I spent the last year living in Australia and the biggest surprise wasn't the cost of living — it was how much money I wasted on the move itself because nobody tells you the real order of operations.

A few things I wish someone told me before I booked anything:

• Flights: booking direct from your home country is almost always more expensive than routing through a stopover hub. The difference can be hundreds of dollars on the same week.

• Visa timing: your visa grant date starts a clock you don't want running before you've got housing sorted — most people get this backwards and burn weeks of it in a hotel.

• First job: the "no experience, no job / no job, no experience" loop is real, but there's a specific way locals get around it that most guides don't mention.

• Housing. getting your accommodation sorted before you even arrive can save you thousands

I put everything I learned (flights, visa order, housing, landing your first job) into one guide so people don't have to make the same expensive mistakes I did: https://whop.com/checkout/plan_lLfNhe4u6iyxN

Happy to answer questions here if anyone's planning the move.