When we looked at the points required in 2005 for New Zealand, we noticed with a shock that about a month after we first looked and saw we didn’t qualify, New Zealand Immigration Service had dropped the points to a point where we easily qualified . This meant that we could have been living in New Zealand years ago.

But things happen for a reason – our business was just starting to find it’s feet at that stage and we still had a few important business lessons to learn before we could leave. If we had left at that stage, it would have been financial suicide.

What a good feeling it was for me to have the opportunity to apply for a country I wanted to go to AND Mel was now finally standing next to me in the queue and just as happy to be in the queue.

Now I am a very thorough person and when I am enthusiastic about something there is no stopping me. We then spent the next few months researching everything we could about New Zealand to see if it would be a place we would want to live in.

As we had decided that we would rather save as much money as possible for when we arrive, we decided against a Look, See and Decice (LSD) trip. This is obviously a risk, but we have done more research than into this than than for anything else we have done before so are pretty confident with the decision.