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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.
Oh hai I have important question.
Okay. So, I really wasn't going to post here again (I mean, if someone GBCN, they should not come back, right?)
But, I need some advice, and this is pretty much the only place I can think of to ask.
I have asked H to sit down with me in a week or two and hammer out a plan for getting back to the US. We have certain ideas for what we would need when we get there, but I want to check to see what the reality is.
Thank you very much for any response!
Re: Oh hai I have important question.
Bio
Wedding stuff.
My food blog
What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DBasically, we just threw happy glitter farts into the air in the hope we would survive moving back. Heh.
We saved money for 10 months, had a general radius of where DH would job search, and had a place to stay at my parent's house. Because DH enter and got his green card we had to wait till we arrived to do most of the job searching.
Will you both need to find jobs or can you transfer back? We were really lucky that DH got a job 3 weeks after we moved.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
Hi hi!
I might be able to transfer back with my job (I'm laying groundwork already) but none of this stuff is set in stone! Plus, my company tends to take care of its employees, but on the cheap. lol
Happy glitter farts sounds like what we'd end up doing.
Wedding stuff.
Bio
Hey Snippy. Nice to see you!
We have been laying the ground work to move back for years, and plan to in 18 to 24 months, I think. DH will do an internal transfer with his company to NYC. They will cover our cost of airfare and to move our things. Plus we will be staying in a company apartment for one to two months.
What we have done to lay the ground work is be very open with DH's boss. They know our long-term plan and support it. Over the years, DH has moved into a position that he can successfully do anywhere in the world managing staff in both NYC and London. Because we knew for the past four years, we wanted to move back with his company, we have been honest and it has helped with the planning.
Recently, DH told his boss, our current plans, but said, we are willing to move it forward or back six months to accommodate them. Luckily, DH's company is very supportive of people moving within offices internationally. For us personally, we have been saving for a DP for years, and hope to buy within a year of moving. We have also set aside a little each month to cover potential car DP, furniture, etc.
We know it will be transition, but by taking this steps we feel more prepared.
Hope you are doing well!!
Nat-- No we don't want to move back to hometown, and yes we still have the house (though we want to sell this year)
Coffee-- how many years have you been planning? I really cannot see myself here past another year. My career is going to top out, and I am going to have to move vertically to get out of the situation that I am in. The politics for my department are bad. We definitely will not be in a position to buy at that point, even if we sell our house as we are going to probably take a small loss on it.
UGH. This is the suck part. I want to go back. I am going to need to go back to get any further with the career and I feel like we are very seriously stuck here.
Wedding stuff.
Hi there
We planned our move for about 18 months (to Oz, not the US, but still a move 'back home' for dh)
we saved money - enough so that we could travel during the transition time (the best time to travel IMO - when your stuff is in storage and you're not paying for anywhere to live in the meantime) and so that we had enough money to take a few months to find jobs when we got here. Also sorted out visas, shipping company research and some job searching & resume prep
I think its totally doable in 12 months if you guys get started on saving & planning - GL!
You need to remember that the grass is not always greener on the other side.
Things aren't necessarily going to turn out perfect and happy just because you move home.
Hi
Our move was happy glitterfarts and we moved back within 2 weeks of making our decision. Basically we left all of our stuff there (sold it), quit our jobs, took a leap of faith, moved in with my parents until we knew where we were going to be and hoped for the best. All we needed to worry about was getting the pup back and that was pretty easy.
My situation was really unique though and surprisingly easy. We joked that the easiest thing about living in Israel was moving out of the country!
Did I say that I was unhappy? I love where I work (don't like my job), and I love being in Sweden. But I want an exit plan so we don't end up just *staying* here indefinitely.
But hey! Thanks for being a diick.
Wedding stuff.
Well then that is not very nice. You asked for advice I recently moved home ad that is what I took home from my move. You don't need to be defensive or call me names.
Edit: here is something you might find useful. A$$. If you are currently renting your house out put aside money for repairs. We had to paint and replace and repair a ton of stiff in Our house and replace all the flooring because they damaged it (they skipped out on their last two months of rent so we didn't even have a security deposit to use - even that would not have been enough to cover the repairs).
Wen we moved back to Oz, H thought he had enough money, but it turned out he was basing his calculations on when he lived here last. FIVE YEARS AGO!
He didn't do any real time research so we had no idea the electric went up 63% and the general cost of living had raised over 28% in those five years. I would get real costs for where you want to go, as in call the electric companies, and cable companies, the city to find out water and trash rates, etc. They'll be able to give you average prices for the zip codes you're looking at,.
It can take up to a year to get a job, maybe more. So I'd definitely plan on having a good chunk of savings to get you through if you plan on coming back and then looking. If you're going to try to transfer back or get a new job that you move back for then you probably won't need as much savings but I would factor in these things either way:
if you want to buy a house you'll need to look into house prices and mortgage information (there are programs out there still for people without down payments but they're few and far between, most lenders now are much stricter on the down payment requirements),
if you're renting first/last and security deposit,
money to fix up either place (paint, home improvements, garbage bins, rakes, all that little crap you need that you probably aren't moving over or don't have now)
I'd also get rates on internet/phone/tv for the area you'll be moving to, and electric and gas/oil prices. For us all those things are actually more expensive in the US than they were in the UK, surprisingly. water and trash and all that are $$$, too.
Healthcare - another expense that when we factor in what we pay in taxes here _ healthcare we're definitely spending more overall than we were in Europe.
car + gas - will you live somewhere that you will want a car? how much driving will you do? you'll know gas isn't nearly as expensive as it is in Europe but you'll likely drive more and spend more on it in the long run, at least we certainly do.
what will it cost for you guys to move the dog, vaccines or anything he needs plus the cost of the actual tickets for him.
And then think about what kind of lifestyle you are giving up and where you could live that might approximate the things you really like and would miss about Sweden. We spent a long time looking for a walkable town with neighborhood schools and lots of parks/playgrounds because that was something we appreciated about living in the UK.
And then, remember that there is likely to be a lot of reverse culture shock for a while about how big everything is, how much shopping everyone does, etc. I had months where I was just as homesick for the UK as I had been for the US when we first moved there. Also, I had no friends. It took me a good year to get something even approximating a social circle and support network here because I moved back to somewhere that I didn't know anyone anymore. So there's that to think about.
None of that is to discourage you at all, its just all the obstacles we encountered. And I haven't really listed anything for DH who has his own host of issues but he's not American so I assume those issues are unnecessary to include since you both are. Good luck!
is that serious? the smiley at the end is confusing. : /
Tot/Obs--
I do apologize. I thought better of it later, but I had already shut down for the night and was in bed. I was all kinds of snappy yesterday and I should have taken another minute to reconsider what I responded to you.
That being said, I never mentioned that I was moving home due to unhappiness. Just that I wanted to be back in the US and not stuck here forever.
Anyway, thanks all for your responses.
Wedding stuff.
Hi Snippy! We keep moving our 'move home' date further and further in the future so I don't have any actual advice but wanted to say hi :-)
BFP Apr 2012, EDD Dec 19 2012 * twin h/b at 6wk, 9wk scan * Baby A lost at 12wks, Baby B was my rainbow born at 36wks
Hi Snippy, as usual, I have no useful advice! However, wanted to say hi to you and Lil' Lu! Hope you all are well.
We'll be peacing out of IT in a couple more years-- I'm stressed about finding a job, but I will be happy to go home. I never thought I'd say that, but 3yrs into it, I completely understand wanting home. Alot!
Anyway, hope we'll see more of you and... Lucy!
I forgive you and will respond more not saying you are unhappy but using the "general you" and expand a bit. Forgive any typos but I suck at iPhone typing. I was aiming more at the emotional side of moving back as opposed to the finance side. When living abroad everything that would take one step at home took three steps in Amsterdam. I assumed when moving back home it would be miraculously easy because it was my home in my country with my customs and was but re-patration is almost as difficult as becoming an ex-pat. We moved back to our old house and our tenants had done a ton of weird stuff to our house and it is still an on going process of fixing it all. Because this is my home and not just a rental property the changes really upset me. A few things they did were to skip out on the last months of rent, half painted our entire house in awful colors (they started painting some rooms and never finished), they let their cats live in our crawl space so there is now mold under our house, put in ugly permanent shelves in our garage I still can't figure out how to fix, put in doors and frames in our open floor plan, added electrical outlets to random places, replaced all our appliances with crappy ones, ruined our hardwood floors, left burn marks on our linoleum, stained our carpets, never changed a filter the entire time we were here. All this and we had a management company watching the house. If we were going to sell we would have had to fix a ton of stuff. We are living with a bunch of it because it is a lot of money.
Another thing that is something you want to think about - taxes. Who is going to do your taxes for the time you were in Sweden? My husbands company is refusing to do my taxes (thu will do his) even though married people are supposed to file together.
Our Dutch landlord is screwing us on our deposit and husbands company isn't doing much to help.
All of these things are really stressful because it is a lot of money and we are still dealing with crap I'm holland six months after we have moved home.
So I thought the move was going to be super easy but it has been stupid stressful!
Also our dogs are acting out like idiots and the vet is positive it is over the stress of the move!
This was kind of all over the place and kind of turned into me just bitching buty point is, it had not been easy!
Hi Snippy! Hamilton covered most of the financial stuff. We we're prepared for most of that. I wasn't prepared for how boring life is in the US. I do think a lot of that was driven by the city we had to return to for DH's job. It's such a hassle to do anything - you have to drive everywhere and things are far apart so no one wants to do anything in the evenings - grabbing a pint is a 30 minute car trip instead of a 5 minute walk. When we get the choice to choose where to live it will totally be in a US city that is walkable.
I thought having all the choices I could possibly stand would be great. It's annoying. You spend 3 days researching your phone provider, and when you call they give you 42 choices of plans. I also can't be bothered with spending my entire Saturday running from this store to that because you buy your 80 gallon jar of mayonnaise at one store but you get your organic oranges at another. And don't try to ask anyone why you could possibly need 80 gallons of mayonnaise...that's crazy talk...buy in bulk and save dammit.
And don't try to ask anyone why you could possibly need 80 gallons of mayonnaise...that's crazy talk...buy in bulk and save dammit.
Exactly! My grandma is like this - and has a pantry full of expired food to prove it - and cannot be swayed by any other logic