My H has been slowly progressing through an interview process for a job in the US. He would love the the job but we've been unsure how we would make the whole thing work if he was successful, due to us having a baby due in November.
He has just started emailing a HR lady to discuss the logistics of the job- moving, expected salary etc before they consider flying him over for a final interview and she just said they would be happy to push out a start date to February next year at the latest. So our baby would be 3 months old then- suddenly it is all starting to feel in the realm of 'doable'.
But what now? What else should we consider? Who has made/considered such a move and what do you think is important?
Some considerations:
- This is not an expat job so we don't think it carries a high salary- we would need a salary that supports a family plus covers some of our mortgage back home
- Will have to organise renting out our house
- Is moving OS with an almost 3 year old and a 3 month old madness?
Last edited by meow; August 11th, 2010 at 12:52 PM.
: typos
I don't think that moving OS with children is madness whatever their age. You can get a relocation company to take care of heaps of the logistics. My brother's company provides a relocation as part of his package - if he moves into their accommodation they hook up utilities and so on. If he arranges his own housing they just provide removalists.
Renting your house isn't really very hard and you can get an agent to do it.
You might need to consider education and health expenses - can your children access free education in the States or do you have to pay even for a public school? Health insurance is a biggy in the US because of the cost of health care.
What will you do with your furniture? Move it to the US? Sell it? Store it?
Do you have pets?
You're right about education... I've been wondering about that. We're thinking in many ways now is a good time to go because we don't really want to go for a long time and this way we'll probably move back before our eldest starts school anyway. But I do need to look into kindergartens and occasional care options.
The company pays relocation- they will move everything including our car if we want and they give us a real estate agent to help us find a place. Think they pay temp accomodation in the meantime then too. Only problem is we would have to pay to move it all back so we think we would sell the car and only move over furniture that we're happy to leave there when we're done.
We do have a cat... what to do about her? Will have to look into how long she would be in quarantine I guess.
Ah yes- health care! A biggie with any US job huh?!
Health care is a BIG consideration... although, get your DH to find out what's covered by his new employer, as that seems to be your ticket over there.
You probably wouldn't want to move your car, given that they drive on the other side of the road. Import cars can be the biggest headache in the world to insure, so think that through as well. Might work out better to sell your car here, then hook yourself up with a new one over there.
It's only madness if you think it will be madness. I don't really see why you couldn't do it. You'd just need to be fairly organised and have good contingency plans. I thinnk you'd be fine.
Yeah moving the car seems a bit dumb to be honest- it would be all wrong on their roads!
I guess I'm just remembering how hard the first few months were after my son was born and I'm wondering if trying to move at that point would just be a huge nightmare. And organised is NOT my middle name Then again- I'm good at pre-planning and research so can be fairly organised and I'm also good at going with the flow so I think we could make it work.
Will have to see where to from here I guess. Getting a little excited and there's no actual job offer yet! We don't know what the corporate culture towards work/life balance is yet either and we don't want to move to a job where my H is expected to work long hours.
Moving OS with a family- what to consider?
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