The step-by-step plan for New Zealand

In this step you see which routes to New Zealand there are. This is also where the big difference with Canada and Australia lies. There you build up a file and lodge it from the Netherlands. Here almost everything starts with a job offer from an employer accredited by Immigration New Zealand. Accredited means the immigration service has approved the employer to hire foreign workers. Without that employer your application simply doesn't exist.

Four doors are realistic. The first two run via the Green List, New Zealand's list of occupations in short supply.

• Tier 1 of the Green List. If your occupation is on it, you apply for residence straight away with that job offer. After two years you can apply for permanent residence. This is the fastest route there is.
• Tier 2 of the Green List. If your occupation is on it, you first work 24 months in New Zealand. Then you apply for residence.
• The Skilled Migrant Category. If your occupation isn't on the Green List, there's this points route: six points plus a suitable job.
• A working holiday. If you're 18 to 30 inclusive, you can turn the whole order around with a working holiday of twelve months. That gets you there, and you look on the spot for an employer who helps you further.

In this step you get to know a tax advantage that's in almost no Dutch guide. Whoever becomes a tax resident of New Zealand for the first time automatically gets a temporary exemption of about four years on almost all their foreign income. Tax resident means you pay tax there as a resident. The condition is that you weren't a tax resident of New Zealand in the ten years before.

The exemption lasts for forty-eight months. In that time this income is untaxed in New Zealand:

• Interest and dividends.
• Rent from your Dutch home.
• Income from foreign investment funds.

You don't have to apply for anything. If you meet the conditions, you get the exemption automatically.

Two things you need to know already, because they change your planning:

• Wages are not covered. The same goes for income from personal services you earn abroad. It's about capital, not about work.
• You can only get the exemption once in your life.

There's also a catch. If you apply for Working for Families, the exemption ends. That's the New Zealand child scheme, including Best Start (an allowance for young children). The exemption also ends if your partner applies for the scheme. For a family with children and little foreign capital that's an easy choice. If you rent out a Dutch home or have an investment portfolio, it can make a difference of thousands of euros a year. So work it out before you apply for anything, not after.

Put the date on which the exemption ends in your diary straight away. After that the ordinary rules apply. Those include the FIF regime, New Zealand's rules for foreign investments. It applies to foreign shares above NZ$ 50,000 purchase value. Further on in the plan you read how that works.

In this step you check whether you fall within the three hard limits. There's no point calculating around them.

Age. For the residence routes you're 55 or younger at the moment you apply. There are no exceptions and there's no waiver. If you're older, in practice you're left with only a temporary route, or the route via a child who already lives there. The article with this step explains that.

English. Dutch people aren't exempt. The main applicant of a skilled residence visa (a residence visa for skilled workers) needs IELTS 6.5 average. IELTS is a recognised English language test. An equivalent score on one of the other accepted tests is also fine. A test you take at home doesn't count. For your partner and children from 16 a lighter requirement applies: they speak English, or you prepay the lessons in New Zealand.

Health and character. Everyone has a medical examination, children too. From age 11 a chest X-ray is part of it. That's done by a doctor designated by Immigration New Zealand. Everyone from 17 also submits police certificates, from:

• Every country of which you're a citizen.
• Every country where you lived for twelve months or longer in the past ten years.

Those certificates may be no older than six months at lodging. That's why they're in phase 2 and not here.

In this step you see what the journey is going to cost you. The application is dearer here than at most destinations. Count on around NZ$ 6,450 for a residence application, whether you do it via the Green List or via the points. On top of that come the language test, the medical examination and the police certificates.

But the real money is further on, in two items:

• The crossing. The ocean in between is the longest of all the destinations we offer: six to nine weeks' sailing.
• Your car. It stays here. Further on in the plan you read why.

Work it out with your own choices before you start on anything.

In this step you decide together whether it's going to be New Zealand. You end up with a few conditions on paper that you both stand behind.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, with a week in between:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in New Zealand? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be arranged for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4 sheet.

New Zealand is the farthest destination on this site. That's not a mood picture, but a fact with consequences. A single journey costs you well over twenty-four hours and a stopover. Popping over to a funeral in the Netherlands is a week of your life and a hefty sum. Discuss that out loud, because it's the reason people return.

Also discuss the things that only start to weigh later:

• The house prices in Auckland and Wellington.
• In most places you're stuck without a car.
• In the first years you may not buy a house. That's not a budget question, but a law. Further on in the plan you read how it works.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers for the visa, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you can both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in New Zealand and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses.

Married, registered or living together? It can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. Check at the visa and at your healthcare further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four: tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed habits, like the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school: tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, like their room.
• Teenagers: involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs heaviest. Agree how they keep in touch and when they see their friends again.

In New Zealand the state school is free for a domestic student. Whether your child is one depends on your visa. With a residence visa it's arranged. On a work visa your child needs a student visa of their own. Otherwise you pay fees as an international student.

Who learns the language, and when? In New Zealand everything is in English. For a skilled residence visa your partner and children aged 16 and over must speak English too. If they don't reach the score, you can buy English lessons in New Zealand instead. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and precisely that partner has no colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

With a target date you see whether your planning is feasible. Set a date by which you want to have left. That date isn't fixed. But everything that comes after this has a lead time, and you can only judge it against a date. Finding a job takes months, a pet six months, a container two months.

Vertrekklaar works out for you whether it fits, and says so honestly if it doesn't. Shifting is always allowed. The date is yours, not the tool's.