No more LAFHA

One luxury to being an expat here in Australia is the ability to claim LAFHA every month. LAFHA is a government funded allowance for people living away from home. Basically, it helps subsidize your food and rent expenses thereby giving you more money in your paycheck. Since Adam works for a very large global consulting firm, he was unable to get this allowance (we were super bummed). However, once I got my new job for a much smaller company, I was able to obtain it with such ease. Within one paycheck cycle I noticed an increase in my salary which was not from my company.

It has been great benefiting from this for the last 11 months but to my sadness it has come to pass that as of July 2012,  this allowance will no longer be given to expats living in Australia without PR (permanent residency).  Many people on the same 457 Visa as myself claim they are eligible based on the fact that we normally reside overseas but are living in Australia for work. Just in the past year the amount of active 457 Visas in Australia doubled to 9,000. That means there are going to be 9,000 people just as unhappy as me.