about it. I suppose on one hand the fact I still have a job is a good thing, but I work to live, not the other way round.

So we're starting to ask the hard questions, should we sell up and move across the ditch to Oz? We're going to look into it, best to see what the advantages and pitfalls must be rather than just being enamoured with the idea of the 'grass being greener over there'. It's hard to look at how well the inlaws are doing over there and not be a tiny bit envious, although after our experiences of the excessive heat over there at Xmas, I'm still a tiny bit dubious about the idea. But I always thought if I worked hard then I could have the things that I wanted and enjoy my life, and now it's just working to have enough money to put gas in the car to go back to work again, or to be able to have lunch today, stupid little things that we shouldn't have to obsess over in life.

I guess we'll see in time. We don't have to rush into anything at the moment. Rob is considering returning to parttime work after her trip to PNG, so we've got time to consider, and maybe her returning to work will help alleviate some of the pressures we've been feeling lately.