Jet-set skills: live locally, work globally

You meet these people at parties. They wear designer jeans and Merrell trainers, carry laptops like handbags and talk about international airports as if they are their second homes.

As you chat, it emerges that while they reside in New Zealand, they work for employers in the US, the UK or Japan.

They seem to have the best of both worlds. They live here, enjoying the beaches, the open space and all the L&P they can drink. But they fund this fabulous lifestyle so envied by the rest of the world with regular fat cheques in US dollars, pounds sterling or euros.

Who would turn that down? In most cases, these are highly skilled people who have made a name for themselves. Their employers have set them up on contracts where they work remotely from this country and continue their jobs.

Tony Coyle is one of these fortunate creatures. The 34-year-old rode the internet boom in the UK, and now he and his British partner are back in New Zealand.

Coyle designs internet applications - "the code behind websites" - for an internet design agency in England. While he does this, his partner is setting up six accommodation units and a clubhouse in bush near Helena Bay on the road to Russell.

On the hourly rate Coyle is paid from the UK, he reckons, he earns a third more than he would if he were working here.

Coyle, who has been away from New Zealand for ten years, is in the right job for this kind of remote work.

"We do the odd bit of Skype-calling. We haven't needed to resort to video chatting yet.

"I am lucky I have the skills to do this work from afar," he says. "I was lucky having a client in the UK. They were quite supportive, not to say a bit jealous, when I told them my plan."

Thanks to the time difference between here and England, Coyle can provide the technological group with a slick overnight service.

"I work three to four days full time, sometimes two to three hours a day, and through the weekend as well. Sometimes something needs to be investigated; I get a list of its requirements, and I'm working on it from 7am my time. If something needs to be troubleshot I can work on it overnight for them. It works really well."

He seems to have done things in textbook style. It is far more difficult trying to establish overseas work when based in New Zealand. It is all about the relationships you have at the time you are leaving your overseas home.

Wisely, Coyle is making inroads in the local market, as well. If something happened with the UK company, "a good portion of my income could disappear overnight. I need to augment it a little bit more locally", he says.

The motivation to work abroad from New Zealand is not necessarily all financially-driven. For some, there are simply not the jobs for their skills here, so they create their own solutions, drawing on the overseas networks they know.

British businessman Richard Newell worked as a professional writer for 20 years. Prior to moving to New Zealand five years ago, he was a director of a UK funds management company. He now runs his own consultancy focused on helping clients develop their business in Asia.

The large bulk of his income comes from clients in Asia. "It has been a case of building a business on the back of my contacts overseas."

Newell, who is advised by his accountant wife, is a tax resident here.

Of course, if you are going to work internationally from New Zealand, you do have to invest in travelling to see clients. Newell spends a week of every month in Asia and goes home to England fairly regularly. "I can see how New Zealand is not the natural place to be based to do international work," he says.

Some critics might say that if people don't resume a career in New Zealand, they are not necessarily committing to the country, but Newell, who has young children, says: "This is not a temporary thing."

Another by-product of working purely for overseas companies from New Zealand is you don't re-integrate with social and business networks here, and this can make settling into a life here more difficult.

Katrina and Rob Fowler have mixed feeling about their new New Zealand life since they arrived back from high flying jobs in New York.

Although both have found work locally - Katrina is a lawyer, Rob a creative ad director - they are finding the work fed to them by their former US contacts too good to turn down. As they both have green cards, it suits them to be working for American companies at this point. They have also kept their apartment in New York and visit the city every year for a couple of months to see work and social contacts.

Katrina Fowler's life has not changed enormously since transplanting here.

With two young children, she was working from home in New York as a legal consultant, and she rarely saw her bosses then, so she says there is very little difference going over contracts from her home in the Eastern Bays. "I would just email contracts. Even though I was there, I rarely saw them.

"For me it has been super easy. If I am at work by 8.30am, then we have two or two-and-a-half hours time that overlap, which is useful." On average she works 15-20 hours a week and does some legal consulting on the side.

"With the exchange rate as it is, I am getting really well paid for what I do," she says.

Rob is a freelance creative director and is working largely for US advertising agencies, although he has worked for companies here, too.

The couple pay their taxes in the US because of their green cards. "Politically, we would rather pay taxes here, but selfishly we want to keep our taxes there."

They have bank accounts there to which they have direct access from New Zealand.

You may ask what they are contributing to the economy here, but Katrina answers: "We spend all our money here." And they are looking to buy a bigger house in Auckland.

Another argument for working remotely in New Zealand is that you are less exposed as a contractor when the local economy deteriorates.

For Maria Scott, a Christchurch-based financial journalist who has pursued a successful career in the UK for a number of years, says she still gets about half her freelance income from the UK. She has just received £1200, close to $3600, for a 3500 word article she would receive $1200 for here. She has been back in the country for 18 months, time enough to make good local contacts, so she does both.

"You can spread your risk by working in two markets," she says.

Diana Clement is another former London-based journalist who still writes for British magazines. The rates and the strength of the pound make it a no-brainer. She is writing a piece at the moment which would earn her $560 from a New Zealand newspaper. Writing it for a second-tier British magazine, she will receive the equivalent of $1015 for it.

Clement has her website listed on a number of UK websites and has a British phone number which redirects to wherever she is in the world. As she puts it, working for overseas publications is worth getting out of bed for, literally.