Question to all of you ex-pats
Before the question, I must mention a few things...
I left Portugal in 1995 when I was 17. Was young and foolish and left before finishing High School and came to the U.S. to help out people as part of a religious organization which I'm not a part of anymore (and avoid mentioning due to the way it affected my life). Left parents, sister and the entire family behind. Gave away my entire Sinclair collection, which I regret, but it is what it is. Back then I thought I was doing the right thing.
Ended up meeting the girl that became the love of my life and had kids. Fast forward to October 2006. Decided I was tired of being used by an organization (11 years with paid housing but no vacations) and the missus and I decided we would start a new life, get a normal job like everyone else and have a normal life. I decided to stay rather than move back to Portugal because deep down I know this is where my kids will have a better chance of making it. Since 2006 the missus and I have been working hard, paycheck to paycheck, to give us and them a decent life. We both got simple jobs without having a degree or diploma to show. My interest in my Sinclair hobby came back, but I'm concentrating on eliminating debt, continuing my education and providing for my family.
My question to ex-pats is, was it easy for you when you moved to another country? We still live in a small flat/apartment and the rent is high. I hear of WOSser ex-pats that just moved across the pond and already have a house. How did you do it? Were you offered work? Is it because of a title you hold? Did you had family or friends to help you out when you arrived?
I don't feek sorry for myself or feel envy when I see other people's prosperity. I'm just curious. I know I'm going to make it, but it's taking a long time. At least now I don't feel like I'm wasting my time anymore. I work doing what I like to do. All I have is High School and hands-on experience, same with her. But we've been constantly working our way up, earning more each year, being promoted, bringing more to the table...
On day I'll buy my first house.
So, just curious if any ex-pat had to start from zero like I did or if you had things handed to you.
I left Portugal in 1995 when I was 17. Was young and foolish and left before finishing High School and came to the U.S. to help out people as part of a religious organization which I'm not a part of anymore (and avoid mentioning due to the way it affected my life). Left parents, sister and the entire family behind. Gave away my entire Sinclair collection, which I regret, but it is what it is. Back then I thought I was doing the right thing.
Ended up meeting the girl that became the love of my life and had kids. Fast forward to October 2006. Decided I was tired of being used by an organization (11 years with paid housing but no vacations) and the missus and I decided we would start a new life, get a normal job like everyone else and have a normal life. I decided to stay rather than move back to Portugal because deep down I know this is where my kids will have a better chance of making it. Since 2006 the missus and I have been working hard, paycheck to paycheck, to give us and them a decent life. We both got simple jobs without having a degree or diploma to show. My interest in my Sinclair hobby came back, but I'm concentrating on eliminating debt, continuing my education and providing for my family.
My question to ex-pats is, was it easy for you when you moved to another country? We still live in a small flat/apartment and the rent is high. I hear of WOSser ex-pats that just moved across the pond and already have a house. How did you do it? Were you offered work? Is it because of a title you hold? Did you had family or friends to help you out when you arrived?
I don't feek sorry for myself or feel envy when I see other people's prosperity. I'm just curious. I know I'm going to make it, but it's taking a long time. At least now I don't feel like I'm wasting my time anymore. I work doing what I like to do. All I have is High School and hands-on experience, same with her. But we've been constantly working our way up, earning more each year, being promoted, bringing more to the table...
On day I'll buy my first house.
So, just curious if any ex-pat had to start from zero like I did or if you had things handed to you.
Post edited by zxbruno on
Comments
I think boozy got on the wrong bus and ended up in the states ;)
scottie already put the framework/foundations in before moving and has a family. it's a gamble and well like anything can go either way.
I almost applied for a job in Boston (yer, at cheers) a few year back.. but the industry it's in is REALLY unstable.
I might end up going to Ireland at some point the way things are going or well out of london as being priced out by people who are only buying as investments and don't live here.(like how HK has become).
some countries it's the norm to rent, while other places it's the "big dream" to own. I do think in London , our parents had it easier in the respect of what we earn to what you can afford mortgage wise.
I think I've had it a little easier than you...probably because Texas is a hell of a lot cheaper to live in the Cali ;)
I came here in 97 with 2 suitcases and about $4k to keep me going as I couldn't work for the first 6 months..not by choice, INS wouldn't let me (still not sure why that is).
As soon as I got my work permit I bagged a job at Compaq as a contractor in the returns department...after about 2yrs of that i got hired on by Compaq as a perm and started getting the nice benefits..pay was ok.
With that job in the bag and my exwife getting a decent paycheck working as an Activities Director at a nursing home..we found a 3 bed house on 6 acres in the countryside, about 35 miles out of Houston..all for $105k...(as I was saying about living in Texas ;) ).
Of course she got that in the divorce...and I moved into the city to an apartment.
Roll forward to now, I'm an operations manager for a OEM of power conditioning equipment (for the audio/video industry), Just got married again in Feb, honeymooned in England in March, Just bought a new car and planning on buying a house probably next summer in Sugarland which is more convenient for my job...and nearer to the beach (where the new missus likes to go a lot).
Overall I'm doing better here than if I'd have staying in England where I was working in dead end warehouse job.
Texas itself...is 'ok'....I'd like to move further north though at some point if just to get out of the extreme heat here and boring flatness of everywhere...but again, can't beat the economy/cost of living in Texas..I think it's the best in the US really...you can still get property cheap and there is plenty of it.
I'm an ex-ex-pat. I had everything handed to me. The company relocated me and paid for everything, including giving me a fat per-diem.
If I were Portuguese or Spanish, I probably would have stayed too but my home country is prosperous and there's plenty of work in my line of work, and I appreciate certain things about home even more now after having been away for a number of years. So I came back.
This is true particularly in Houston. Two of my good friends got laid off during the recession, anywhere else they would have been scrambling to get a job but one of them already had work lined up before their last day at the old job, and the other was only out of work for a couple of weeks. Houston is a boom town right now thanks to the oil prices. I was talking to a friend in the oil business there who says it's great now -- but when the next crash comes it's probably going to be awful. But I said is it really going to crash again? We seem to be at a point where we've maxed out the extraction rate of oil so any economic growth at all anywhere will keep oil prices high and Houston booming.
A couple of years ago when I was visiting (I was actually going up to see a friend in Oklahoma first, but I flew via Houston) the guy at the immigration desk remarked that I was the first person off the plane he had seen who was not in the oil business. And I was right at the back, too. (A friend of mine is a BA B777 captain, and that flight from London to Houston was (probably still is) timed to connect to another flight from Nigeria, specifically because of all the oil industry people)
After a few years there I took jobs in either the railway or oil industries in Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Nigeria, Noway, Sweden, Russia and Italy for various lengths of time, normally "project duration" which would be about a year but I ended up spending 3 1/2 years in HK (back to back contracts) and just under 2 years in Kuwait (War, lets say the job spec changed slightly). All these jobs came with accommodation paid for and either food paid for or good expenses to cover it. All this time I still owned property in the UK and in fact sold and bought a number of houses to "climb the property ladder". (I had one house in Cheshire for nine years and slept there for 3 nights in that time).
I always intended to come back to the UK at some time so I invested in the UK rather than buying something wherever I was. Plus most of the sort of jobs I would be on would be accommodation and expenses (and / or food) provided for almost all of the ex pats to the point that expenses would cover flights to whatever country you wanted during downtime. These jobs were set up for ex pats to avoid having to pay tax either in the country of the contract or your home country. That's very common especially in the oil industry.
A friend of mine in Malta has a typical arrangement. He works as a merchant seaman so has tours of months on end. He will then fly from wherever the ship ends up back to Malta on most occasions but if he is getting close to his time in the country limit for paying tax he will fly back to the UK and thereby avoid the problem.
I stopped doing this a few years back but having homes in both Malta and the UK still ensured I could minimise my tax liability's - until Malta joined the EU and ruined it all.
In big engineering that is typical of how people work because the job is rarely longer than a single project which means you never really have time to set down roots in the country your working in but I don't know a single person who works this way that doesn't have at least one permanent (purchased) property in a country or country's they never intend to work in.
It's a very different type of ex pat lifestyle but from a personal viewpoint, a very enjoyable one.
I am the one who is fully convinced that America is the Promised Land - Land of Opportunity.
I came to US in 99 with a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering and with borrowed 750 USD in the pocket - all my savings went for the airplane ticket. No friends, no family in US - I was admitted with a full stipend in a PhD program thanks to my academic accomplishments. During my PhD program I met a Korean girl, now my wife, so we decided to stay in the states after completing degree.
Upon graduation I had no problems finding a good job. Went through long but straightforward immigration procedure based on employment (both my wife and I - we came here from different continents). We still keep on working a lot but pays well.
I think that I am living what is referred to as American Dream.
And, BTW, no way I would change California for Texas. There are plenty of reasons why living cost is high here. This is the place to be from many aspects. When I see other places I wonder why it is not even more expensive in CA. CALIFORNIA!
ZXBruno, if I am not mistaken, I live ~20 miles north of you.
Wonder if he visits WOS.
I missed this the first time, sorry about that. Here is the answer to satisfy your curiosity.
I could go into a lot of details about the whats and wherefores but Ill cut some details for brevity. Essentially it was just savings. Both me and my wife worked in the UK before my son was born and we managed to put a little by.We were both very good at living frugally but to a high standard. We had hobbies that did cost much Walking in the countryside, days out at the beach, unicycling and vintage computers from car boot sales. We rarely brought new things (other than clothes), but brought quality items, furniture, appliances, electronics etc. As a student I had also brought and sold a home for a small profit. About six months before coming over here to live I was flown out for an interview, whilst at the same time applying for a US visa.
When we came over I was living in accommodation subsidised by my employer for the first 4 months. It was so cheap my savings got topped up further. Therefore when I wanted a mortgage for my home, my bank were more than happy to oblige. I think the combination of job title, area of specialism and employer also helped, if anything it showed I'll not be short of work (fingers crossed). It's only now I feel I've earned the right to be a little less frugal, but to be honest I don't have enough time to be a spender
Anyway, my wife's from Australia so has been itching to get back here for a while. She applied for a really good job that she thought she'd never get, but she did, so I got my visa, we sold the house and off we went. I took my work with me, which was handy, but I hope the exchange rate improves sometime as everything is really expensive at the moment and getting paid in pounds isn't so great.
My sister-in-law lives in Portugal by the way, and is loving it. Then again, she's just a short hop from the beach in Estoril and works as an academic. I'm sure not everyone has it quite so good there.
For 15 years, me and Mrs Ant went from paycheque to paycheque, with little excess cash. Just enough for one budget holiday in the sun a year, but even that stretched things so we got into debt, especially with pay that was reducing compared to inflation. Mrs Ant's mum and dad died i recent years, so that windfall cleared her debt. 2 years ago I changed career, so this year for the first time I have some proper spare cash to spend wothout adding to credit cards. We were lucky in as much as we have a house, but only because Mrs Ant got it cheap from the council, otherwise we'd just be considering that now. Its a bit run down, but hopefully my spare cash is enough to sort that out over the next couple of years, a lick of paint and some decent furniture will work wonders.
I guess the main thing is that we were happy(ish) with our lot. We're not terribly materialistic, a few home comforts are enough and I'm content to play old and inexpensive games for a hobby.
I moved to a small town (Montpelier, ID) of no more than 3,000 people with an hour and a half drive to get to anywhere bigger. I started of just working in a local store stocking shelves etc. After a couple of months an acquaintance I had made since being here offered me a job working in his insurance agency. I knew nothing about insurance in the UK let alone the US, but it was an office environment and that suited me better. After a couple of years I got licensed to sell insurance in the agency and started doing that as well as having a small computer repair business on the side.
We moved to Boise, Idaho in 2012 but came back at the end of last year. I worked in a larger company up there and earned better money. We owned a house there with 6 acres in a nice area, but the cost of commuting and paying the house off meant we were better off to come back to Montpelier. I also did not enjoy the stress of living near a big city.
We have owned 3 different houses since I came here. We made a little bit of money off the last one and right now we are living in a house owned by my in-laws. They are only there for about 3 months a year. We can stay here as long as we want, so we have no rent and no mortgage which is really nice. We built an extension on to the front of the place recently as well. It is a really odd building though. It was built 100 years ago and was originally a school and then a church later on. The place is somewhere between 4000 and 5000 sq ft, although it is split in to three different areas and we use just one part of it. It's a bit of an odd setup but it's not so bad.
We pretty much live from paycheck to paycheck, but with new setup of having no mortgage etc, I think we should start doing better now. The scenery here is breathtaking, although it gets very cold in the winter. You really get fed up with white by the time March comes around.
If you want an idea of what it's like around and have played Skyrim it looks very much like that! It is mountainous and there is often snow in the winter. The summers are warmer than the UK though.
I do get homesick sometimes though. I don't think there would be any way for me to move back though really. I could probably work for the MOD again, but I would not earn much and we would probably end up living in a council house or flat or something, which compared to where we live now would be a big step down.
Zxbruno, maybe you could research moving to a different state. As mentioned previously property prices in some states (including Idaho) are pretty low.
The odd isolation you get feeling sometimes whe you see the natives and their extensive support networks of friends and family,
Other than that, love the great weather, hate the astronomical property prices and beer prices
Dead right.
Although, in amongst all the health-tourism, benefits sponging, depriving the locals of jobs, drug dealing, gang warfare and disrespect for local customs we all still find a bit of time to still love the mother country. :smile: