5 Tips For Those Who Are Looking At Becoming An Expat - By: Don Saunders

Every year thousands of people decide to move abroad permanently and to make a new life for themselves in a foreign land. For many of these people this will prove to be one of the best decisions that they have ever made, but for a large number of others their dream will quickly turn into a nightmare. Here are a small selection of the many things which you will have to consider.

� Make sure that you really do want to live abroad permanently.

It is a simple fact that the grass is always greener on the other side and it is far too easy to conjure up a heavenly picture of living in your chosen country. However, once you arrive, you could find that the grass is now a lot greener back at home. It is also usually the case that your view of a country when you are a holidaymaker is quite different from that when you are a resident.

Not only must you visit the country a number of times before you make any decision to move there, but you should also do so at differing times of year and for increasingly lengthy periods of time. You also have to try 'living' in the chosen country by renting a condo or house and living as far as is possible as you would be living as a resident rather than a holidaymaker. If you still think that moving is the correct choice after spending six months or so 'living' in the country, then it is a fair bet that you will not come to regret your choice.

� Make certain that you understand the immigration rules for the country concerned.

Check out the current immigration requirements of your chosen country and also take a look at its immigration history and any known or rumored plans for change.

In the majority of cases you will have to meet strict visa requirements and some of these could be inconvenient, expensive and leave you without a great deal of security. The very last thing you wish to do is to sever your ties with home, buy a condo and get your kids settled into school only to find that you cannot extend your visa and are given seven days in which to leave the country.

� Sit down and work very carefully through your finances.

Think very carefully about how you intend to support yourself financially in your chosen country. For example, do you plan to seek employment after you arrive to provide you with an income, or will you fund yourself from saving, investments or retirement income from home?

If you wish to seek employment overseas then how easy will it be to get work? If you are able to get work, what kind of salary can you expect? Will they let you work at all? A large number of countries will require you to apply for a work permit and these are sometimes issued only in particular circumstances or for employment requiring specific qualifications or skills. In a lot of cases your visa will expressly say that you may not seek employment.

If you wish to fund yourself from sources back home, do you have enough resources not merely for today but for the next ten or twenty years or beyond? For example, if you are going to be receiving retirement income overseas will it keep pace with rising costs? In a lot of cases you are permitted to receive retirement income overseas but, if you opt to do so, you will lose any cost of living increases and your income will be pegged at the level at which you start to take it overseas.

� Consider what to do with your assets back home.

If you own your own home will you sell it, rent it out or just leave it empty? What will you do with your car, furniture and other personal belongings?

Naturally your home is much more than merely as asset because it also provides you with a tie to your home country and provides you with an address back home which could be very useful if you do not have family or friends who are happy for you to use their address. Just wait until your credit card runs out and your bank informs you that they will only send your replacement card to the address to which the account is registered in your home country.

As far as your other belongings are concerned you can of course dispose of many of them if you want to, keeping only those or especial real or sentimental value, or you can take them with you. But how easy is it to ship things out and what will it cost? Look carefully too at the rules in your chosen country. Some countries will allow you to bring just about whatever you want into the country, but other countries will have very strict limits or levy high import taxes. In many cases for example it will be much less expensive to buy a new car than to ship your own car and suffer high import duty and perhaps to need to have your vehicle adapted to satisfy local requirements for registration.

� Take a very careful look at the provision of healthcare.

You could feel on top of the world today but, if you are considering moving overseas permanently, then a time is going to come when you will have to avail yourself of the local healthcare facilities. Just how good are the facilities and how do they compare to the facilities that you have grown accustomed to?

Another very important factor is the availability of public healthcare. If you come from a country that provides publicly funded healthcare, like the United Kingdom, then you might be more than a little surprised by the cost of medical treatment when you are living in a country with only private healthcare. Of course, if you are accustomed paying for your own healthcare, you may be very pleasantly surprised to find that you can get the same level of or better medical treatment much more cheaply.

Whatever the case, however, this is something which you will have to check out very carefully and you will certainly need some form of expatriate health insurance plan.

This short list of just five tips is certainly not exhaustive but hopefully it will give you a starting point and get you going in the right direction. Deciding to become an expat is a huge step and one which requires a great deal of careful thought.

About the Author

Donald Saunders writes on many subjects, in particular health, and is also himself an expat. For more information on international travel health insurance or on affordable health insurance in general then please visit MedicalHealthInsuranceToday.com

Article Directory: http://www.articlerich.com

Additional Articles From - Home | Travel & leisure | Travel tips