· NextMigrate Team
Eighteen Months, Line by Line: What One Family's Move Cost and When Each Fee Fell Due
Migrating with a family of four costs money in about fourteen separate transactions spread across roughly eighteen months, in three or four different currencies, and the headline total hides the part that breaks budgets. The timing is the problem. The ledger below tracks one anonymised household of two working adults and two school-age children moving from South Asia to Canada on a skilled route without a job offer. Their process costs, meaning tests, assessments, certificates, translations, medicals and government fees, came to roughly US$6,000 equivalent spread across eighteen months. Flights, insurance and the first two months on the ground added about US$12,700 equivalent, so the cash they actually handed to anyone was close to US$18,800 equivalent. Alongside that sat a settlement-funds balance of the order of CA$28,000, a figure published by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for a household of four, which had to exist, be genuinely theirs, and stay untouched from month ten until landing. Counting that balance, the household had to be able to control something in the region of US$39,000 to US$45,000 equivalent at once, and roughly half of that was never spent on the move at all.
The largest single month matters more than the annual total. For this household the worst month demanded roughly US$3,450 in a four-week window, and it arrived at the point when their savings were already committed to a settlement-funds balance they were forbidden to touch. Every figure below is a planning figure taken from a worked example, published fee schedules move, and none of these amounts should be treated as current. Confirm each one on the issuing authority's own current page before you budget.
This article is general information about how migration costs are sequenced. It does not constitute legal or immigration advice about your situation, and no figure here is a quote. A licensed or registered immigration adviser, meaning someone listed on the public register kept by the regulator in your destination, should confirm what your own case requires before you spend money.
What this ledger covers
The ledger is a worked planning example. It is assembled from published fee structures: IRCC for the government charges, the test providers IRCC designates for language testing, the organisations IRCC designates to issue educational credential assessments, and the IRCC panel physician network for medicals. Those structures are arranged into a realistic eighteen-month sequence for one composite household. Treat it as a shape rather than a case file. It shows which fees cluster, which months are quiet, which month hurts, and how long the money has to sit still.
Treat every amount as a planning order of magnitude. Three things move these numbers underneath you:
- Authority fee revisions. IRCC revises permanent residence and biometrics fees periodically. Australia's Department of Home Affairs has typically revised visa application charges at the start of its financial year on 1 July. UK Visas and Immigration revises application fees and the Immigration Health Surcharge on its own schedule. Each of those authorities publishes its own current fee page, and reading it the week you plan to pay is the only reliable method.
- Exchange rates. Most of these costs are set in the destination currency and paid from a home-currency account. A ten percent currency move over eighteen months changes the home-currency total materially.
- Your own household. Family size multiplies almost every row. Two adults and two children is roughly four times the biometrics, four times the medicals, four times the police certificate work for adults, and a settlement-funds figure meaningfully higher than a single applicant's.
Who this route is for
The pattern in this ledger fits a specific kind of applicant, and it is worth checking you are one before you use it as a budget.
- Skilled workers applying without a job offer, where the settlement-funds requirement bites hardest and the timeline is longest.
- Households where both adults have degrees or trade qualifications, because assessing both adults costs more and takes longer, though it can raise the points score.
- Applicants who have lived in more than one country, so police certificates are needed from several issuing bodies with different turnarounds and fees.
- Families with children under eighteen, where medicals, biometrics and the settlement-funds figure all scale with headcount.
- People paying in a currency that is weak, controlled, or both, where getting money out is its own separate problem worth solving before you book anything.
If you have an employer sponsoring you, a relocation package, or a route where the settlement-funds test is waived, your ledger looks nothing like this one. The single largest line here disappears entirely, and the timeline compresses. If you work in a regulated health profession, add a second ledger on top of this one: our costing of what bridging and adaptation programmes actually cost, including the months you cannot earn prices the regulator fees, exams, placement living costs and lost income that sit outside the visa bill.
What you need before you start budgeting
Before you can build a ledger of your own, you need six inputs, and five of them are dates rather than amounts.
- The current fee schedule for your specific route and stream, taken from the authority's own site, with the date you read it written next to each figure.
- The settlement-funds figure for your exact household size. For Canada, IRCC publishes a proof-of-funds table by family size and updates it annually against the low income cut-off published by Statistics Canada, so take the number from that table and note the date you read it, along with how long the balance must be demonstrably held. Our guide to proof-of-funds seasoning covers what "held" actually means in evidence terms.
- The published turnaround for each assessing body you will use, because these set the sequence more than the fees do. Our reference on skills assessment timelines by assessing body is the starting point.
- The list of countries you and your spouse have lived in long enough to need a police certificate, with each issuing body's fee and turnaround.
- Your language test result date, because the validity clock starts there and constrains everything downstream.
- The exchange rate your bank or transfer provider will actually give you, which sits below the mid-market rate you see quoted.
The ledger: months one to six
Month one in this example is the month the household decided to apply, and every row is dated by when the money actually left their account.
| Month | Line item | Paid in | Approximate amount | Notes on timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Language test booking, main applicant | Home currency | US$250 equivalent | An IRCC-designated English test such as IELTS General Training or CELPIP-General; fee set by the test provider |
| 1 | Language test booking, spouse | Home currency | US$250 equivalent | Both adults tested, to keep spouse points open |
| 2 | Language test sat, no cash | None | Nil | Results issued roughly two weeks later |
| 3 | Language test retake, main applicant | Home currency | US$250 equivalent | One band short on writing on the first sitting |
| 3 | Credential assessment fee, main applicant | Destination currency | US$220 equivalent | Paid direct to an IRCC-designated credential assessment organisation, each of which sets its own fee |
| 3 | University transcript and document dispatch | Home currency | US$90 equivalent | Sent by the university, not by the applicant |
| 4 | Credential assessment fee, spouse | Destination currency | US$220 equivalent | Second assessment, needed for spouse points |
| 4 | Courier costs, documents to assessing bodies | Home currency | US$120 equivalent | Two international courier consignments |
| 5 | Document attestation and notarisation | Home currency | US$180 equivalent | Home-country attestation chain |
| 6 | Certified translations, first batch | Home currency | US$310 equivalent | Degrees, transcripts, marriage and birth certificates |
Total cash out in the first six months: roughly US$1,890 equivalent. Almost all of it was paid in the home currency, and almost all of it was optional in the sense that the family could have stopped at any point and lost only what they had spent. This is the cheap half of the process, and it is also the half where most of the elapsed time goes.
The retake in month three is the row worth studying. A single band short on one component cost another test fee and pushed the whole sequence back roughly six weeks, because the credential assessment and the profile submission were both waiting on a final score. A retake is common enough that budgeting for one sitting per adult is optimistic. Budget for a retake, and treat not needing it as a saving.
The ledger: months seven to twelve
| Month | Line item | Paid in | Approximate amount | Notes on timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 | Profile created, no fee at this stage | None | Nil | Points profile submitted and entered the pool |
| 8 | Police certificate, country of residence, two adults | Home currency | US$60 equivalent | Fast turnaround locally |
| 8 | Police certificate, second country, one adult | Second country currency | US$85 equivalent | Applied by post from abroad, ten-week turnaround |
| 9 | Police certificate, third country, one adult | Third country currency | US$70 equivalent | Required a consular appointment and fingerprints |
| 9 | Fingerprint capture for the overseas certificate | Home currency | US$45 equivalent | Local police station, receipted |
| 10 | Settlement funds moved into a single account | Home currency | CA$28,000 equivalent, not spent | Money became untouchable from this date |
| 10 | Bank letter and certified statements | Home currency | US$40 equivalent | Reissued twice over the following months |
| 11 | Certified translations, second batch | Home currency | US$190 equivalent | Police certificates and bank letters |
| 12 | Invitation received, no fee at this stage | None | Nil | IRCC's window to submit the full application opened; confirm its current length with IRCC |
Cash actually spent in months seven to twelve: roughly US$490 equivalent. The line that dominates the half-year is the one where nothing was spent at all. In month ten the family assembled a settlement-funds balance in the region of CA$28,000 equivalent for a household of four and then did not touch it. That money still belonged to them. It was simply unavailable, and it stayed unavailable through every fee that followed.
The three police certificates are the other timing lesson. One took days, one took roughly ten weeks by post, and one required a consular appointment before the certificate could even be requested. The fees were trivial. The turnarounds were the constraint, and they had to be started before the invitation arrived, because a submission window measured in weeks will not accommodate a ten-week certificate. Our guide to police certificates for every country you have lived in sets out how to work out which ones you need.
The ledger: months thirteen to eighteen
| Month | Line item | Paid in | Approximate amount | Notes on timing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | Immigration medical examinations, four people | Home currency | US$620 equivalent | An IRCC panel physician, who sets their own fee; adults typically priced above children |
| 13 | Government application and processing fees, four people | Destination currency | US$1,900 equivalent | IRCC permanent residence application and processing fees, paid in a single online transaction |
| 13 | Right of permanent residence fees, two adults | Destination currency | US$800 equivalent | IRCC charges this fee for adults; dependent children are exempt |
| 13 | Biometrics, family rate | Destination currency | US$130 equivalent | IRCC applies a family maximum for biometrics |
| 14 | Travel to the visa application centre, four people | Home currency | US$180 equivalent | Overnight trip, nearest centre was not local |
| 15 | Reissued bank letter and updated statements | Home currency | US$40 equivalent | Requested during processing |
| 17 | Confirmation issued, no fee at this stage | None | Nil | Landing deadline tied to the medical validity date; confirm how yours is calculated with IRCC |
| 17 | One-way flights, four people, with excess baggage | Destination currency | US$4,100 equivalent | Booked five weeks out |
| 17 | Travel and interim health insurance, four people | Home currency | US$420 equivalent | Cover until provincial health insurance begins; some provinces apply a waiting period, so check with the province |
| 18 | Temporary accommodation, first month | Destination currency | US$2,600 equivalent | Furnished short let while searching |
| 18 | Rental deposit and first month on a permanent lease | Destination currency | US$3,400 equivalent | Paid in the arrival month |
| 18 | Household setup, phones, transit, winter clothing | Destination currency | US$2,200 equivalent | Coats and boots for four people |
Cash out in months thirteen to eighteen: roughly US$16,390 equivalent. From here the ledger behaves as a cash-flow problem more than as a list of fees.
Month thirteen alone required roughly US$3,450 in one four-week window, in destination currency, at exactly the point where CA$28,000 was sitting in an account the family could not draw on. The settlement funds were doing their job by existing, and the fees had to come from somewhere else. Families who plan a single total and assume the settlement funds double as the fee budget discover this in month thirteen, when the medicals, the government fees and the biometrics all fall due together.
Month eighteen is worse in absolute terms and easier psychologically, because by then the settlement funds have been released to do what they were always for. The family spent roughly US$8,200 in their first weeks on the ground, and that is with a furnished short let rather than a hotel and with no car.
What it costs: the totals, grouped by what the money does
| Category | Approximate total | Currency it was mostly paid in | When it fell due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language tests, including one retake | US$750 equivalent | Home currency | Months 1 to 3 |
| Credential assessments, two adults | US$440 equivalent | Destination currency | Months 3 to 4 |
| Documents, translations, attestation, courier | US$890 equivalent | Home currency | Months 3 to 11 |
| Police certificates, three countries | US$260 equivalent | Three currencies | Months 8 to 9 |
| Medicals, four people | US$620 equivalent | Home currency | Month 13 |
| Government fees and biometrics | US$2,830 equivalent | Destination currency | Month 13 |
| Travel to appointments, bank letters | US$260 equivalent | Home currency | Months 14 to 15 |
| Process subtotal | US$6,050 equivalent | Mixed | Spread over 15 months |
| Flights and insurance, four people | US$4,520 equivalent | Mostly destination currency | Month 17 |
| First two months abroad | US$8,200 equivalent | Destination currency | Month 18 onward |
| Cash actually spent | US$18,770 equivalent | Mixed | 18 months |
| Settlement funds held, never spent | CA$28,000 equivalent, per IRCC's published table for four people | Held in home currency | Months 10 to 18 |
The process subtotal is the number people ask about, and it is the smallest of the three blocks. The first two months abroad cost more than the entire immigration process. The settlement funds cost nothing at all and constrain everything.
Compare this shape against our broader breakdown of the true cost of migrating abroad if you want country-by-country ranges instead of one household's sequence.
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Start the free assessment →Here is the honest part. This route may not work for you, and the ledger is how you find that out early. If your household cannot assemble the settlement-funds figure and hold it untouched for several months, a no-job-offer skilled route is closed to you until that changes, and no amount of paperwork skill substitutes. If your occupation is not on the relevant skilled list, the ledger never starts. If your points score sits well below recent cutoffs and the only lever you have is a language retake you have already taken twice, the honest answer is to look at employer-sponsored routes where savings tests are waived, or at a different destination, before you spend another test fee. Our free eligibility assessment matches your occupation, your household, your documents and your savings against the routes that actually fit, and it will tell you when the answer is that this one does not.
How long it takes
Eighteen months is a middle case for a family on a no-job-offer skilled route, and the elapsed time splits unevenly between the parts you control and the parts you do not.
- Months one to six are yours. Tests, assessments and documents move at the speed you push them. A family that starts both credential assessments in month one instead of months three and four saves real time.
- Months seven to twelve belong to the pool. Waiting for an invitation is outside your control entirely. It can be weeks or it can be much longer, and it depends on your score against cutoffs that move.
- Months thirteen to seventeen belong to the authority. Most authorities publish processing time as a service standard, which remains an estimate that individual cases exceed. IRCC publishes processing times by route and updates them, so confirm the current figure on IRCC's own page the week you need it.
- Month eighteen is a deadline. Once a confirmation of permanent residence is issued, the landing deadline is generally tied to the expiry of the immigration medical, which means the medicals paid for in month thirteen quietly set the date the family had to be on a plane. Confirm with IRCC how your own deadline is calculated before you book anything.
Households that finish faster usually did one thing: they started the long-turnaround items first. The overseas police certificate and the credential assessments have turnarounds measured in months and fees measured in hundreds. The medicals and government fees have turnarounds measured in days and fees measured in thousands. Sequence accordingly.
Where to verify every figure
Do not budget from this article. Budget from these pages, read the week you plan to pay.
| What you are checking | Authority to check with | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent residence and biometrics fees, Canada | IRCC | Fee schedule revised periodically |
| Settlement funds by family size, Canada | IRCC | Re-published annually against the low income cut-off from Statistics Canada |
| Visa application charges, Australia | Department of Home Affairs | Typically revised at the start of the financial year on 1 July |
| Application fees and health surcharge, UK | UK Visas and Immigration | Revised on its own schedule, charged per person per year |
| Nursing registration and English requirements | The Nursing and Midwifery Council for the UK, Ahpra and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia | Registration standards and fees revised independently of visa fees |
| Recognition of foreign qualifications, Germany | The Anerkennung in Deutschland portal, run by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), which points you to the competent recognition body | Procedure and fees vary by profession and by federal state |
| Skilled migrant settings, New Zealand | Immigration New Zealand | Route settings and fees revised periodically |
| Departure clearance, Philippines | The Department of Migrant Workers | Applies to overseas Filipino workers; clearance requirements and fees are set separately from the visa |
| Emigration clearance, India | The Ministry of External Affairs, through the eMigrate portal | Applies to holders of ECR-endorsed passports travelling to notified destinations |
Every figure in this article is a planning figure. Every figure on those pages is the one you pay.
When this does not work
There are four situations where a ledger like this one is the wrong tool, and recognising yours saves you the first US$2,000.
Your savings cannot survive the freeze. The settlement-funds balance has to exist and stay still. If assembling it means borrowing, or if you will need to spend it during the wait, the route fails at month ten regardless of how good your paperwork is. IRCC requires proof-of-funds money to be available, unencumbered and not borrowed, so a borrowed lump sum can sink an otherwise strong application. Confirm the current wording of the requirement on IRCC's own page.
Your currency cannot get out. In countries with capital controls or thin foreign-exchange access, the destination-currency payments in month thirteen and month seventeen are a harder problem than the amounts suggest. Plan the mechanism before you plan the amount.
Your occupation is the constraint. If your occupation sits outside the skilled lists that matter for your destination, no ledger helps. That is a route-selection problem, and it is worth solving before you book a language test.
You need to arrive sooner than eighteen months. If a family situation, a visa expiry elsewhere or a job start date sets a hard date within a year, a no-job-offer skilled route is a poor fit and an employer-sponsored route with a shorter clock deserves a look, even if it pays less at first.
A note on who you pay
Every payment in this ledger went either to a government body, an assessing body, a test provider, a panel physician, a translator, a courier or an airline. None went to an agent, and none went to anyone promising an outcome. That is the default you should hold to.
Concretely, treat these as stop signs:
- Anyone charging you a fee for a job offer. In Canada, an employer may not recover the labour market impact assessment processing fee from a worker, a rule administered by Employment and Social Development Canada, and several other destinations prohibit charging workers for sponsorship. Check the rule for your destination with its labour or immigration authority before money changes hands.
- Guaranteed visa promises. No adviser controls an authority's decision, so a guarantee is a sales line.
- Payment to a personal account. Legitimate firms invoice and receive payment to a business account. A request to send money to an individual's account or wallet is the single clearest warning sign.
- Unregistered advisers. Immigration advice is regulated in most destinations, and the regulators publish searchable registers: the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants in Canada, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority in Australia, and the Immigration Advice Authority in the UK, which took over the role previously held by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner. Search the register for the individual's name before you pay, and remember that a company name on a website tells you nothing about whether a registered practitioner works there.
- Pressure to pay today. Fee revision dates are real, but an adviser who cannot show you the authority page behind the deadline they are quoting is manufacturing urgency.
Our guide to how to check a migration agent is licensed walks through the registers themselves.
Common mistakes
Budgeting one total instead of a schedule. A family that saves the correct grand total and hits month thirteen with it all locked in the settlement account still cannot pay. Build the schedule, then save against the schedule.
Assuming one language test sitting. Retakes are common and cheap relative to the delay they cause. Budget two sittings per adult and be pleased when you need one.
Ordering medicals early. Medicals have short validity and, on many routes, set the landing deadline. Paying for four medicals before the authority asks for them can mean paying for four medicals twice.
Forgetting the second adult. Assessing a spouse's credentials and testing their English costs money and takes time, and it is often the cheapest available points. Decide deliberately, and price it in from month one.
Treating the arrival month as an afterthought. In this ledger the first two months abroad cost more than every fee combined. Deposits, a short let, winter clothing for four and the gap before the first pay run are the largest block in the whole exercise.
Pricing in the wrong currency. Fees set in destination currency and paid from a home-currency account move with the exchange rate over eighteen months. Add a margin, and never sit exactly on the settlement-funds threshold, because the assessment converts at the rate on the day it is read.
Letting a document expire mid-process. Language results, skills assessments and police certificates all have clocks. The overlap between them is the real scheduling problem, and it is what turns a fifteen-month process into a twenty-two-month one.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it really cost to immigrate with family?
For a family of four on a skilled route without a job offer, plan on process costs in the region of US$6,000 to US$9,000 equivalent, a settlement-funds balance that must exist and stay untouched of the order of CA$28,000 for Canada as published by IRCC for a household of four, or the equivalent figure set by your destination, and US$8,000 to US$13,000 equivalent for flights, insurance and the first two months on the ground. In this ledger the cash actually handed over came to roughly US$18,800 equivalent, and a realistic planning band is US$15,000 to US$20,000. The sum you must be able to control at one time is considerably higher, because the settlement funds sit on top. Every one of those figures is a planning figure. Confirm the fee and settlement-funds numbers with the destination authority, and have a registered adviser check them against your own household, before you commit savings.
Which single month costs the most during the process?
The month you submit the full application, because the government fees, the right of permanent residence fees, the biometrics and the medicals for every household member usually fall inside the same few weeks. In this ledger that month required roughly US$3,450 in destination currency. It also arrives at the point when your settlement funds are least available, which is why it catches people.
Can I use the settlement funds to pay the visa fees?
Not without risk. The settlement-funds balance is assessed as available and unencumbered, and many routes expect to see it held steadily. Drawing it down to pay fees can leave you below the threshold on the day an officer converts and checks the balance. Keep the fee money in a separate account from the funds you are demonstrating.
Do children cost as much as adults?
Less, and unevenly. Panel physicians typically price children's medicals below adult medicals, IRCC applies a family maximum to biometrics, and IRCC charges the right of permanent residence fee for adults while exempting dependent children. Against that, every child raises the settlement-funds figure, adds a flight, and adds to the setup costs on arrival. Check the per-dependant add-ons on the authority's own current table.
How far ahead should I move the settlement funds into place?
Earlier than feels necessary. Routes differ on how long a balance must be demonstrably held, and evidence of a sudden large deposit shortly before applying invites questions about its origin. Move the money in early, leave it alone, and keep a clear paper trail for anything that was gifted. Our guide to proof-of-funds seasoning covers the evidence standard.
What happens to the ledger if my application is refused?
The process costs are gone. The settlement funds survive intact, because that money was never spent. That asymmetry is worth holding onto while you decide whether to apply: your genuine downside is the process subtotal of roughly US$6,000 equivalent, while the balance you were asked to demonstrate remains yours. A refusal also creates a disclosure obligation on future applications, which is its own problem to handle carefully.
Is eighteen months typical, or was this household slow?
Eighteen months is a reasonable middle case for a family applying without a job offer. Households move faster when they start the long-turnaround items in parallel in month one, and slower when a language retake, an overseas police certificate or a request for updated documents lands in the middle. The parts you control are roughly the first six months. The rest belongs to a pool and a processing queue.
The bottom line
The total cost of migrating with a family is a schedule with a shape: a long cheap tail of tests and documents, one expensive month when the government fees and medicals land together, a large sum that must sit still and do nothing for half a year, and an arrival month that costs more than the entire application. Write your own version of the table above with real dates and your own currencies, and the vague dread turns into a savings plan with deadlines on it.
If the exercise shows that your savings cannot survive the freeze, or that your occupation is the real constraint, that is a useful answer and it is better to have it now than in month thirteen. Take the free eligibility assessment and it will match your occupation, your household size, your documents and your savings against the routes that actually fit, including the ones where the settlement-funds test does not apply. If it tells you this route is not yours, we would rather say so than watch you spend the first US$2,000 finding out. If you want the ledger written out for your own case, with the order, the months, the currencies and the authority page behind every figure, the personal migration roadmap is $499, down from $999, started with a $99 deposit and the balance settled afterwards.
