Please tell me what to think about when going to live abroad?!

[Lycraphobe]

DH was made redundant in November and we have decided to move abroad. We have always toyed with the idea but suddenly there is money in the bank and no job here. I don?t know where yet? I am interested in somewhere English speaking like Australia but DH thinks we should try somewhere in Europe. We have three DC (DS1 is 10, DD is 6 and DS2 is 2).

There just seems so much to do! Any advice please on where to go or even what we should be thinking about would be gratefully received!

Also if you can keep hold of your uk house, do. It is not a good idea to burn all bridges. We did and now we are effectively stuck.

If you move abroad to a non-English speaking country, definitely go somewhere where there is a bilingual school (ie local language plus English) that you can afford (because bilingual schools are usually fee paying). That way your children will grow up biingual and biliterate and you will have an international community to use as a base while you are finding your feet (and this can take a long while).

What amapoleon said. i have just left spain after 19 years there.

Not one minute of it was easy. The reason people on those TV programmes always seem to be doing B+B or whatever is because in many european countries there is no work for foreigners. For example in Spain you can't have a public sector job unless you spend years doing civil servant exams. You can't do those exams unless you're spanish. So that leaves teaching English or starting your own business. We did both and worked a 7 day week till 8 or 9pm at night for 15 years - family life? - what family life?

Now we're starting again from scratch in the UK with no jobs and no savings.

If you have a house in the UK please DON'T sell it, rent it out. You might want to come back.

By moving abroad you won't be leaving the rat race you'll just be having to deal with it in a language you don't speak. It takes years to learn a language and many more years to understand how a place works.

Take your heads out of the clouds and do some proper research. Please.

just want to add - what someone else said - try and get new jobs in the UK and buy a little place abroad for holidays.

Hahah Shitemum, I couldn't have said it better myself! {It's lucy5 by the way]

I'd like to echo Shitemum's post.
I'm Italian and I lived in the UK for 8 yrs. Before moving, I thought I knew England quite well and was fond of it, plus my English was already fluent.
It was still extremely difficult to adapt. And very lonely.

Having lived somewhere that, like Australia and New Zealand, is too far away and too expensive to visit the UK more than once a year, and ditto for visitors coming out to you, I'd say Europe - choose somewhere that Easyjet or whatever fly to!

In saying this, I'm presuming you have family and friends in the UK you'd like to keep in touch with. Family members of ours moved to Australia, and have had one visitor in five years. And nobody ever phones them (apart from us ). Remember that your friends may sound excited for you when you're talking over plans in the UK, and promise to visit, but in reality, once you've gone, they're less willing to spend their hard-earned cash and holidays coming to see you.

Sorry, rambling, but my point is once you move away, the onus is on you to keep in touch with people by returning to the UK regularly.
Don't bank on visitors to far-flung destinations.

Good luck!

I lived in Cyprus for 4 years and found it a wonderful place, I would move back tomorrow. DH could get a job (and yours too) with building and plastering etc.
Tis quite expensive though but quality of life, aaahhhh!!

Hi lucy5 ! - you aren't really stuck but it's almost as hard moving back as it is staying!

IME moving abroad is over-rated and has been hyped by all those TV programmes.
Spain (for example) is not the UK but with better weather...

funwithfondue - I had regular visits from my mum but my siblings only made it out about 2 times each in all that time(19 years).
And we never had holidays to anywhere but the UK!

Also bear in mind that your children will grow up to feel they belong in whatever country you have moved to. (Possibly a country that you have no other relatives in or ties to). I had visions of the DC staying in Spain once grown up and me and DP moving back to the UK and then having to go and visit them there in our dotage...

By all means try it for a year but don't burn your boats or your bridges.

This is all really good advice!

I am finding it difficult to find a good source of info anywhere ... soemthing that tells me how to prepare and what the realities of emigrating here. Does anyone know of any resource or is this just a gap in the market? I can't be the only one who doesn't just want to leap into the unknown...?!

There is no one stop shop as every country is completely different.

The Explorer guides do "Resident's Guide to X" which can be quite helpful and take you through the main things you need to think about. There are hundreds of books on emigrating to Aus/NZ/ US- just do a search on Amazon. It's also probably useful to read books by people who have done it (positive and negative). Again, Amazon normally suggests these if you look for the Explorer guide.

Some countries with big expat populations have websites where you can get a lot of information. Expatwoman is good for the gulf states. Asiaexpat for Asia.

There are expat sites for Spain too but mostly used by people on the coast. IMO living on the coast is very different from living inland or in Madrid or the north.

Have you exhausted all possibilities in the UK? Like getting a few headhunters, maybe changing jobs, sking friends, old colleagues, linkedin.com, etc. Moving away is not the land of milk and honey. We have moved 2x in the last year and it's been stressful. We're now in Dubai and we see so many Brits leaving again. It is hard and yes, as others pointed out: the rat race doesn't stop coz the sun is shining.

Can absolutely second AF's last comment. Hand on heart. Don't know much about Spain but I can speak the language well enough and still wouldn't think I can hack it in a corporate, let alone handle my own business. I don't mean to discourage you, but do some research before you go there because many are leaving and you might get dicked around and sit on your costs.

Sorry, I'm too slow, not AF's last comment but the one where she wrote about the MENA region and Dubai, Qatar, Saudi. So true!!

British Expats www.britishexpats.com/ has boards for quite a few countries which you can surf, but you really need to identify a country in order to ask questions there. Australia seems to have the best economic prospects at the moment, but it is a long way away, so expensive, and I don't know how long it takes to get visas.

If yit's a lifestyle change you want why not move to another part of the UK? Cornwall, Scotland, Wales etc... Not all places in the UK are 'rat-racey'

Moving abroad is hard. If you don't speak the language it'll be extremely difficult to set up a business.