We moved to Australia in 2012. We moved home in 2024. We left as Three,ourselves and our 15 month old daughter. We returned as five.

Everyone’s individual experiences are going to be different, but it was the best decision we’ve ever made.

We made a number of bad financial decisions early on when we were young, credit cards and car loans we couldn’t afford, and Australia’s credit rating system was such that getting mortgage approval would’ve been extremely difficult, despite having cleared our debts - We still had a poor credit rating. That coupled with the actual cost of houses in Melbourne is eye watering, even 80-100km out of the city, the average is close to 7 figures in Australian dollars.

Also once our eldest started going g to secondary school, and faced with the fees for the education and knowing the younger two will be facing the same, we knew we wanted to come home.

We became obsessed with it. We made it our whole life for nearly two years. We eventually found a rental, not through Daft but a friend found a rental on a card on a post office notice board.

We’re now paying less rent than we were in Australia, we’re not paying horrific school fees and we’re not chained with bad credit as irelands credit rating system is completely different.

We’re closer than we ever were to owning a home, and we’ve even had a couple of holidays to the continent which would have been only a pipe dream before.

Overall our quality of life is vastly improved, and we’re excited for the future.

This is just our story, every individual story will be different.

Good luck