Multiple Moves (cont'd)

[GilliC]

To avoid hijacking the other thread any more, I thought I'd just start another one...

Feb 24, 2015 11:11:15 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Feb 24, 2015 10:58:33 GMT -5 expatpumpkin said:

Feb 24, 2015 4:14:09 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Feb 23, 2015 20:31:22 GMT -5 expatpumpkin said:

Good luck with wherever you decide - and DO GO SOMEWHERE. I'm on my 4th country (Mexico, not in Mexico City, though) and can't imagine having never lived abroad.

This is awesome, and I'm always so fascinated and jealous by people who have been able to do this.  Can I ask what you do?  Have you always moved around with the same company?  What countries have you lived in?  I feel very lucky to finally have gotten an opportunity to work abroad and I'm "only" in London.  I would love to do Asia next...there's a tiny possibility that could happen when I'm done here.

I'm self-employed, but that's not what's led me abroad...  First country was Spain - did one year of undergrad there and then returned later for two years to do a master's degree.  Second country was Mexico - married a Mexican and moved here with him after the wedding.  Then we moved to the UK (London!) for a little over three years because of his work.  And now we're back in Mexico - combined time living in Mexico has been three years now.  (I should have said I was on my 3rd country because I was counting the US, hahaha.)  

How did you end up in London?  Are you enjoying it?  Mexico is great and we enjoy a cushier lifestyle here, but I sure do miss London! 

What a great set of experiences.  I always wanted to study abroad but my school made it very difficult to do that.  I'm now well into my career and had kind of given up hope that I'd ever get the expat experience I wanted but I saw an opportunity to make a move with my current firm, pushed hard for it, and voila here I am!  I've been here almost five months now and the work is going well but I feel like I haven't explored my new surroundings enough yet.  It's also been tough because DH is lagging behind on the move for several more months so we're doing the long distance thing, which sucks. 

Feb 24, 2015 19:09:24 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Feb 24, 2015 18:03:58 GMT -5 GilliC said:

RockNVoll I'm also on my 4th country if you count the US (The others are France, China, and Norway). I work in the oil industry, though not as any kind of geologist or petroleum engineer. I knew that the company has a strong culture of international transfers, which is why I joined in the first place, and I've been bouncing around ever since.

I love this, how awesome that you found a company that could feed your wanderlust!  Will you be moving to your next country anytime soon?  Any idea what that will be?  And I've always been curious how you met your bf and how you guys make the Norway/Rio thing work.  I miss my husband something fierce--I'm so not cut out for a long-distance relationship.

[GilliC]

Feb 24, 2015 19:09:24 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I love this, how awesome that you found a company that could feed your wanderlust!  Will you be moving to your next country anytime soon?  Any idea what that will be?  And I've always been curious how you met your bf and how you guys make the Norway/Rio thing work.  I miss my husband something fierce--I'm so not cut out for a long-distance relationship.

No plans to move anytime soon. I was looking at a transfer a few years ago, but with the global economy the way it has been, it made more sense to stay in Norway for the moment. Now with the downturn in our industry, it's unlikely we'll see many people moving at all for a while. Plus I love it here and doubt I'll find anywhere better, so my move-related wanderlust is starting to subside.

My boyfriend actually works for the same company, and we actually met in Houston, when I was teaching an internal course that he was attending. We met again a while later when I was in Rio for a few weeks for a different project. Basically we had a fling while I was in town, but then we decided to see where things went. We'd both been through a divorce, so to some extent having the distance for a while was a good thing. It kept things from getting too serious too quickly, and it meant that we were pretty candid about what we wanted, since it would have been a lot simpler to split up.

And thankfully the time difference with Brazil isn't terrible (5 hours in summer, 3 hours in winter), so we could talk a lot on Skype. We'd pretty much just leave it running a lot of the time, so it was like being in the next room. We'd leave it on even if we were cleaning or watching TV or something, so the other person could make a comment once in a while - like you would if you were doing separate things in the same flat. We also watched a few of our favorite shows "together" each week, by queuing them up on the computer and one person counting down "3, 2, 1, Play!" and then muting the two Skypes. It's kind of silly, but it was nice to feel like we were doing something together.

Anyhow, we kept that up for a little over 2 years, I think? We managed to see each other every second month, since we have a lot of vacation, and our bosses were generally okay with letting us work remotely from the other office for a week or so once in a while. Finally we decided we wanted to work on the same continent so we could visit more often, and we started asking about transfers. He was following up an option near London, and I was chasing an opening in the south of France, where there would have been a direct flight to Gatwick. That ended up falling through, but he got a transfer to our office in western Norway, so he moved there a little over a year ago. Now it's just a 45-minute flight between us, so we can see each other quite often. Eventually I think we'll want him to move to Oslo, and we'll probably start following up on that in another year or so.

[Cicero]

We're on country number four if you count the US as well. We met in Prague when I was studying abroad in undergrad and he was on a two year secondement through his Big 4 accounting firm. We its went back to the U.S., got married, yadayadayada, until one day one of the directors from the Prague office called and basically offered him a job. I was in law school at the time so he moved first and I came later I did a year of law school there it by the time it was over the global economic crisis was beginning to be felt in the Czech Republic. Contractually guarenteed benefits like language lessons started disappearing, we pretty much saw the writing on the wall and H started talking to recruiters (and in retrospect it is a really good thing he did because his entire group in Prague has since been let go).

Through the recruiter he got an amazing job in industry in Switzerland. After two years with them he was sent on a two year assignment to Malaysia and after that a similar assignment came up in the US, which is where we are now. As long as he stays with this company we'll likely be moving every few years just because company culture is such where they want you to understand every aspect of the business and you can't move up if you're not willing to move.

[rupertpenny]

We are on our first country, but hoping that my H can transfer to another office in his firm sometime in the future when we are ready to move on. The two logical moves (besides going back to the U.S.) are London and Singapore. My H is interested in Switzerland but I am really not at all (Cicero maybe you can tell me if I'm being irrational about this or not).

We would go to Singapore but it isn't something we'd pursue aggressively. We really are hoping to end up in London someday.

[Cicero]

Feb 25, 2015 9:23:11 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

We are on our first country, but hoping that my H can transfer to another office in his firm sometime in the future when we are ready to move on. The two logical moves (besides going back to the U.S.) are London and Singapore. My H is interested in Switzerland but I am really not at all (Cicero maybe you can tell me if I'm being irrational about this or not).

We would go to Singapore but it isn't something we'd pursue aggressively. We really are hoping to end up in London someday.

I had zero desire to even vist Switzerland before we moved there.  The opportunity was just way too good to pass up.  I ended up enjoying it but was ready to go when we left. Now that we have a kid I'm actually looking forward to eventually moving back.  The quality of life is really high and I think it would be a great place to grow up.

Where in CH is their office?  

[Cicero]

Feb 25, 2015 11:39:24 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Feb 25, 2015 11:12:03 GMT -5 Cicero said:

I had zero desire to even vist Switzerland before we moved there.  The opportunity was just way too good to pass up.  I ended up enjoying it but was ready to go when we left. Now that we have a kid I'm actually looking forward to eventually moving back.  The quality of life is really high and I think it would be a great place to grow up.

Where in CH is their office?  

Are salaries generally adjusted to make up for COL there?  I haven't been but have heard about how incredibly expensive pretty much everything is.

Salaries are high in general but coming from other a European countries you have to also factor in that they don't have nationalized health care and it's all private insurance, and it's pretty expensive (our premiums after H's employer picked up most of the tab were somewhere around $1k a month).

[Cicero]

Feb 25, 2015 11:55:54 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Feb 25, 2015 11:51:40 GMT -5 Cicero said:

Salaries are high in general but coming from other a European countries you have to also factor in that they don't have nationalized health care and it's all private insurance, and it's pretty expensive (our premiums after H's employer picked up most of the tab were somewhere around $1k a month).

Wow.  I'm still not adjusted to London's COL and can't imagine how I'd feel going somewhere even more expensive.  I'll be honest, while my gratitude for this opportunity and experience is high, the MM side of me cringes at the thought of how far behind I'll be financially relative to having just stayed in the U.S.

It really is company specific. Wages in the Swiss office for us are significantly higher than anywhere else in the world.

We were on a local contract there and ended up far beyond where we would have if we had stayed in the US. Part of it is the fact that H had an entire career change that brought a raise but part of it was also the salary and benefits offered in CH, but those two years really set us up financially. Our first year there we were able to pay off all SL debt and more aggressively save for retirement. The move to CH was a game changer for us.

There are definitely things you can do to bring down expenses as well. We bought our groceries across the border in France because it was 30% cheaper--and probably more now that they've removed the ceiling between the Euro and the Franc.

[Cicero]

Feb 25, 2015 12:13:26 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Feb 25, 2015 12:04:31 GMT -5 Cicero said:

Have you been able to find work as well every time your H's company has moved you?

Not really.  Doing the trailing thing has really stunted my career, which is something I knew full well going in and chose to do.  That being said, it's a lot easier now that I am working in my profession in such a way that I'll be able to continue the next time we move.

[rupertpenny]

Cicero they have two offices, in Zurich and Geneva.

@rockinvoll i love Hong Kong, you should definitely try to spend some time living here! We do want to end up in London eventually, but I'm happy to stay here for a while longer. I think we have a very high quality of life , although I guess it helps that small apartments don't bother me haha. The crowds do get old, but I find it pretty easy to avoid. Basically I just never go to Tsim Sha Tsui or Causeway Bay and it's fine.

[rupertpenny]

RockNVoll we are in a 400 sq foot place right now, but moving to 600 sq foot place next month. The new place is 3 bd 2 bath so the rooms are small for sure, but we also will be in a building with a pool, a gym, two lounges/sitting rooms, and our apartment has two balconies so it isn't that bad. Also, we will have 4 people living there: me, my H, our daughter, and our helper/nanny. I think childless couples have a lot more options and can get something that at least feels more spacious because you don't have to cram in as many bedrooms.

The summer does suck, but I'm from Florida so I'm pretty used to it.

I am trying to learn Cantonese, but it's so hard! I don't practice enough because everyone is so willing to just speak English. I also am not learning characters and I think not having a visual aspect is making it more difficult for me too.

[GilliC]

Feb 25, 2015 19:40:12 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

RockNVoll we are in a 400 sq foot place right now, but moving to 600 sq foot place next month. The new place is 3 bd 2 bath so the rooms are small for sure, but we also will be in a building with a pool, a gym, two lounges/sitting rooms, and our apartment has two balconies so it isn't that bad. Also, we will have 4 people living there: me, my H, our daughter, and our helper/nanny. I think childless couples have a lot more options and can get something that at least feels more spacious because you don't have to cram in as many bedrooms.

The summer does suck, but I'm from Florida so I'm pretty used to it.

I am trying to learn Cantonese, but it's so hard! I don't practice enough because everyone is so willing to just speak English. I also am not learning characters and I think not having a visual aspect is making it more difficult for me too.

3-bed 2-bath in 600 sq ft?! Color me impressed! I have a 2-/1- in 650, and most people back home look at me like I'm crazy. I do have plenty of space, so I guess I can see where I could fit the other two rooms in. It just reminds me that I'm spoiled!

[wise_rita]

Country #4 for us, too.

I won't get into the long winded details but us being of different nationalities and studying has afforded us 3 out of 4 international opportunities.

I can feel the seed of a 5th destination starting to germinate. I've got my eyes on the Middle East in a few years. Maybe.

[fbf2006]

It's the 4th country for us too. Grew up in Nigeria, both went to college in the US (Atlanta for college, Boston for grad school, then worked 3 years, and then NYC for 6 years). We also lived in Toronto for less than a year between the time we lived in Boston and NYC and we're now in London.
It'd be nice to do a couple more countries before we 'settle' back in the US or Nigeria.

[mrsukyankee]

I'd love to move from London for a few years - somewhere in Asia in particular - but right now with ageing in-laws, it won't happen. Bah.

[CakeLover]

#1 for our family. #2 for DH

[meshimeshi]

We are on our third country overseas, 4 if you count the US. We've been in the Middle East the whole time though. We've enjoyed it, but I am jealous of some the locations that many of you have lived.

I wish H could get in with some company that would give international placements. I am a teacher, so we move based on my work, but I think it would be easier and more lucrative if he could find something. He just finished his BS though....he went to college later in life, so his career is just starting off.