Married Life
JanieJones
member
Dear Community,
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Those who have lived abroad-
in Married Life
What do you do with your house, cars, etc?
If the France thing works out, we'd be leaving in 2-3 weeks. (I don't know how high my chances of going are, but Mr.JJs are really high)
Re: Those who have lived abroad-
Rent the house and sell the car(s).
Storage unit for furniture and appliances and others hit that won't be outdated when you move back.
And whatever you do...go to France!
Wait, France?
I haven't heard about this. ARE YOU MOVING TO FRANCE!?
Hi.
I hate you.
Also, do you need a roommate? If you do, I won't hate you anymore.
H is already talking about selling his car and motorcycle. My car is worth more to us stored. It's only a 6 month project.
Backstory- Wed. H was asked about taking a special project for his company in France. I am interviewing for his company Monday... but he would try to get me on the same assignment.
He confirmed his interest Friday, we'll hear more early next week. The timing is pretty golden for everything in our lives, so I am crossing my fingers HARD that they want me to go with. They'll need HR for what they are doing, and I am fluent in french.
We sold our car to a college student in the area. It was older already, and we knew we'd be abroad for a while.
We rented an apartment prior to leaving, so we moved out when our lease ended (conveniently less than 2 weeks before we departed).
Sell your car. Trust when I say you'll be there longer than 6 months. You'll find a way within a coupe months of being there, seriously. Ywia!
We don't rent the house bc it would be really expensive to move everything in and out repeatedly. I don't want to rent it furnished bc it's ourshit and don't want anyone touching it. Also we're not gone for an entire year and I will only rent to tenants with any of our properties on a 1 yr lease.
We put the car(s) in the garage, lock everything up tight, alarm the house and take off! That's about it. The gardener still comes every week and I have him and a relative check outside here and there to make sure it looks ok. I tell only a couple neighbors and make sure they call me if anything looks strange.
Oh and we have someone get our mail and FedEx it to us occasionally.
We were in Holland and I wish I knew then what I know now
What is the relocation package offering? If possible, write in husbands contract they pay your mortgage for ENTIRE TIME you are gone (not just 6 months but entire time because if the project ends up going longer you don't want them to come back and say "well you need to stay 6 more months to finish this project but your contract only says we have to pay your mortgage for 6 months.")
We had a bad experience renting our house out and if I had to do it again, I would have just said screw it and used my paycheck abroad to pay our mortgage. It was a hot mess when we moved back into it and it is costing us thousands to fix the damage they did (even some as simple as not changing the filters every few months is costing us a ton to fix).
Also, for 6 months, it isn't worth it to sell the cars. There is a lot of cost that goes into moving and you really need to negotiate with the company to get them to pay as much of the cost as possible. Especially the move back.
My husband's company paid the following:
-Trailing spouse fee of $2000 because I had to quit my job and move with him. That was kind of pointless but whatever.
-They paid for a realtor to find our apartment as well as put the deposit down on the apartment (if there are damages we have to pay the damages). They also signed our lease in their names.
-They did our taxes
-They would cover the cost for the family to fly home if a direct family member died while we were abroad (we actually had to use this when husband's father died)
-They paid for us to fly home once a calendar year (not just every 12 months but once a calendar year - for example we moved in October 2008 they still covered a trip home in 2008 even though we were only there for a few months)
Oneslybookworm (on the International Board) got a much deal than us. They covered the loss on her house sale, car depreciation, a crate for her 1,000 pounds of kitty litter, etc, storage back at home, etc.
Also, make sure they cover health insurance. We had AETNA global and it was pay out of pocket, get reimbursed later. That wasn't a big deal for a 25E trip to the doctor but a 3,000E trip to the ER sucked. We switched over to Dutch Insurance and paid 200E a month for the family and that was it - no money ever came out of our pocket again. It was brilliant.
Come visit us on the IN board, I'm sure more ladies have great suggestions.