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Hi everyone. I hope that you are well. My name is Christian and welcome to my channel, Backpacking Bananas. If you don't know, a few weeks ago I moved to Australia on my second working holiday visa. And in this video, I wanted to talk about how much it actually costs to move to Australia in 2025. I'm going to be talking you through everything that I have actually spent in the past few months, but more importantly, what I think your budget should be if you are wanting to do the same thing depending on your circumstances and your preferences. We're going to be having a look at how much money you should be having in the bank, how much money you will be spending before you even arrive
in Australia, how much money you'll be spending in probably your first month in Australia, and all of that good stuff. So, one thing that's important to look out with regards to your finance before moving to Australia is any current memberships or subscriptions that you already have. Take this as an opportunity to look through your app store, to look through your bank statements to see what subscriptions you have, which ones you definitely want to keep, and which ones that you definitely want to cancel. For example, if you have a gym membership back home, that is definitely something that you're going to be wanting to be cancelling or freezing. But do keep in mind when you move to Australia, likely if you've got
a gym membership back home, you may be getting one here as well. And so that cost isn't going to be something that changes too much in the future. There may also be apps that you're subscribed to that you realize you're just not really using anymore or you know you're not going to want to use them when you get to Australia. So make sure you get on top of those things and have them cancelled before you go. But there are going to be some memberships and subscriptions that you are going to want to keep. for example, Spotify if you love listening to music, Netflix if you love watching the TV, your VPN subscription, which is very, very important, especially in the big 2025. Which brings me to the sponsors of
today's video, Surf Shark. So, if you don't know, Surf Shark are a VPN, which stands for virtual private network. And what it allows you to do is change the virtual location of your device to pretty much anywhere in the world. So, when you arrive in Australia, if you're still wanting to watch your UK shows on ITV or BBC, you want to keep up with Strictly Come Dancing over the festive season, you are going to need a VPN when you arrive in Australia to switch your virtual location back to the UK so that you can access your BBC i Player or your ITVX. And also, very importantly, having your Surf Shark switched on turns your public Wi-Fi connection into a private one. Why is this important? Well, let's
say when you are at the airport on your way to Australia or you're on your layover and you connect to the airport's free public Wi-Fi network. That's all well and great, but when you do that, your device is at risk of being hacked via that connection. However, when you switch your Surf Shark on, it acts like a virtual shield on your device so that none of those evil hackers can get in. You don't want any of the data on your device being stolen before you even arrive in your new country. That would really put a dampener on thing. Now, Surark is one of the only VPNs which gives you access on an unlimited number
of your devices with just the one account. So, it's really worth having so that you can have it on your iPad, your laptop, your phone and you can get four extra months of Surf Shark when you use my code backpacking or you can head straight to surfark.com/backpacking and the link will also be in the description. It's important to note the memberships and subscriptions that you're not going to be cancelling because especially if you've just left your job in the UK, you don't have an income coming in anymore. You need to factor those things in that's still going to be coming out of your bank account as spending when you arrive in Australia. Now, your costs and spending.
By the way, I'm going to be talking about everything in either Australian dollars or in GBP or both, just for your reference. We're first going to talk about all of your upfront costs before you travel to Australia. So, firstly, the actual cost of your visa. The working holiday 417 according to the Australian immigration right now costs $650. That's around $320. However, what I actually spent on the visa was £341, which is £696. And that is because as well as the visa cost itself, there's also a processing fee. I'm also pretty sure there was a credit card fee when I was making the payment. And as well as
that, because I paid on my UK Amx, there was also a transaction fee as well. So perhaps for yourself when you are budgeting how much this is going to cost, you should budget closer to $700. Something else that you're going to need to get before you go is travel insurance for the duration of your time in Australia. Now, I find it easier to use travel insuranceances which have ongoing payments as opposed to just doing the entire thing in one bulk. Mostly because, especially for a trip like this, you may not know how long you are staying. And also, paying monthly may be a bit more cost efficient for you and better with cash flow. On that note, I
am with Safety Wing and I pay around £49 a month, but that covers me for pretty much every single country in the world wherever I travel. And I also have the adventure sports add-on because I tend to do adventurous things quite often. The Safety Bing do have a more basic option which doesn't cost quite as much as that, but as a ballpark, I would maybe budget £39 a month or $80 a month for your travel insurance. I actually think I might have a $20 discount code for Safety Wing as well. So, I will leave the details for that in the description. Traveling to the airport in the UK, although this may seem like a small purchase, it is still a pretty significant one cuz if you're getting public transport in the UK, you will
know that the prices can often be astronomical, especially when you're going to the airport. I would budget at least £50 for this journey. That was personally exactly how much it cost me to get a taxi from my parents house to Heathro airport. But you may need to get a bus, a train or taxi. Either way, have a look at how much this journey is going to cost you and factor that into your budget. The next big expense that you probably have is your flight to Australia, of course. Now, depending on what country you're flying from will obviously vary massively how much you are paying for that flight. But if you are flying from London or Europe, I would budget around £800 for that
flight. I'm a big fan of Qatar Airways, Malaysia Airways. You've obviously got Emirates and Singapore as well, but they tend to be slightly more expensive. If you are flying to the east coast of Australia, I would 100% look into some of the Chinese airlines, China Southern, China Eastern, Air China, because they actually do tend to be the cheapest and the flight route is pretty good. And generally, I have had a good experience flying with them, apart from the fact that it's really hard to check in online beforehand. But other than that, they do tend to give you quite a lot of checked in luggage included. But on the note of luggage, if you are moving to Australia, it's likely that you are going to want
to bring quite a lot of stuff, maybe more than the average amount of stuff that you would be bringing on holiday. So, I would also add into your budget an extra $500 for additional luggage. Be that booking an extra suitcase and kgs with the airline itself. Or perhaps you want to look into doing a sea freight shipment. I know that you would be able to bring a lot more this way for less money. However, the sea freight shipment between the UK and Australia can take up to 3 months, but it definitely could be worth exploring your options there. Now, my flight to Australia this time was all over the place and to be honest, I had an absolute shocker. I flew to Australia via 1 month in Pakistan. So, I had to
account for my flight to Pakistan with the extra luggage and then the flight from Pakistan to Perth with the extra luggage. You know, I decided to go with the option of having two checkedin suitcases and my first flight to Pakistan I paid for with airline points which was great but with the extra luggage there was still an excess charge. So I paid €228 for that which is all good, right? But then the real disaster came from Pakistan to Perth. So initially actually I had a €500 voucher with kiwi.com which was amazing and I used that and it was a self- transfer flight from Pakistan to Koala Lumpa with Pakistan International Airlines and then another flight 5 hours later with Air
Asia from Koala Lumpa to Perth. About a week before the flight that first flight was pushed back to 12 hours which meant that I was missing my ongoing flight which is very annoying but because I used my voucher I didn't actually pay anything for that first flight. So I thought it's fine. I will book another flight from Koala Lumpa to Perth for 24 hours later. And I even booked a hotel in Koala Lumper as well because I was going to need that. Then on the day of my new flight time, I rocked up to the airport. He said, "Your flight has been delayed another 12 hours. Go home." So then I was like, "This isn't annoying. I won't be able to use my hotel booking in Koala Lumpa." And then a few hours
later, they pushed the flight back again by about 7 or 8 hours, which meant that I also would not be able to make that brand new flight that I had booked, which I had also paid extra luggage for. So that was £188 plus £124 for the extra luggage wasted. And after all of that, as you can imagine, I was really quite upset and not very trusting of Pakistan International Airlines that this flight was even going to run at all. So I decided just to book a whole other flight for the next day with Qatar Airways that I knew was going to run because they are an airline that I trust. And so I paid £877 for that flight for some peace of mind.
Now, they wouldn't let me add the extra luggage on at the time of the booking. So I was like, "Okay, well maybe I can just do it at the airport." By the way, I had an extra 14 kgs of luggage. When I got to the airport, she was like, "Your luggage is overweight. You need to pay for it now." And in Pakistani rupees, she quoted me a price which on my conversion said it was around £100. And I said, "Okay, yeah, that's actually a really good price for this. Let's go ahead and pay for it." Now, it wasn't until a few weeks later, I looked to see that it was actually £624 that had been taken from my card for that extra luggage at that time. And I called Qatar and I said, "There must be some kind of mistake. This is how much
I've been charged for an extra 14 kgs of luggage." And she said, "Ma'am, it's not a mistake. That's just how much it costs for extra luggage at the check-in gate." And I said, "But you wouldn't let me prepay online beforehand. I didn't have a choice." But anyway, I'm now currently in dispute with Qatar Airways over this whole thing. Because at this point in time, my total cost to fly from the UK to Australia via Pakistan with the extra luggage has cost me £2,040, which is crazy. Anyway, I digress. Let's move on, shall we? So, that's all your upfront cost before you move to Australia. Now, we're moving on to the amount of money that you need to have in your bank account ready to spend when you get to Australia. Now, the
immigration website states that you need to have the equivalent of £5,000 in your bank account um as enough of a budget for all of this, which is about £2,450. And you do actually need to send them a copy of your bank statement to prove that you have that much. So, make sure that you obviously do. But, let's del more into that spending that first month to see what that money actually might be going towards. So, firstly, your transport from the airport into the city. Luckily, Australia has a way more affordable public transport system than the UK does. So, I would say you only need to budget about $15 for this. I was very lucky to be picked up from the airport by my boyfriend on arrival. So,
I spent $0 on this. Now, we are going to budget for our initial accommodation. This I would budget for 4 weeks. That is based on basically you wanting to get a job almost immediately when you arrive. Being super proactive, you starting to search for jobs and hopefully landing one in your first four weeks. If you don't plan on getting a job immediately and you plan on doing a bunch of travel beforehand, then these costs are going to be way more, but we're not going to talk about that in this video. We're just going to base it on 4 weeks, assuming that you get a job after that can help you pay for all of your future accommodation. If you're arriving
in Australia solo, what most working holiday makers do will start off in a hostel dorm room. Now, I would budget $1,500 for the month for this. That's on average $50 a day. The dorm prices in Australia vary a lot, as you can imagine. There are some which go up to like $80 a night for the super nice ones, but you can also find them for like $35 a night. So, I feel like budgeting around $50 a night is a nice even ground. You definitely should be able to find somewhere nice enough for that price. But staying in a hostel dorm room is not your only option. You may opt from the get-go to book a private room on Airbnb. And I know it's possible to get deals of course when you book for
an entire 4 weeks. If you're planning on doing this, I would budget around $2,200 for the month, which of course, actually, if you are coming to Australia with a friend or in a couple, that would be just $1,100 each if you were to share, which is even cheaper than the hostel option, but you wouldn't get the super social hostel life, of course. Or you can book yourself an entire studio or apartment on Airbnb. If you are wanting to do this, I would expect that to cost slash I would budget around $4,000 a month for this. And again, if you're with a friend or a partner who you can share with, even better, that would be $2,000 a month, which is actually not too bad. And the last option, of course, would be a hotel. I
would budget at least $4,500 for this. I don't even know why I'm mentioning it because I wouldn't recommend it at all, to be honest, because in a hotel, more often than not, you don't even have access to cooking facilities, which is definitely something that you're going to want to have access to in your first month in Australia. I very much doubt that you are going to be eating out every single night unless you are completely balling. You would have so much more fun in a hostel or if you did want your own space, getting an Airbnb would be so much more costefficient. But maybe you are super bougie. So that is how much that I would budget for a hotel. I personally have been very lucky
and I've been able to stay with my sister and her family who live here in Perth for my whole first month. I have spent zero on accommodation. I am going to need to find my own flat share soon. So that is exciting. Even if you are not planning to, you may find yourself getting sucked in to booking a bunch of bucket list activities in your first month in Australia. Just like a few things to start ticking off the Australia bucket list. Maybe you book yourself a welcome bungee, a skydive, a surfing lesson, maybe you want to climb across the Sydney Harbor Bridge. Whether you plan it or not, arriving in Australia is super exciting and you're probably going to find yourself doing a few of these things. As you can imagine,
some of those activities are quite pricey. So, I would actually factor into your budget a,000 Aussie dollars in your first month for things like this. Alternatively, for a similar price, you have incredible companies like Welcome to Travel who do entire week welcome tours to help you setting up your entire life in Australia. And included in that, you also do a bunch of bucket list activities that you are ticking off from the get-go. They have both a welcome to Melbourne and a welcome to Sydney tour, which both start at $1,179. And I have a discount code for Welcome to Travel as well. You can get $50 off
using my code BB50. I will also put links to a lot more of Welcome to Travel stuff in the description because they are the best tour company in Australia, and I would highly recommend traveling with them in some capacity. If you are interested in group travel and being connected with other like-minded travelers from the get-go, you're going to want to get a local phone number, a local SIM card when you arrive. I would budget around $40 for this. I am paying $25 for mine cuz I've got quite a basic plan with not much data because I have a lot of credit from EI plans for data. So, I don't need that much. Your transport for the month. So, again, if you are just searching for jobs, you're
probably just going to be getting the odd bus or train here and there. I wouldn't budget more than $100 for this because like I said, public transport is really affordable in Australia, which is great. England could never. Then, of course, your food and groceries for the month. My personal favorite supermarket in Australia is Walworth. They've also got Coohl's which is super similar. They have Aldi's here and they also have IGAs which are good and good quality produce but they're like the co-op in the sense that they're a lot more local and they're very expensive. So I do tend to avoid IGA for my weekly shop for that reason. But I think that $500 should be more than enough to see you through for
the month based on you eating mostly food from your grocery shop but also of course going out for food and drinks. And on that note, how much should you budget for socializing, drinks, clubs? Obviously, it will be significantly less if you are not an alcohol drinker and or you don't really like going out in the evenings. But let's assume that you do like to socialize and you don't want to completely hold back in that first month. I would budget around $800 for this. If you are a coffee drinker, you are probably going to want to get a coffee out every single day of the week. And I'm not exaggerating here because the coffee is a lot better here in
Australia and it's also a lot cheaper. But if you were like me, I would budget $150 for the month just for takeout coffees. Do with that information what you will. And then finally, we are going to save a bit of money for shopping. So maybe you need to buy some workloads for an interview. Maybe you need to get some storage solutions from Kmart. I would budget at least $200 for this shopping, which brings the total for that month based on you staying in a hostel dorm room of those accommodation options to $4,35, which is not too far off that $5,000 that you needed as proof. So, personally, that is how I would budget it. But personally, I would actually have even more with that because if you
wanted to be really smart and savvy and prepared with your financials, let's say that after those four weeks of living in a hostel or an Airbnb, or perhaps you're not even there for 2 weeks and you want to move into your own place to an actual flat share in Australia. Most landlords here will be asking for a 2 to four week bond here as your deposit plus 2 weeks rent up front. So, let's say that the room you rent is $400 a week. Obviously, you can get rooms cheaper than that. A lot of them are more expensive, but I think that's a realistic average price. And let's say that they do want four weeks bond and 2 weeks upfront. That is $2,400 that you want to have in your bank account so that you are able to make
moves like that. That would be my recommendation at least. So, with the $4,300 plus the 2,400, that is $6,700 that I would recommend having in your bank account before you get to Australia ready to be spending in that first month. Hopefully after that you get a job and all the money that you earn in Australia can be what supports you for the entire rest of your time in Australia. Whether you want to just save up money and work the whole time, hop around different jobs or whether you want to save up just enough so that you can then travel around the country or head to Southeast Asia and travel there, your money will go so much further. But that is it for this video. I really hope
you guys found this useful. Good luck if you are moving to Australia on a working holiday visa. It is probably going to be one of the most exciting things that you ever do. I've got much more content coming up of my time here on a working holiday in Australia. I'm going to be searching for a job soon. I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye-bye.
