Passive Income – Leaving Australia – the Practicalities

OK I have confession – although I love travelling I bloody hate packing – and leaving a country is like the worst packing in the world because everything has to go or be shipped. We have only been here two years – why we have so much crap is beyond me! Oh and its Christmas so we are into the usual social round of Christmas – Australia style. i.e. lots of drinking and eating really. Oh and the weather has suddenly come good so I would rather be swimming to be honest!

Does this have anything to earning passive income – well it seems that working from home is a bit like being the stay-at-home mum/wife – you get to do all the running around. Partner went to work today I spent 3 hours selling the car – successfully but still. And then I came home and cancelled the insurance and arranged the rental car – which I will pick up tomorrow.  Over the last few weeks I have found us a sub-let for the first two months home – our house is still rented to tenants – arranged for the New Zealand car to go to the garage, though it did apparently get started after two years of sitting – impressive! Cancelled the power, cancelled the phone/Internet and generally run around.

So if you think you have this online business sorted out and want to get out to see the world, with your new independence I seriously suggest the follow strategy:

• sell everything;
• if you think you can’t bare to part with it see point above;
• if you need it rent it: car, house, whatever.

If you are planning on travelling with your business: don’t plan on getting any work done a week both sides of the move – if you do it will be a nice bonus. The month before you move plan on losing at least a few days with the annoying admin details I’ve mentioned above.

Must Haves for Moving Country Easily and Keeping Your Business Going

• Think about where your Paypal account is linked to. You can’t move a paypal account to another country-  you have to close it and re-open it.  There is however nothing stopping you retaining an Australian bank account with an overseas address – so this is a loophole – which at least means that you take your time moving the account.
• Have a location independent email address – NEVER get caught up with using your ISP’s email address – use your own domain or a free yahoo or gmail account.
• I’ve now done the same thing with my  phone number – I have a SkypeIn number which looks like a local New Zealand number, costs around Euro40/year and I can answer anywhere in the world, without  the caller realising I am not in the country!
• Have your important files backed up – just in case the laptop doesn’t survive the airline!
• Think about leaving a bank account behind – its the easy way to receive refunds for bonds and car insurance after you have gone – you can always electronically transfer the balance out after you leave. If you are using this bank account for payments from affiliates such as Adsense – remember to change them BEFORE you close the account be aware you will have to do this several months in advance.
• Let your online contacts know that you are heading  off and might fall of the great Interweb for a  little while – that’s from around the 20 Dec for about 10 days if I get unlucky re connections being promised just before Xmas in New Zealand.

Leaving Australia Count Down

• Give notice to the phone company and power company. In Perth the power company , Synergy, will send you final bill overseas, the Phone company has always billed us electronically so the email stays the same.
• Cancel any subscriptions you might have picked up along the way.
• Start advertising what may be saleable, decide where you are going to give it to if you don’t sell: we took cents in the dollar for a lot of books rather than spend time selling them individually – we took the lot to the second hand shop. We will do
• The rental agent is some sort of clean demon – I have never cleaned the tops of doors I own never mind those of a rental – apparently it has to be done, ditto the carpet cleaning – I’m hiring someone to do both – too hard for me!
• Selling a car varies dramatically state by state – in Western Australia – its buyer beware there is no requirement for a mechanical check before sale – the paperwork is available online and you then just mail the sellers portion back with the buyers details included.  Gumtree is the local equivalent of Craig’s List and worked for the car!
• The airlines have got tough on overweight luggage – instead we will ship our overweight bags via air freight a day or two before we fly and even with $80 worth of fixed charges the $3.50/kg is a lot more attractive that $10/kg Qantas charges! You do need to collect the stuff from the receiving airport.

Some link love – must be Christmas or something:

Todd has restyled his blog to being all about Home Business Tips – nice new look Todd and solid advice about not changing domains every 5 minutes – you can get ANY url to rank for a term with enough backlinks – this blog being a case in point.

My Prague friend  – Hospitalera – is after one of the most obscure anchored links I’ve ever come across Oes tsetnoc – I thought it was some weird Czeck term – even I know enough it wasn’t German – but I was wrong, check her link to find out what its all about.