Is New Zealand right for you?

If you’re considering immigrating to New Zealand you want to know if New Zealand is better than the place you’re at. Regardless of where you live now, I can tell you right now that nobody but you can say if New Zealand is better than the place you’re at. Sure, we can pull up all sorts of empirical statistics about quality of life in New Zealand, but unless you live in a third world or war torn country, that really doesn’t prove that New Zealand is any better than where you’re at.

The reason for this is because everyone is different, and everyone has different priorities. So the real question, isn’t “is New Zealand better?” but rather, “Is New Zealand right for me?” I once had a world traveler tell me that you can read every travel book about a place and never truly understand it until you’ve actually been there. The best way to understand if New Zealand is right for you is to actually visit the place. Granted, Amber and I had never visited New Zealand when we moved here, and we didn’t even know anybody here. We just took the plunge and figued if it didn’t work out, the worst that would happen is we’d end up right back where we started except with a broader perspective and a good story to tell. It just so happened that we do love it here. So it’s not necessary to visit first, but if you can afford it, it will only help. Plus, it’ll lessen the impact of culture shock and the fear of the unknown if/when you do move here.

Based on my subjective experiences, here are a few factors that indicate New Zealand could be right for you.

• You meet the immigration requirements.
• You can cope with being separated from your friends and family
• You have a high tolerance for change
• You don’t mind a slow pace of life and minor inconveniences such as limited shopping opportunities and crappy internet connection
• You enjoy living with/around people of wildly different cultures and backgrounds
• You love eating new foods from different cultures
• It’s important to you that you live in a country with a relatively non-corrupt government
• You love the outdoors
• You love to travel
• You don’t mind taking a pay cut in exchange for the lifestyle opportunity (if you’re a public school teacher though you may get paid more)
• You don’t mind long winters

• You hate living in a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood

Like a vague horoscope, these bullet points probably apply to most people. So sure, you may like to travel and like the outdoors, but do you really, really LOVE to travel and visit the outdoors? If these aren’t things you’re actively passionate about then you don’t really need to move to the other side of the world for them. If you don’t really mind living in cookie-cutter houses then you don’t really need to turn your life upside down to escape American suburbia.

Here’s some signs that New Zealand (or in some of these cases, emigrating in general) is wrong for you.

• You have very strong ties to your family to the point that your family is your world.
• You are focused like a laser on building your career and making a lot of money.
• You love the fast life.
• You’re unfocused at this point in your life and have a hard time committing to anything.
• You can look around you right now and say,” Yeah, I’ve got everything I need right here.”
• You thrive on routine.
• You’re trying to run away from yourself.

If you’re still on the fence, you may consider a working holiday to New Zealand. You can live here up to 3 years without the hassle/limitations of getting residence or citizenship.

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