Expat Dream Team Feature
Recently I was contacted by Sarah_with_a_smile to participate in her sixth Expat Dream Team feature on her blog. The concept behind this series is that for each feature she decides on a topic, creates five questions about that topic, and sends them out to expats around the world. Sarah compiles the answers and provides a fascinating snapshot into the lives of expat women.
For this feature, the topic was starting out on the expat journey. Our five questions were:
What brought you to move overseas?
What was the process like for preparing visa documents & health care?
What’s your advice on managing taxes back in the States?
What was the process like to find housing and schools for your children (if any)?
What’s your top advice for others who want to move abroad?
Women living in New Zealand, Portugal, England, Hungary, Bulgaria and Puerto Rico provided answers. In other features she’s covered such topics as holidays, foods, and unwritten expat rules. It is definitely worth a read if you’re longing for an international adventure.
I thought I’d share my answers here because these are definitely FAQs, but I’d encourage you to check out all of the responses on Sarah’s site.
1. What brought you to move overseas?
We were some of the crazy Americans who started crashing immigration websites the day after the 2016 election. My husband and I had toyed with the idea of moving abroad before, but that November it became real. We thought Trump was a symptom of much deeper systemic issues that weren’t/aren’t going to be fixed any time soon, and we wanted to raise our kids somewhere less volatile and more optimistic. We came up with three criteria and went shopping for a country: English speaking, good climate, and a good business environment. New Zealand quickly rose to the top of the list even though neither of us had ever been there before.
2. What was the process like for preparing visa documents & health care?
New Zealand’s visa process is not for the faint of heart and most visas have a points system to determine if you are eligible. After reviewing the information online, we decided to hire an advisor to help us through the process because there were clearly some “gotchas” that we wanted guidance on. First we submitted an Expression of Interest (EOI). A few weeks later, right before Christmas, we learned that our EOI was accepted. Then we had to prepare a huge application with lots of supporting information that took months to do. Immigration New Zealand (INZ) asked for things like certified diplomas from our universities to demonstrate English proficiency. Then I had to get a certified translation of my diploma because it was in Latin and everything had to be in English. The irony of this situation was no lost on me. It felt like each time we tracked down one required document, four more were needed.
A medical is required to immigrate to New Zealand, and an approved physician is required to do the exam. We drove the whole family from Austin to Houston to the closest approved doctor for the medicals. Fortunately, the doctor’s visit itself wasn’t particularly long or difficult.
Once we mailed off our large package of documents, we waited. And we decided to make a trip to New Zealand to make sure we actually liked it. At this point, New Zealand was still sight unseen for us. Fortunately, we fell in love with the country by the time we queued up for our Air New Zealand flight and were head over heels by the time we made our way to Wellington and met with INZ. The day after our INZ meeting, our paperwork started processing. The total process took about nine months.
3. What's your advice on managing taxes back in the States?
This is a tough one because it really depends on your situation. How much you earn and where your assets are can make a huge impact on your tax strategy. My biggest piece of advice is – at least for the first year – hire a professional.
4. What was the process like to find housing and schools for your children?
New Zealand housing, and Auckland housing in particular, is notorious for being expensive and sub-par. There are lots of things that we take for granted in the US that aren’t a given in Kiwi houses, things like double glazed windows, lots of insulation, central A/C, and washers and dryers. Almost all immigrants to New Zealand will be renting at first due to newly passed legislation that limits who can buy property, and this means that the rental market is intense. Often there will be open houses that will only last 15-30 minutes and dozens of people will go through the property at once. If you’re interested, you need to be prepared to put in an application right away. With that being said, there are a lot of houses on the market because house hunting is practically a national sport here. It is intense, but completely possible to find a house that suits you.
Schools are zoned like in the United States and ranked by decile which is an indication of the socioeconomic status of the neighbourhood. While it isn’t an exact indicator of how good a school is, decile 10 schools are considered desirable while decile 1 schools aren’t. There are Ministry of Education reports that give data on all of the schools so we were able to determine which neighbourhoods we wanted to live in. School and house hunting go hand in hand.
5. What's your top advice for others who want to move abroad?
Commit at least two years to wherever you are going. There is a concept called the Happiness Curve for migrants that says there is an initial phase of euphoria and excitement that quickly leads to a big emotional slump from months 6-18 after a big move. There were many times during that slump that I thought about throwing in the towel and moving back, but we made a commitment not to discuss repatriating until we were at the two year mark. Thank goodness we made that decision because right around 17 months, things started to improve.
