5 Tips For People Who Are Thinking About Becoming An Expat

Every year many thousands of people decide to move overseas permanently and to make a new life for themselves and their families in a new country. For many of these people this turns out to be one of the best decisions that they have ever made, but for a number of others the dream will rapidly turn into a nightmare. Here are a handful of the numerous things which you will need to consider.

- Make sure that you really do want to live overseas permanently.

There is no doubt that the grass is always greener on the other side and it is all too easy to create a heavenly picture of living in your chosen country. However, when you get there, you could find that the grass is a lot greener back home. It is also frequently the case that your opinion of a foreign country as a holidaymaker is very different from your view as a resident.

Not only is it essential to visit the country a number of times before you make any decision to move there, but you must visit at different times of year and for increasing lengths of time. You also need to try to 'live' in the chosen country by renting a house or condo and living as far as possible as you would as a resident rather than a holidaymaker. If you still believe that relocating is the right choice after you have spent a few months or so 'living' in the country, then there is a good chance that you will not regret your choice.

- Make certain that you fully understand the immigration rules for your chosen country.

Look at the present immigration rules of your chosen destination and also look at its past history on immigration and any published or rumored plans for the future.

In many cases you will have to meet strict visa requirements and some of these may be inconvenient, costly and leave you without a great deal of security. The absolute last thing you ought to do is to sever your ties with home, buy a condominium and settle the children into school only to discover that you are unable to extend your visa and are given two days in which to get out of the country.

- Sit down and work very carefully through your finances.

Think very carefully about how you will support yourself in your chosen country. Do you, for example, plan to look for a job after you arrive to furnish you with an income, or will you fund yourself from investments, savings or a pension from home?

If you wish to look for a job abroad then how simple is it going to be to get work? If you are able to get work, what sort of salary can you expect? Will they permit you to work at all? Many countries will require you to apply for a work permit and these are sometimes issued only in particular circumstances or for employment which requires special skills or qualifications. In a lot of cases your visa will specifically say that you may not seek employment.

If you are going to fund your stay from sources back home, do you have sufficient resources not just for today but for the next ten or twenty years or more? For example, if you are going to be taking a pension abroad will it keep pace with rising costs? In many cases you are permitted to receive a pension abroad but, if you opt to do so, you lose any cost of living increases and your pension will be fixed at the level at which you start to receive it overseas.

- Consider what to do with your assets back home.

If you own your home do you intend to rent it out, sell it or just leave it sitting empty? What do you intend to do with your furniture, car and other personal possessions?

Of course your home is far more than simply an asset as it also provides you with a link to your home country and gives you an address back home which could be extremely useful if you do not have family or friends who would be happy for you to use their address. You only have to wait until your credit card expires and your bank informs you that they can only send the replacement card to the registered address in your home country.

As far as your other possessions are concerned you could of course get rid of many of them if you wish, retaining only those or especial sentimental or real value, or you might decide to take them along with you. But how simple is it to ship things out and what will it cost? Look carefully too at the regulations in your country of destination. Some countries will allow you to bring more or less whatever you want into the country, while other countries will have very strict limits or charge high import taxes. In many cases for example it is a lot cheaper to buy a new car than to ship your own car and to suffer high import duty and perhaps to have to have the car altered to satisfy local requirements for registration.

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

You could feel fit and healthy now but, if you are thinking about relocating abroad permanently, then a time will come when you will need to avail yourself of the local healthcare facilities. Just how good are the local facilities and how do they compare to the facilities that you have grown used to?

Another extremely important consideration is the provision of public healthcare. If you come from a country with publicly funded healthcare, such as the UK, then you may be more than a little shocked by the cost of medical treatment when you are in a country with only private healthcare. On the other hand, if you are accustomed paying for your own healthcare, you could be very pleasantly surprised to find that you obtain the same or better medical treatment much more cheaply.

Whatever the case, however, healthcare is something which you need to examine very carefully and you will most certainly need some sort of expatriate health insurance plan.

This brief list of just five tips is far from exhaustive but it will hopefully give you a starting point and set you in the right direction. Deciding to become an expatriate is a very big step and one which needs considerable and careful thought.