Any tips from British Re-Pats on moving back?
I'm seriously considering a move back around 2008 so I have plenty of time to prepare but I'd be interested in your views on what should or should not happen between now and then.
How did you find a job? How long did it take you?
How did you deal with moving? Did you just sell/abandon stuff here?
Where did you plan on living? How about transport?
What do you miss most from USA?
What are you glad of the most in UK?
Was it easy to adjust back?
If you are dual citizen, how much of a pain is it doing a tax return for US each year?
That kind of stuff and anything else you can think of.
Thanks!
Wouldn't mind sharing in this. We're moving back in a couple of years too. It's been a couple of years for a couple of years now, but we're trying to catch up before we start preparing ;o)
Wouldn't mind sharing in this. We're moving back in a couple of years too. It's been a couple of years for a couple of years now, but we're trying to catch up before we start preparing ;o)
Me too, we are moving around that time and looking into Surrey or Sussex-where I used to live. I have a question-sorry to be off topic, as fas as I know for university admission, to be classified as resident of the U.K or E.U, a person needs to be living there 3 years prior to applying, is there any other way to make this happen? Like having banking accounts, tax return and so on. My daughter will be 15 next year and I want her to finish her studies in England, does anyone know anything about this???
I wish I could help you more on this! :wink:
Ok, I'll ramble on awhile and hopefully I'll hit some of the points.
I didn't have a job lined up when I moved back, and neither did my wife. We were prepared to use some savings for a little while, and to except that we may have to do some 6 motnh temp work at first. I'm working for a financial company at the moment that I got through an agency. It's ok pay and it gives us breathing room to really find what we want in this area. My wife just got here and is therefore able to look for a very decent job. Maybe I'm not the best to say how long it took to get a job because all I was looking for was a minimum of £16,000 to pay the rent and bills whilst I looked for something else. From what I know of you Pilgrim you'd have little trouble getting a good job if not the ideal one at first.
I personally didn't deal with moving - I just got on a plane which was quite unfair to my wife really. She packed everything up (shipped some stuff by UPS, books by PO M-bags) and had a few yard sales to sell the stuff we couldn't use or didn't want. An important thing for us is we aren't big consumers so selling things wasn't too hard. Selling the cars was annoying though - it took longer than we thought. As for picking a place to live - I did think we'd be living in South Wales because I'd been sort of promised a job there. But when that fell through shortly before I moved we picked Bristol on a map. Seemed the nicest city in the South of England to live around for work and lifestyle. I don't drive here and use buses and trains which are very decent here.
I miss familiarity about the US. Alot of the things I remember about the UK are no more, and the supposedly superior culture we claim in the UK is simply not the case. TV and radio is just as bad if not worse, politics is less annoying because it's not all about abortion/marriage, the BBC has turned into CNN but run by the Guardian, and Tesco has lost all its charm. However, the familiar piss-taking of people is still here, the diversity of entertainment is here, public services are available (if quite often poorly performing) and life just seems less stressful. I no longer feel like a cog in the wheel that must perform for America's sake. Less Stakhanovite in other words. Adjusting was easy in the sense that living in the UK has always been easy. But it is quite shocking how different things are now, how stark those changes are, and now how ill-informed everyone seems to be regards the US. No matter what kind of progressive you may be, it will annoy the shit out of you the amount of stories you'll hear/see about people who pissed away £16,000 on credit cards and what is the government going to do about it because it's not my fault God damn it.
As for tax - I'm not a dual citizen but I have to fill one out anyway cuz I married an American. I don't want to - in fact I resent very much having to. I was never fully afforded the rights of an American and now they require me to do things for them. My children must be registered as Americans once they're born in the UK or it causes all sorts of problems in later life. Not my choice to make for my children but I don't believe it is the US governments' decision either.
The things that will piss you off when you get here are banking, utilities, phone lines and things like that - it's mostly relative to where you move I suppose. Getting a BT phone line was abitch. The banking thing is a must to sort out before you move. HSBC were great as they did it all for us. At first the guy we spoke to said it was for wealthier clients, but after we told him to keep digging he realised it's not exclusive. Just do the reading yourself and you'll be satisfied. If you have pets, get them microchipped and make sure the paperwork is correct. Vets don't know because it's not that common really.
All in all I'm glad to be back - I'm not a British nationalist but I feel like I belong here if only for the time being. At least I know how thick my accent is now - nobody thinks I'm English and no matter how much I tell them they sort of reject that as absurd (think Lawrence on the Nigel/Lawrence radio shows a while back). I do miss the US but in that unexplainable way some people miss the UK. I just do.
Hope that's a good start.
Thanks Bungle - that's very good food for thought.
Thanks Bungle, that was really helpful, not that we're likely to be moving back anytime soon but a girl can dream wink
Now we need Ameriscot and Nell to give us some feed back too.
Those of you that are planning to return, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you with a jealousy that knows no end - sorry did I say that out loud wink
I don't feel it will be easy but it seems "time". I will have spent a decade here but it's never been home and now I am seeing less and less advantage to stay here.
I feel a need to be closer to my family - my parents are getting older and my dad had a very serious accident last week. He's fine now but it was a scare and I know I will be very unhappy later if I don't take advantage of him being around now.
I also had my sister over here last week with her husband and they are very supportive. My friends are all students (graduate or undergraduate) but they will all move away within the next few years and I don't feel like being stuck here on my own some more.
As far as family goes, I don't know if I will be close to mine by moving back. I don't want to live in the same region as they do, which leaves occasional road trips and phone calls. Earlier this year I signed up for Vonage and got a local UK phone number for my mum to call me whenever she wanted. Seems they burn up all their local service minutes on internet dialup...
Since putting the UK phone number on we have had 2 wrong numbers, the telco I work for used it to test international calls, and our former exchange student from Germany used it to call us as it was cheaper than calling transatlantic.
*sigh*
Mothers. Can't live with 'em, can't get born without 'em.
Oh yeah - if you can, get some of your medical records. What with the sterling service offered by the NHS it isn't helped by saying, "no I've been taking those for 4 years" and your doctor saying, "nah we shan't bother with that - you're probably mistaken anyway." And your dentist will love you forever if you can already provide him/her with an X-Ray.
Well hello there, and welcome to the UK (where it is raining).
Have been back only 5 weeks, I'm looking for a job but have had too much to do to get round to it properly. There certainly seems to be alot of jobs about, and if I wasn't so picky on working hours and location I'd have one by now (these are jobs in sales by the way).
Moving stuff back well it took a lot of visits from shipping companies to find a decent one, and when we've sold our house we'll be shipping all our stuff back minus the elecricals, total of $7000 door to door. Electricals and cars will be sold to the highest bidder!
We actually bought a buy to let house when we left the UK so we've moved back into it. It's tiny and miles from the kids school, but it was the easiest option. I decided prior to moving back what kind of car I wanted, but it took me a while to find one, and in the meantime I spent quite a lot of money on hire cars. Insurance companies wouldn't recognise my US no claims record so insurance was pricy. I would say the trickiest thing about moving back is you know just getting settled, cos it is hard, all of a sudden you're spending a fortune on washing machines, computers, toasters you know, and you feel like you're buying everything on the hop, it's not much fun and you have to ride out the feeling of oh shit this is crap, cos once you have your life more or less straight you forget how pants the whole first few weeks were.
What do I miss from the US? Well for starters I miss the space. I really miss the radio, here they all talk loads between records and play alot of horrible misic, I have to say I did enjoy the radio much more in the US, all that good old US rock. I miss the peanut butter. i miss my stonkingly huge house, I miss permanently upbeat & non-bitchy people (even if it's false), I miss customer service and filling my grocery bags and I miss easy peasy driving - here on Suffolk's bendy country roads you have to keep your wits about you at all times.
What am I glad of the most in the UK? Oh I'm just glad to be back, the people are friendly, it's much more sociable, we don't feel alone basically, we have so much to do and places to go, people to see and I'm not talking family , just friends. The kids love thier school. I love the tv, graham Norton, Parky, it's so funny and the programmes are so entertaining. I enjoy the newspapers, and of course the food! But I have agree with Bungle, BT is terrible and utilities in general are expensive now.
For me it was easy to adjust back because I was unhappy in the US, also it helped that in the end my husband was offered a job to go back to so that made it easier. I haven't had one day of thinking, have we done the right thing? But that's me everyone will miss different things from the US, and if it's the lifestyle you really like and all the material goodies that come with it then I think leaving it will be so much harder, cos it definitely isn't the same lifestyle here.
Anyway all the best to you, and good luck with your decisions.
Yeah you can say goodbye to customer service. If America really does want to win the war on terror it should call back the military and send waitresses, bar staff, customer service staff and call centre agents around the world. Talk about winning hearts and minds. I couldn't get one person at British Gas to actually acknowledge that I was now the account holder, and that no more bailiffs would be calling with regards the last bastard who hadn't paid their bill. BT fobbed me off for 2 weeks until I happened to get a team leader who told me they could help. TalkTalk offer an amazing free international calls/free broadband offer but their service is so horrendous it makes you want to punch a puppy. I was told repeatedly my account was "in a queue" for activation - that was if the call centre agent didn't hang up. On Wednesday I called and they told me they'd screwed up and I'd have to start from scratch. Only 7 and a half weeks to tell me that. Genius. But being a turnip I said yes. I know 2 other people with the service and they say the rate is so good they put up with the shitty service.
The most irritating thing about it though is in the US I became used to being told things about my utitlities. Like I'd opened them. Only the water company have ever sent me antyhing in the mail to acknowledge that I have an account and paid the bill. Gas, electricity and BT can't be arsed to assure me unless I phone. I've been in Bristol 2 months and I still can't convince BT to send me a bill in the mail. Wankers.
Oooh, Lizzi, was wondering where you were. Good job Hebe never managed to mail that letter innit? roll lol
Lizzi,
great to hear you have settled in. I was interested with your comment about utilities being expensive - what is the average price now per month for gas, electric, water etc.
Bungle, I bet you are enjoying have your wife there )
Interesting, I will be going back as well. I will 42, but have never had trrouble getting a job in the IT industry and have always done well, wherever I have gone. Am I likely to be to old for this business??
I was just having a rare peek into Britnet and saw this. I'll have a go at answering but as I was only in the US for 3 years, it might not help much.
We were really lucky on the job front. We decided that we were going back, even though we had no job lined up. Then by chance, Tom's old boss heard he was coming home and offered his old job back (and they were moving the office from London to Southampton which was a plus). We had to stay at Tom's parents in Scotland at first, so there was a gap in work, but his company here gave him remote work in the meantime. As I say, we were incredibly lucky.
We brought back everything except the car (We had a Honda Pilot and I think the petrol bills over here alone would have killed us! shock We used Allied Pickfords. We had the full package of them packing for us. It was a four bed house and it took 2 days and cost about $10k. It got over to Britain in about 4 weeks, but we had it in storage for about 5 months in the end, due to being at my In-laws.
We ended up renting a house down near Southampton and are just in the middle of buying. Definately a culture shock when you pay British house prices! We bought a car as soon as we got here but bought outright so didn't need a credit check etc so don't know how easy it is if you need a car loan. Mortgage hasn't been a problem, so not having lived here for 3 years doesn't seem to have been a problem for that.
I definately have spells of missing USA. Stupid things like going to Target, seeing all the halloween stuff on the houses in my neighbourhood, the Mall being empty even on a Saturday afternoon, a whole Sunday filled with Football (though they do show two games late on Sunday here), the onion bloomer at Chilis lol . Just silly little stuff. But I'm glad to be here. I just feel much more comfortable, like I belong (not that I felt that much of an outsider in the US). I like not being commented on my accent, being able to walk to the local shops, Waitrose, fish and chips, nothing major just feel like I'm home. It's difficult to put into words, sorry.
It didn't feel like I had to adjust to being home at all, but as I say, I was only away 3 years and now it feels at times like my USA time never happened!
It's nice that we can see family so much easier (but not be living so near that anyone can just pop in unannouced ;) )
I'm not sure any of that helps you at all ???