To wish it was easy to move to the USA

[Highway65]

I've been watching The Pioneer Woman on Sky the past few evenings. It's utter drivel but I LOVE it!! It's this blog writer/cook living in Oklahoma and it just looks ace! All cowboys, horses and massive ranches. I want to live there.

Infact, there are loads of places in America that I would like to live. Europe has plenty of highlights too of course. Not where I live, it's just grey!! But I reckon I should have been born American.

I have family living in California. They both married Americans to get their green cards. I would be up for that if I wasn't happily married

I work in the aging services sector in the US. The circumstances of older people vary greatly, depending on their pensions, savings, value of family home, state they live in, whether they are rural, urban, or suburban, etc. But the safety net for older people is actually fairly good in the US and much better than it is for younger people with limited income.

Besides Medicare, which everyone 65-plus gets, there is subsidized housing, nutrition programs, senior centers with activities and meals, and many other programs funded through government and private sources. Of course, many people are in need, but the main issue is often getting information to them of what help is out there; this is especially true for rural elders and elders who who have no close family around.

I don't work at all Armani.

You must have had something in mind when you made your comment. I would be interested to know what it is. At some point I will need to choose whether to retire in the UK or the US. I looked into the difference between state pensions in the US vs the UK, and the US state pension was higher. The US offers Medicare to all seniors regardless of income, and having talked to my retired neighbours they didn't have a problem with it (and they're not rich).

So what is it about growing old in the US that is so much worse than in the UK?

I moved over here 8 years ago. I came over working for a bank and met DH who is Danish. Both DH and I are probably living the American dream. Our careers have evolved through the educations we have pursued. I am now a CPA working as an auditor at big4 firm. DH is a sales manager for a slaughterhouse group and finished up his MBA last year. Our income is way more than it would be if we were in the UK or Denmark. We are in the process of buying our next home just outside of NYC in New Jersey. The same sized place outside of London would be so unaffordable to us.

I am incredibly thankful to America because the system here has enable us to build a better life for our family. The only thing I wish we had here are the car boot sales. My DC's are dressed in 2nd hand clothes that my Dad picks up. In 8 years my pension is now close to $150k due to me putting away the maximum amounts each and every year. None of my friends who have stayed in the UK have anything like that put away. I have another 35 years until I plan to retire so feel optimistic that we will be fine. We are also looking at expanding our family. In the UK we couldn't afford a 3rd or 4th child....

OP, YABU, I live in LA and I hate it
But I do like the idea of small town American life as you describe it.

butterflies, the UK doesn't have light sentencing, it has a sentencing regime that is in frankly in contravention of human rights law, it is so punitive

dozie NPR where I am has a great deal of talk content, and I find it very good. And R4 is so easy to get on iplayer. I'm the first to complain about life in the US but even I'm happy with that!

I'm hoping to move (back) to the US after my PhD is finished. I lived there for a year when I was younger, and would love to at least do another 5-10 year stint there. Every single place in the world has pros and cons, you need to work out what works best for you.

Seriously, I don't think the UK is as great as you think it is...

Well, no, it isn't greater than the US or anywhere else probably as so much depends on where you live and what your income is.

I have only lived in the US after the DCs had left home so am sure my view would be different if I'd gone with small DCs. Also we have moved regularly so no long term base with many long term friends.

I couldn't live in the US....
I have lots of friends and family over there but couldn't for many many reasons including but not limited to :
Healthcare (I have a long term condition that the NHS pays for an extremely expensive drug for.... In the US I just wouldn't be able to afford it - friends in the same situation had to choose meds or Uni - obviously they chose meds & it still bankrupted them!). The influence of the religious right on issues such as contraception, abortion, women's rights, homophobia.
Workers rights or lack of them.
Nonsensical Gun laws
Death penalty & the issues with prisons.
The litigation culture - both DH & I are in professions where the insurance premiums & the stress of this is bad enough in this country & colleagues in the US daren't do helpful things we don't think twice about as they are worried about being sued! I find that extremely sad.
The UK isn't perfect by any means but it's an imperfect I can live with.

I have travelled extensively through work and for pleasure. I have a list of places that I could consider living in, NYC being one of them. I have lived in London and Dublin so a big city doesn't scare me but I want more children and the maternity leave in the US isn't anything like I would get here plus my parents and in laws would be devastated if we moved so far so I am not going.

Op to hanker after a better quality of life is fine but to do based on tv shows isn't a good way to compare your lifestyle. Have you travelled much?

Flying, you are living the dream. That's what I want... But I think it will always just remain a dream for me.

DH is American so we've considered living in the US.

Arguments against:

1. we have good pensions schemes here, and some of his family lost a LOT of their retirement money in market crashes, which scares me
2. DH has a "pre-existing condition" that makes it near impossible for him to get health insurance unless he's employed by a big company
3. generally scared of having my life ruined by their terrible health insurance system
4. very far away from my family, and not that much closer to his, since they're scattered all over the Midwest and the East Coast
5. work more stressful and more competitive
6. I guess the violent culture, although tbh if you live in a white middle-class neighbourhood like DH's family does you're unlikely to be exposed to it. DH grew up in Texas and has never seen a gun other than a hunting gun.

Arguments for:

1. better quality of life for similar salaries (assuming we go live in the Midwest). Could probably buy a huge beautiful house instead of the small semi-detached we can afford here.
2. much better weather (or weather we enjoy more, anyway - hot summer, cold winters, real fall and real spring)
3. generally a more optimistic and can-do culture
4. I love American food, sue me
5. raising the children as Americans (neither of us are British, so it's a little strange to have British kids)

So far the "against" have been winning.

My love of the US is not because of the tv shows I watch They are escapism and I do watch a lot of them!!

I've been to Spain, France, Italy, Malta, Sicily and I've been to America 3 times. Always California because that's where my family are. But we did visit Nervada last time and took a trip to Palm Springs for the tennis

My family live in a picture perfect suburb of SF and to me have the perfect life. The kids have great schools and play loads of sports. Plus it's sunny and warm

PS: to the OP, Oklahoma isn't that nice! The people are lovely and friendly, but super religious rightwing and love their guns. The entire state is basically a desert, and the capital city is a monstrosity (still can't wrap my head around the fact it's a city, looks like a giant parking lot to me). I guess Tulsa is the place to be if you're really keen, it's relatively green and relatively liberal by Oklahoman standards.

DH has a "pre-existing condition" that makes it near impossible for him to get health insurance unless he's employed by a big company

This is not the case since Obamacare was passed.

You're not alone though - a lot of people have quite outdated views of how health insurance works in the US, from reading this thread.

Possibly, we haven't checked. This dates back to about 5 years ago, when we spent several months in the US and found it absolutely impossible to get health coverage for him.

The larger point is that I don't trust the private healthcare system, not to mention that I don't trust the republicans not to overturn obamacare as soon as they get the chance.

I don't trust the republicans not to overturn obamacare as soon as they get the chance.

I am concerned about this too. It will be interesting, though, from a political standpoint because they would be taking steps to eliminate coverage that people now have a right to. I think that may be a more difficult sell to the public than they anticipate.

I am hoping that Obamacare gets overturned BUT that they go back to the table and put together something better. My main grips with Obamacare are:

1. Illegal immigrants are not required to pay fines that poor working Americans have to pay for not having coverage. DH and I went through a lot to get our visa's and do things legally. If you are here illegeally the whole family should be deported. I find this policy to be akin to tratorship as America should look after their own people first.

1. Those in the 18-26 year age group should not be covered by their parents. At 18 you are an adult. Far too many in this group are working FT and continue to be covered by their parents. This is one of the many reasons why the numbers for Obamacare do not work.

1. The payments are far too high for most families in high cost areas to buy coverage. In Northern NJ a family with an income of $100k is paying about $10k a year for coverage, not including co-pays. That is far too much and doesn't result in the end goal of universal coverage.

1. Cadillac plans are mainly offered with lower salary packages or are a result of the cost of living and not because they cover more. As an auditor I have seen many of these plans withdrawn and replaced with lesser plans or the employer pay huge premiums. In the NY metro area cadillac plans are almost standard because the cost of medical care here is the highest in the country due to high cost of doing business.

I pray Hilary Clinton runs. She is the only person who I think could put together a decent healthcare policy for America. She did a great job with the maternity provisions she pushed through. I never really appreciated what she did until starting a family.

Um, TV isn't reality. If it was struggling writers would find it easy to live in apartments in Manhattan and buy $500 shoes.

I cannot abide The Pioneer Woman.

DH and I made the move to the US last year, so far, no regrets.

We're both dual citizens anyway - my mom is American, so I've been a dual citizen from birth through her - and DH's parents are both originally from the US, so he has also been a dual citizen from birth. Thankfully this made relocating much easier for us.

It isn't perfect here, far from it, there's the healthcare issue for a start (we're fortunate that we can afford top level cover). And yes, there's the crazy gun laws, where it appears the right to bear arms is put above the right of people to go to school/college/work/the mall/any other place without the risk of getting shot by some crazed individual.

However, our children already have far more opportunities open to them, in terms of activities. My two sons are keen (ice) hockey fans, and DS1 (14) was part of a team over there in the UK, but access to hockey in the UK isn't as widespread as it is over here. Over here, DD2 (8) is already part of a team (we couldn't find a team for his age group in the UK), and DD1 (4) has also taken up preschool hockey. And the hockey is just one example!

And for us as a family (me, DH and five DCs), the quality of life we have here is far better than what we had back in the UK, we live in a leafy suburb of the Greater Pittsburgh area. Pittsburgh frequently ranks highly on charts of being a great place to live, given the cost of living, crime rate etc. We live in a large home, with 8 acres of land, and an indoor pool (not something we particularly wanted, we just fell in love with the house, and it happened to have it). In UK money, we paid just £15,000 more for our house here, than we what we sold our MUCH smaller house (with a family garden, not acres of land!) for in Surrey.

If all continues to go as well as it has, I don't think we'll ever move back to the UK, as I don't think we could ever live as comfortably back there as we are doing so over here.

I was born and raised in the states, and moved here to the UK when I was about 37. I would never ever move back to the states. I have had a birth, raised a child in the states, and had 2 births and am raising 2 children in the UK. UK wins hands down on all counts.

I get so many people saying "why would you live here when you could live in the states??" and the list is so long it would take me all day, but many of the problems have already been listed here, so I won't go into details.

Oh, and to round out that statement, I have lived in large cities, small towns, midwest, west, and new england. There are always going to be little pluses but honestly, I prefer here for so soooo many reasons.

I would also love to see Hilary Clinton run.