Relocating to the USA

[LeeHarper5]

My husband was recently made redundant and is struggling to find another job in his field. There are roles available in the US that he is qualified for and has the relevant experience. He is now utterly focused on us moving out there.

The job he’s looking at is in Dallas, Texas although there are posts in most states. It pays $370 a day, working 5 days a week. The company sort visa’s but everything else would be down to us to sort. It’s a one year contract but he thinks we’re going to love it and never want to come back! He has a childhood friend living a 5 hour drive from Dallas and I’m sure he thinks we’ll be hanging out with them every weekend. We have a 4yr old starting school in September.

My husband has used a comparison site to work out what it would cost to cover bills at home and live in Dallas and says we could ‘just about manage’. He’s looking at renting a 2 bed apartment not houses, hasn’t included a car or thought about possibly having to pay for our sons schooling. He’s no idea if he’d have to pay tax out there or what tax implications there’d be back home. He’d be contracting so needs to set up a company.

I don’t want to disrupt our lives and the start of our sons education to ‘just about manage’. Is it worth scrimping and scraping in order to have the ‘experience’ of spending a year in another country? I can’t imagine going from a house with a large garden to an apartment. I’ve visited the US many times and love it for a holiday but I’m struggling to see how we’d even manage without a car.

I don’t want to be so negative to the idea but I’m worried about being stuck out there, with little spare money to go out and explore in our spare time and being thousands of miles from our support network. I really feel for him because he’s never been out of work and he’s starting to panic about not finding anything but I feel he’s jumping into this without proper thought and research.
Can anyone recommend good websites I could use to look at cost of living, schooling, medical insurance etc and the implications of moving overseas.
Thank you for reading and I’d be grateful of any advice or to hear about your positive experiences of relocating to the US.

I can understand why you think it might not work if you are paying for 2 homes and you are not able to work.
If you do go I would definitely look at renting your home. At least you would have another income.

Also from an insurance and mortgage pov you might not be able to leave your home empty for a year

If I remember correctly Kursk is in a high tourist/summer town in Maine so the town will benefit from an influx of outside cash etc in a way that is pretty exceptional (sorry if I mixed you up with someone else Kursk).

That's someone else I think.

That said my taxes on a 5 bedroom house were $6,400 per year until this year so not hugely more than Kursk's.

Towns in Maine with lower house prices and hence lower property taxes get a lot more help from the state towards their school budget, hence they can keep their town taxes down. I live in one of the Maine towns that gets almost no help from the state and my taxes are $7k on a 5-bed house, of which more than 80% goes straight to the school. As a district we spend a fairly average amount per student overall but we pay a lot more of it out of our property taxes.

What visa would he / you be eligible for? This is your first step - it might be that everything else is academic if you aren't able to get a visa anyway

As others have said the daily rate seems very low

What visa would he be eligible for? Do you need to work? If so, will you be able to do that on that visa?

We moved to the US 2 years ago, my husband had to work for the UK branch of the company he works for in the UK for 12 months before we could even apply for a visa.

This is your first port of call, as without a visa he cannot work full stop

Go and check it out before you move! Biggest mistake we made!

A complete side step here but if he's working in telecommunications has he thought of looking for jobs within emerging technologies? Lots of SMEs in my area who look for this sort of experience. Just a thought.

I am not sure he would get a visa as a contractor.

Also, as a contractor, he would not get health insurance.

Setting up a company is a way of limiting your liability and getting yourself an income as the employee of the company. It would be sensible. But he would need to get a lawyer to help set it up, and this would come with a cost. Tax-wise, he might write off a 'company vehicle' and claim other expenses such as cost of a dedicated work space at home, laptop, phone, etc.

Simply moving and getting set up would cost several thousand £. Apartments (apart from corporate long-stay apartments) do not in general come furnished in the US though you would have a fridge/freezer and dishwasher included in the vast majority of apartments. You would need to rent or buy beds and bedding (US and UK standard sizes are different), and furniture. You would need small appliances - hoover, kitchen appliances (coffee machine, mixer, blender, electric kettle, etc). You would also need to fork over at least a month and a half in rent up front, followed by your first month's rent in advance. Can you afford to move, given that you have no income right now?

You would need to establish credit before you could buy or rent any of these. While this can be done by getting an Amex card and paying off purchases in the UK, your H is unemployed at the moment, so this might be difficult.

Without any financial or practical help from the company, all of this would be a burden for you. You would be looking at considerable outlay and considerable effort on your part. Would they even offer help finding an apartment? Or would you have to take a trip to find and meet with a leasing agent, look at apartments, look at neighbourhoods, and fill in forms consenting to credit and background checks by potential landlords. There is a lot of expense involved. If you went out and stayed in a motel while looking, you would put yourselves in a very precarious position, with the motel bill to pay, and the possibility that your foreign references and credit history would result in landlords saying No thanks. I can see you hemorrhaging money just getting out there and getting settled.

And then there is the massive difficulty of health insurance. It might swallow a third of your monthly income.

Quite honestly, I would be looking much closer to home if I were your H. Could he work away weekly - in Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Sweden?

Also, if you do decide to try out Dallas, you really should rent out your house in the UK. How would you afford the mortgage, council tax and house insurance otherwise?

LeeHarper5 as he's in exactly the same industry as my DH, I will say an H visa is easy for him. This week DH just got a fast tracked visa and is now in the US. Telecommunications engineers do not have any difficulty with H1 visas. All the companies can pretty much get these easily for engineers. Is he hoping to get into 5G because I think, from what DH is saying the US is the place for that at the moment. Everywhere else is really quiet. Last month DH worked for a two week contract in London and people were saying it is really not a good market at the moment. The US on the other hand....
DH is not in a cheap city and is looking to move to Dallas, or a better area before we would consider moving as well. Could your DH do the same, go and feel it out before you make the big move? We live in DH's country and have a house and school places that will be open whenever we want to come back, so it is a bit easier for us. We don't take furniture, toys, clothes or anything to the US as it is quite easy to pick up those sort of things. Not for beds but for everything else we've always used Thrift stores. They are so cheap it is laughable. But then we are used to Brazil, it might be a different from British eyes.

Looking at the wage offered. Are you sure he cannot negotiate a better wage? less than $8,000 a month for a US contract is low for contracted engineers. If he can negotiate a better wage then you will have a better chance of arranging your own healthcare if needed, although I'm pretty sure you get health and life insurance into the contract. It's worth looking into getting best deal you can out of this, it is something I wouldn't pass up if the opportunity is there.

Check into the health insurance and then check again.

I believe it is fairly common if not universal to have co pays and deductibles so although you may have fantastic cover you will still have to pay towards it.

Check vaccines are covered for your children and what is covered if you get pregnant. And remember you will be paying for contraception.

Personally I wouldn't go any where near if it was a 'manage' situation and not a situation where you will get much more money / life benefits.

He’s no idea if he’d have to pay tax out there or what tax implications there’d be back home. He’d be contracting so needs to set up a company.

Of course he is going to have to pay taxes.

OP

It sounds a bit hair brained to me.

Linoleum
'Contract worker' is different from 'employee'.

A contract worker is not an employee. He is classed as self employed. There is no health or life insurance for contract workers.

These kind of engineers are contractors, they can work for the same company but will go from one project to the next. Most of the engineers, even the us ones don't have permanent employed positions. The contracts can be anything from 2 weeks for a project proposal to 2 years with a big network upgrade. The teams are usually made up of engineers from all over the world, as they are specialists and many countries like the US don't have enough home grown ones. Companies like Huawei and Samsung always pay life and health insurance in every country DH has been to and worked for them in, sometimes even food, cars and accommodation as well.

Correct, they are contractors, and for purposes of tax and rights they are considered self employed.

American companies, unlike Huawei or Samsung, might not feel the need to provide compensation packages for contractors that include health or life insurance, or insurance for families, accommodation, etc. Much depends on the corporate culture and the calculations made about attracting talent for specific projects. It's clear from what the OP wrote that her H is being offered a very lowball daily figure and nothing more.

Any update on your decision? I just wanted to let you know that things have changed for us and it looks about 70% likely that we will be going to Dallas now. DH said 5G is about to kick off in the USA and there will be a lot of jobs, he also confirmed that it is possible to negotiate health insurance.

As a spouse you go on an H4 visa. The good news is that on an H4, as long as you have a bachelors degree or higher, you can now apply for a work permit (new rule), this changes things a bit because it means there will be a chance to increase income and also get out of the house and have a life of your own.

Just thought you might want that food for thought.

OK sorry scrap that, it's only if you have an i-140 which DH's company has just filed for him. Not everyone on an H1-B will have an i-140.

Sorry everyone I’ve just realised there’s been some recent posts.
We won’t be moving to the USA anytime soon. Three weeks ago my husband secured a 12mth contract with our local university. It’s in IT networks as opposed to telecoms networks but the salary is comparable to his last job, shorter working days and they’re flexible too. He’s enjoying it so far.
He really was clutching at straws I think with the USA job. We’d been living on our savings for 4 mths (thank goodness we had savings) and with no prospects of a job on the horizon he was getting desperate.
So for now things are back to how they were. My son is looking forward to starting school and I’ve started looking for p/t roles too.
Thank you everyone who took time to give advice and share experiences particularly Linoleum. I hope your move goes well.