Dallas Texas

[JLT24]

Has anyone moved from the UK to Dallas with a young child? We are exploring doing this for 2 years. Please share any info you have 🙏🏻

How much money? Because you'd need to offer me a massive pile of it to move to DFW. Let's save all the political stuff for later. I live in the USA and actually quite like where I live, by the way.

• It is at the southern end of the prairies. It is F L A T. And there's nothing to stop the sprawl so it is positively endless.
• It is hot. I hope you like 3-4 months of 35C highs. You will be indoors in the air conditioning.
• Tornado Alley!
• Did I mention sprawl? Because there is sprawl.
• Sprawl = many freeways and bad traffic.
• Public transit? Not in Texas! There's a couple of light rail lines, but you'll be driving. Arlington, which has a population of 400K and a major league ball park, has no transit. On purpose.
• There's two major religions in DFW: Baptists and high school football. Your eyes will pop when you see a Texas high school football stadium.
• There really isn't anywhere good to go that isn't hours away. The Texas side of the Gulf has some beaches, but it's not very nice. The nice Gulf beaches are in Alabama and Florida (and some really are gorgeous). Dallas is basically surrounded by miles and miles of more flat prairie till you hit the woods in East Texas, or the Hill Country south/west of Austin. Want to know how big Texas is? It's 600 miles to El Paso and 550 miles to Brownsville and the border. And let me tell you there's not a heck of a lot between Dallas and El Paso. Austin is 3 hours away, and it's fun, but not that fun.
• Politics: Texas is ruled by the hard right. The city of Dallas is actually Democratic, but the suburbs are not. Notice how I mentioned Baptists? You will be invited to church. And because of the draconian laws on women's healthcare, it's impacting healthcare services in general.
• Texas has its own electrical grid that's cut off from the rest of the country. So when the weather gets really bad, the grid can't cope and everyone loses power.

The best things I can say for Dallas is that it has really diversified and has some excellent food, and there's some very good healthcare (but your employer better provide good insurance; Texas has the highest uninsured rates and the least generous public programmes in the country, even if you're permanent residents). There's worse cities in the US; I think I might actually fry in Phoenix. But you'd need to pay me a lot of money to make up for it. Despite TX' reputation there's some very good schools if you know where to go, because affluent upper middle class parents don't actually put up with poor schools.

Thanks for the info.

So we’d be moving just for 2 years with our 1 year old. I don’t work so no school/daycare required. I’ll be mostly at home all day so don’t intent to travel much day to day but my husband will need to travel to the office and back 5 days a week so it’s good to know and research a bit more.

My husband has been offered a job which is double his UK salary and no income tax so basically we’d come home with a good chunk of money. His package also includes family medical cover.

We’ve lived in Dubai previously so used to spending the summer months indoors. It seems there’s lots of activities for kids indoors and plenty of splash pads dotted around the city!

We’re not concerned about being near the coast (we live on the coast in the UK now) or travelling to be honest. Happy to stay in one place for the two years and chill on the travelling!

I’ll do some more research into tornado alley and the power cuts - thank you 🙏🏻

Is double the salary going to get you far in the states? Depends on his salary now. Is he on 50k, 100k, 150k?

That youtuber Elle Darby/Swift (the one that got cancelled for old racist tweets) recently moved there, shes vlogged the whole move, has very little kids and is pregnant atm.

This, and I would also want to understand more about the healthcare coverage - there is a wide range of what “cover” means and you could end up with a lot out of pocket if the coverage is not great

Will his work be paying healthcare and or rent?im guessing these bills will cancel out most of that wage boost

If you do decide to go, get your contraception sorted in the uk before you go. Implant or coil or similar.

My neice has just moved from texas (where she grew up) to another state because of the politics.

The annual budget would be:

Salary £162,000

Expenses £51,000 (2 bed apartment rent, utilities, content insurance, fuel, food, 2 x mobile phone contracts, internet, Netflix, Amazon, UK sim only contracts so we can keep our UK numbers, life insurance, critical illness insurance)

Fun money £24,000

Savings £87,000

His package includes a car (but not fuel) and family medical cover. Also £7000 for relocation costs (I’ve had quotes to move 20 boxes for £2,300 plus £1,200 for flights plus £4,320 for UK storage)

We are selling our UK home - we were selling next year anyway to downsize. We are storing our furniture.

Grateful if anyone wants to share if they think I’ve missed anything

Thanks I definitely need to understand and look into this alot more!

Just healthcare. The rent doesn’t cancel out the wage boost as we pay a mortgage now which we wouldn’t be paying as we are selling our UK home.

Did she say what she sees as the issues?

I think it would be an interesting place to live for a couple of years if not for the weather, which is downright toxic. For much of the year venturing out during daylight is hellish. Life is too short for that!

What is toxic about the weather?

If you mean the summer months we’ve lived in Dubai so very much used to spending the summer months indoors in air conditioning (100s of places to go indoors). Personally I think the weather in the UK is pretty hellish for most of the year but we choose the right places to go and make the most of it. I love the UK but I don’t love the weather!

Ah fair enough - if you enjoyed the Dubai weather you would probably be fine with Texas too! Both would be my idea of hell, as someone who likes moderate weather.

I think Dallas would be much more fun than Dubai.

Yes, someone living in Dubai would actually be someone who could handle the heat! But do be prepared for tornadoes, thunderstorms, hail storms. I'm in the mid-Atlantic, so I'm more used to heat than the typical British person, but Texas is too much for me.

for health care the bits to calculate are your premium contribution if any and then the amount you are liable for. There is a deductible and then some plans only pay so much of the fee until you hit your out of pocket maximum and frankly it's really complicated. If you never get ill then you'll spend very little, but if something happens you could be on the hook for several thousand dollars. (There is an absolute hard cap of about $13k per family.) so for example, our deductible is $2,000 for all 5 of us. Then insurance pays 80% until we have paid another $2000. Doctors visits are $25, which don't count towards either of those things. After we've paid that total $4,000, all we pay is the doctor fee (the copayment) and similar for prescriptions. If we somehow manage to hit $13,000 then we pay nothing at all. Certain things are classified as preventative and are always free, such as contraception, vaccines, annual well visit, other recommended screening tests.

Are you sure you don’t need to pay income tax? When we lived in US as ex-pats (Houston) we had to do both US and UK tax returns and definitely paid plenty of tax
Other than that Dallas is fine as a city, and we enjoyed our time in Houston. Managed to explore a bit of Texas in the time we were there, and wider US. The comment about Tx electricity upthread is very accurate though and the politics do suck.

You could offer me 20 million dollars and I would still never move to the US. I value first world affordable healthcare, waiters paid a minimum wage so I don't have to tip and I wouldn't want to risk my child being killed in a school shooting. No money would ever be worth it and you'd never forgive yourself, you'd have that on your conscience for the rest of your life. And even at 1-3 year old, there is still a risk you/child could be killed in shootout in town somewhere. Sorry if I offend anyone from there. But I will never, ever, ever, ever understand anyone even considering the US. To me it's on the same level as Afghanistan.

For 20 mill I'd move there like a shot

Bad pun, lol.

UNINTENTIONAL!!!!

There's no state tax in Texas on income, but you'll still have to pay federal tax on income.

My child will be 1, we won’t be using childcare

3 children were murdered on my doorstep a few weeks ago

I can’t live my life in fear though

Yes the income I’ve quoted is after the deduction of federal taxes

I do need to look into UK tax position more though

There is a reciprocal agreement between the US and UK where you don't have to pay tax to the US until income is over a certain level. But that is for US working in UK. I don't know if it works the same for UK working in US, I.e. No UK tax until over certain threshold. Worth speaking to a tax accountant about it.