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

What Alpaca said is totally normal for the US. Overall, taxes are about the same in the US and the UK. But you get more in the UK. Health insurance is a big add on, and in addition to a co-pay for EVERY doctors visit, EVERY prescription, EVERY emergency room visit and so on. If you're on a monthly prescription, count on paying $20-40 each month to have it filled and that's with insurance that covers prescription drugs (many don't cover drugs at all). No free scripts for kids or students or the unwaged. When I was on the Pill and two other medications, it was $60 every month just to stay child free and healthy. Co-pays have generally gone up since then.

And while bad things do happen everywhere, you really can't minimise the amount of gun violence there that way. Kids are shot every single day. So are adults. Being in the UK, it is really hard to conceive but it is very true. Every day I'm grateful that before my kid goes on a play date I don't have to figure out whether the parents have guns in the house, how secure those guns are and whether I want my kid there if the guns are unsecured (which they generally are) or how to even have the discussion as people get really defensive about their guns.

And if you think your kids are university material, tuition at many schools is already hovering around the $50k/year mark and that's before room and board. Loans are due whatever you earn and are never forgiven until you die. And I don't think they're tax deductible, so it is all after tax income. Four year degrees are the standard and for anything professional (law, medicine, architecture, etc) it'll be another three or four more expensive years on top of that liberal arts degree (and it won't be much cheaper to send them back here for uni - move out for two years and you're paying overseas tuition rates.) and most of the state schools are a couple of years behind UK ones anyway.

Standard holiday allowance is two weeks per year. Occasionally three. Some professionals get four in theory but usually can't free themselves enough to take it all. Five and six weeks annual leave is absolutely unheard of.

Great, great place to holiday. Can't recommend it enough. But to live? No way.

Yeah, the 10 days holiday thing is shit. Because DH was sent over by his UK employers and was able to negotiate the terms of relocation he still gets 25 days a year, but the other people in his office are on US contracts and only get the 10 days. Boxing Day is not a public holiday here either!

Also there's no generous maternity provision or law to protect the right to request flexible working hours like in the UK. The vast majority of my friends in the UK who have small children work part time, while here all the mothers I know either SAH or returned to their jobs full time when their babies were a few months old.

... But I should mention that childcare here seems much cheaper, so I imagine that returning to work is almost always financially worthwhile which is not always the case in the UK!

Hmmm… the holiday thing depends on what company you work for though. We have a US office, and my manager thinks that my US counterparts get around 20 days holiday.

But to be honest - with all that you get back in the States (e.g. nice big house, cheap food, sometimes a swimming pool in your backyard)… who needs holidays? When I did work there a long time ago (CA), I'd go to work... come back home and the sun is still out… then went to sit by the pool with friends. It was like a mini holiday every evening. It wasn't the same as here in the UK, where you work and go home and sit on the couch… and then you really, really long for a holiday.

Well for DH, who is out of the house from 7.30 - 7.00 three days a week, and 7.30 - 9.00 twice a week, he likes the extra holidays days so he can spend time with his children.

Boxing Day is not a public holiday here either!

No, but Thanksgiving is. And my employer also gives the day after Thanksgiving. Best holiday of the year, in my opinion.

Childcare is cheaper in the states because the standards are lower. My sister was a manager at a childcare centre. Appalling what passed for "acceptable"

Childcare is cheaper but it has minimal standards. None regarding staff to child ratios, no documentation, requirements for education of staff, nothing. There's often not even criminal background checks. Considering that lack of any paid maternity leave means that mom's often go back to work when the baby is six weeks old, it is frightening. www.newrepublic.com/article/112892/hell-american-day-care

And returning to work isn't necessarily financially viable. Lack of any subsidised hours doesn't help either. One friend had one year with three kids in day care. Ivy League MBA and excellent child care. When she realised she was earning $100/month less than day care cost but lack of maternity leave and job options meant she couldn't quit her job, it was a miserable year for everyone.

When comparing like with like, childcare in LA costs what it does in London - about $1600 a month for full time, decent nursery care for a child under 4.

And don't forget they start school a year later here, and there are no free hours (as standard) until that happens when they're 5.

Just got back from two years in NYC and would give anything to return. Yes there are bad things about the USA, but viewing the UK from a foreigner's perspective has massively decreased my pride in it (and made me into a real republican (small r!)). The USA is a wonderful place and utterly fascinating. You could spend your whole life travelling around and not explore it all. And NYC is the best city in the world - and I say that after living in London for seven years.

I miss it so much it hurts :(

There are great variations in child care; it's also important to understand that regulation of child care providers is largely a state matter so that there will be wide variations.

Some employers provide on-site day care, but there is often a waiting list for it. My granddaughter was in the one at her dad's place of work after my daughter went back to work. It was great; he brought her to work, took her to the center, and often came down to have lunch or attend an event, and then brought her home with him.

Yep - I considered becoming a childminder a while ago here in New England. Background checks, courses to take, had to get your home checked out and loads of safety measures put in place, equipment to buy. Then there are strict rules about how many children in each age group you can look after. Sound familiar?

wobblyweebles That's why "England" is part of the name.

It's a nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there! And Oklahoma of all places? Lol

There is a lot of misinformation on here. Daycare standards are quite strict and the costs are not that low. We have a nanny now we have two and pay a little less than daycare which would cost us approx $3k a month. Our nanny was our neighbour when we lived in our old house and is excellent. She has her certifications, completed a 1yr course in early childhood development and of course she has her CPR course certificate.

We stopped daycare because DD was injured and they didn't complete an incident report. The paediatrician group called the state agency and the class leader was banned from working with children the next day. I was impressed with the reaction and follow up by the state agency. They did an excellent job of quickly removing someone not suited to working with children and monitoring the remaining staff.

The difference here is that daycare costs are low due to taxes being far less so you have more disposable income. It also isn't true that there is no paid maternity leave. You get disability while you are out. It is $500 a week which is quite decent. When I had DD I took off 18 weeks which was too long. I received disability for the whole duration. With DS I had worked for 3 months when I went out on leave and qualified for the insurance program so received my full pay for the 10 weeks I was out. I found returning to work after 8 weeks tough and next time I will settle for 12 weeks I think. My employer has the option for me to take a year off at full pay once I have been with them long enough. I don't know if I qualify but I wouldn't want to take it as I think going back after a year would be much harder for everyone, especially the children.

Reading through the posts by others I am so thankful to live in New Jersey. Who knew the armpit of America was so fabulous!

want you must have a good insurance provider. My mat pay will be disability for 6 wks at 60% of pay for VB, 8wks if CS and my company pay 2wks at 100%. The family leave law FMLA entitles job protection for 12wks if you've been at the company for a year. I've already said I'll take 6mths minimum, if I lose my job so be it.

Daycare I use is a nursery/preschool and they are excellent. My 4yo is there for wrap around care at $1k a month, for an under one it will be about $1300 a month and reducing as baby gets older. Baby room has 1 carer to 3 babies. I find the uS very hot on education and standards. DS2 as a late talker and his daycare think he should be assessed for some speech therapy. If he is accepted as needing help, the school district will pick him up, do the therapy and drop him back to daycare, free of charge.

Taxes we find are lower here than the UK, depends on state you are in, our state doesn't have a state tax so we only pay federal income and sales tax. Plus we can claim back property taxes andortgage insurance which lowers it again. DH pays about 130 biweekly for family insurance and I pay 58 for myself at my work. I don't think that is a lot, I hate to think how much the company pays as their portion though. I have a $100 copayment for ER, $50 for specialist and $25 for GP. A script the other day cost me $1.36. I paid $6 for topical numbing cream, if i hadn't found my insurance card it would have been $50. It was for DS to get a wart treated, I have to say I would have made him suffer if having to pay full price.

*mortgage interest

As someone who has lived in the American Midwest my entire life, I take grievous offense to the whole "maybe the coasts are okay" business.

The death penalty is illegal in my state and has been for over a century. Abortion is legal til 24 weeks.

I worked in a nursery and ran an at-home child care and there were strict ratios and standards for both.

We have a 3 bed, 1.5 bath house that we bought in 2007 for $107k. It'd go for about $87k now. Our backyard is about a half acre.

I know people go on and on about the American dream being dead, and I know plenty of people here usually annoying jaded hipsters who say it is, but every American I know well believes in their heart of hearts that if you work hard and are kind, you'll turn out all right.

No one I know looks down on anyone who takes benefits. Life's tough just now. We do look down on people who could work but don't, though. Laziness is next to murder as a sin around these parts, and hard working poor people are thought better of than lazy people born into wealth who sit around in Daddy's company all day, earning fat paychecks for it.

And I'm far from a college professor (barely graduated high school, took a few college credits but nowhere near enough for a degree) and I can name several countries in Africa. At least, some.

There are guns though. Guns as far as the eye can see. :o

And further to what Cheerful said, and in connection with certain blanket statements made by PP about homophobia in the US: although marriage equality is not the law in every state yet, same sex marriage was legal in several US states long before it was legal anywhere in the UK.

I live in Texas and my city's (female) mayor got married fairly recently to her (female) partner. It makes us look almost progressive

Hmm, maybe I shouldn't made my assessment that US daycare is cheap by comparing Oklahoma City prices to London prices! The highly rated daycare center at our local Methodist church quoted $185 a week for full time place for our then 2 year old. That's about £115, which I doubt we have matched back in Islington.

When I mentioned lack of maternity provision, I meant across the board as opposed to employer dependent (like the 39 weeks of paid leave in the UK). Or does that vary from state to state?

I've never heard of The Pioneer Woman. I'll have to Google her to find out where in OK she's based to make her life seem so appealing. Some parts of the state are actually quite attractive (and it's certainly not all desert).