DH wants to move to US, advice welcome

[mrsgrace]

Hi, this is a tricky one and I could use some advice.

DH is English and I am American. We met in the US but I moved to London to be with him and we've essentially lived our entire relationship in London (dating, marriage, DD birth). He now wants to experience life in the US and argues that he wants to experience living in a different country just as I've done.

The issue is that I like it here. I have close friends and a lovely community network around me. We have a nice home and we both have good jobs. It seems a lot to give up. DD is young and not yet in school so a move would not disrupt her too much, but she has friends here as well.

I have friends in the US but they're scattered across many states so we wouldn't be moving into a community. I'm just not sure I am ready to start over again.

Has anyone experienced the same? What advice can you offer?

Thanks x

Also, I don't think it's as simple as you get to live abroad so he should be able to as well. That's playing on guilt you shouldn't feel. It's about what's best for the family as a whole.

I'd rather make a list of all the things you'd want in an expat location and then see which countries fit the bill.

If he is so keen to experience life abroad, could you make that part of your life plans for when the children are older/left home?

It seems high risk with a young family to satisfy one person's itchy feet. You will have years ahead when you don't have dependent children living with you, I would save it for then, when you can have fun moving around before you settle.

Fwiw. 3 weeks' vacation is quite common here in salaried professional work. I have never not had 3 (except when I was in hourly customer-service jobs).

Vagndidit good points. Pros and cons everywhere. We are trying to figure out whether to stay in the midwest, go east, or go west, all in this country, and even that's hard. I would love to look at Europe but can't work out what we'd do for employment.

Make sure you get a British passport before you leave the country. My friend didn't and they kind of wish they had. She would only be able to move back to the uk with her husband. In the future her kids could live in either country but if anything happened to him or if the rules changed she could not

Definitely look into the UK immigration before you leave! If you can't keep your current status you will be out a lot of money and time and aggravation coming back fresh.

Keatsie I know you can often get 3 weeks, plus 1 or 2 weeks sick leave, but the difference is that usually that has to account for everything, whereas where we are now there are additional leaves you can take -- bereavement leave, you can take off for a sick child, etc. I was shocked when I went to the UK and found out your GP can just sign you off for weeks and your work has to accept it! There is no such thing as being signed off for stress or depression, for example, you would get sacked.

Again, it's the safety net thing -- if everything goes okay then it's probably not a problem, but if anything goes really wrong you're kind of screwed. Get pneumonia and then there's no leave left to go see your family back home for a year.

I admit this is my experience working in a very workaholic city (DC) but it's something to at least investigate in any possible jobs, how flexible they are with respect to leave.

The leave thing is a definite consideration. Before moving here, we negotiated 4 weeks' leave for DH, plus various national holidays, plus a couple of other random days. He also accrues sick leave, but hasn't been off sick for 18 months, so technically can use this up as extra holiday (so pretending he's ill) or be paid for it when/if he leaves the company (very odd to me).

We have actually lucked out in terms of paternity leave. Just had DC2 and DH gets a month off paid - so more than the UK. This is because his company has a very bizarre maternity/paternity leave policy and both women and men get the same time off .

Note - at DH's company, many people do not take their leave! You're seen as very 'European' if you use all your entitlement and it can be hard to be the only one to do this.

Another consideration is how you'd feel if something big happened back home and you couldn't get to it - time/cost/childcare/health reasons etc - I missed my grandmother's funeral last month as I was heavily PG and couldn't fly. If we'd been in the UK, we could have driven to it. It was tough.

dreaming sorry I just saw your post. Totally agree, it can be really stressful here to try to stretch paid time off here to cover all eventualities. I learned about how the GP can sign you off work in the UK on MN and was really surprised, to my knowledge we have nothing like that here.

And yep as Wibbly said it can be hard to actually use your PTO here. You can bank it if you know something is coming up roll vacation time over from one year to the next but there are usually restrictions on that and it can be very hard to actually then take the banked time. I took 3+ weeks off for my wedding and honeymoon and there were a few raised eyebrows at my firm; luckily I had a very good boss (and had been working 60-hour weeks for years so had some goodwill built up).

Dreaming, I've never heard another American speak of the US that way ever.
Your post mirrors all of mine and Dh's experiences and we lived in CA. I ha e never had paid vacation in US ever (25 years working there), as I never worked a full 40 hour weeks and worked around kids school times and Dh being there for my weekend work.
Dh dragged himself to a physical job with a walking cane to make sure he had health insurance to cover what they thought might be cancer (turned out to be Valley Fever and for now he's now better till it returns) If he had lost that job we'd have had 6 months of living expenses in savings, then would have lost it all, house medical cover, cars you name it.

Oh another thing about vacation time.
Dh worked for a fortune 500 company, no rolling over of vacations, no taking more than about 10 days at a stretch, no last minute approvals. After completing one year you get 10 days paid, but have to work that full year with no vacation. After 5 years you get 15 days paid.
After 10 years you get 20 days.
In his job before that he got 10 days a year and had to take them when the company closed for Christmas, no summer hols for nearly 20 years for him.

Jeez that sounds wretched Squinkies. Glad your DH is recovering! I've never heard of Valley Fever, sounds really frightening.

Keatsie yes there are the raised eyebrows to deal with as well, even if you have the leave it's usually frowned upon to actually use a lot of it at once.

I'm curious whether mrsgrace has made any decisions

The vacation thing is awful. I was an admin-type person, so only qualified for two weeks paid leave per year, which there was no way I could cope with because a) I liked to come home to the UK every six months and b) my DH was on 20 days per year (high level job). As a result, I just temped and took time off when I wanted. I didn't get paid, but we were fortunate enough that DH made decent money. Eventually, I got offered a FT job by a guy who really wanted me to work for him FT and because it was just him and me in our dept we fudged it so I could have six weeks off a year (I know - I was unbelievably lucky - but that was my one condition and I would only go FT if he agreed to it).

There were people I worked with though who had never had a two-week holiday in their lives. I remember one guy saved up his holiday for two years so he could take a proper two-week honeymoon and he came over to me when he got back and said 'Wow - that was amazing. Do people in Europe really get to take two weeks off like that every year?'. So I said 'Yep', and he replied 'I HAVE to get a job in London'.

Oh and I worked with several people who used to BOAST about how little vacation time they took. I just used to shake my head and walk away. Some people have no idea how to live - only how to work.

I think whatever you decide you both have to be fully onboard. We are British and moved to West Coast nearly two years ago when DS was 3 and DD newborn. DH has a good job with a stable and excellent company so I know our quality of life is higher than it would have been at home. We have same access to everything SittingBull has and live in LA where everyone is a transplant so the friends we have made are a real support as we're all in the same boat.

I still believe we will eventually go home but I'm in no rush ATM. DS will go to the local (state run but very good) school next year, we have plans to travel to South Korea in the spring to see friends who live there, we we're in the desert this weekend, will be skiing in the mountains a 2 hour drive away in the New Year and get out on the beach almost daily.

I still can't work though and that is the major concern at the moment. Also I miss my friends hugely. Though I've been pleasantly surprised by how many people have visited us (it's a good holiday destination!)

And I feel the same levels of safety as in SE London....

But, it doesn't really matter what any of our experiences are, you both have to be on board - that goes for staying in the UK too

I have to add as well out experience are positive because DH's company is incredibly forward thinking - eg they change their PTO rules last year so DH can take as much time off as he wants. This has vastly improved our quality of life here

Yes, the lack of vacation. Americans are sneered at over here as they are said to not own a passport, well you don't need a passport if you never get more than a couple of days leave!

DH moved companies and an admin assistant moved too, married lady with 3 dcs and she got...... 3 days leave a year. Unbelievable. DH more senior got 4-5 wks (think they transferred his UK style contract).

My complaints about US is the driving - everything is a huge distance away, drives me mad, here I can get the train for long distances, or even bus.

There is loads to see but 1. you need lots of leave and 2. it is very spread out so you are limited to what you can do over any one break.

And there is huge variation between states, Calif income tax is similar to UK, but in TExas much lower ?12%.

Just think you need to do careful research about cost of living etc about anywhere you plan to move to.