I find it very interesting, and good. I appreciate all the first hand info.
Obviously some potential to go down the wrong road, but I don't think anything bad so far. Some of these issues are very much a part of living somewhere else, it's would be wrong not to at least have some discussion of them. Hard to avoid the HC topic, that is clearly a large contrast from the US to other countries.
The US tax thing can be interesting for Canadian snowbirds. Everyone knows six months less a day, or the IRS will take all your stuff. Not everyone knows that they add 10% of last year's time soth to this year's calendar.
I know a guy doing a Hotblack Desiado in England because of it.
Are there any countries that offer good universal healthcare, are generally friendly to Americans, and don’t suffer from this thing called “Winter”?
I had to keep paying taxes to Canada as long as I owned a house there. Selling that house involved some extra paperwork because it was the end of my "substantial ties" to the country. I haven't had to pay taxes there for about a decade now. I know it's quite different when trying to leave the US.
Pete Gossett said:Are there any countries that offer good universal healthcare, are generally friendly to Americans, and don’t suffer from this thing called “Winter”?
Australia? I'm assuming the kids that used to throw rocks at the "Yank" back in the 80's have grown up a bit. There's also NZ. If you don't want to speak English, there are a bunch of options. A friend of mine cut ties to the US, moved to NZ, then Thailand and has now ended up in Spain. He's from the Bay area so you know he can't handle a real winter :)
Keith Tanner said:Pete Gossett said:Are there any countries that offer good universal healthcare, are generally friendly to Americans, and don’t suffer from this thing called “Winter”?
Australia? I'm assuming the kids that used to throw rocks at the "Yank" back in the 80's have grown up a bit. There's also NZ. If you don't want to speak English, there are a bunch of options. A friend of mine cut ties to the US, moved to NZ, then Thailand and has now ended up in Spain. He's from the Bay area so you know he can't handle a real winter :)
Both those two countries have pretty strict residency laws. You need some combination of youth, education, earnings potential and savings to get it. Roughly speaking the younger, better educated and wealthier you are, the easier you'll get in. Irt'ss easy in your 20's, not so much in your 40's and beyond. I know people who did it when young and it was easy (my sisters BFF who I've known for over 40 years) They've been there over 20 years now and love it. I know other people who have looked into it once they were in their 40's and the bar was high enough that they dropped the idea.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Ran into the same thing when I had a house in the UK while living in the US. Made for a fun tax return, especially as the tax years don't fully align.
As my client today seems to want me to be on call, I can elaborate on a few things.
The comments re the health system are something I can pretty much confirm after having experience with the German system, the UK one and the US one. The German one isn't really single payer but people are required by law to have health insurance from an approves provider. It's not as expensive as over here, but coverages have been cut for decades. The social safety net has also been eroded somewhat, and that can lead to funny choices - my cousin and her other half have been together well over a decade, own a house together and all that, but refuse to get married as that would make them responsible for care cost for each other's parents. The other half went through this with his mother and it nearly financially killed him to the extent that he can't afford to go through this again. And other parts of the safety net now have a lot of holes in them as well.
The UK system mostly works as designed - emergency stuff tends to get dealt with quickly, the other care has to wait. It's going a bit downhill though with frequent funding cuts and now with Brexit (the UK employs a large number of EU and non-EU personnel in the health care sector). The rest of the safety net is also not that great and like in Germany, my generation isn't sure if it'll be around until we retire. But at least the UK doesn't take a huge chunk out of one's paycheck for the state pension system and tell you at the same time that you probably won't get much or anything back out.
The one emergency-ish I had in the UK was dealt with in the same quick manner I would have expected from the system in Germany. I had been suffering from what my GP (family doctor) thought were bruised ribs, but they weren't healing. It also felt link there was a lump under the ribcage. I think I got to about the 'p' in lump before he had his receptionist call the local hospital for the required tests, which started within a week or so, followed by about six months of monitoring. I did have an out of pocket cost for some of this (a pound or two for parking at a hospital further away).
The 'not from here' kinda has been following me around since birth, so I never really noticed it that much. The area in Germany I was born and grew up in has a strong regional dialect, and my family moved down there from northern Germany after the war. So I grew up not speaking the local dialect, which immediately marked me as "not from here". But yes, I got the occasional question about where I'm from in the UK and the US - I don't really have that strong a German accent so a lot of people in the UK thought I was from Norway or Sweden, with a bit of South Africa thrown in. In the US, people either think I'm from a funny part of Britain or if they have been to Germany, often correctly guess Germany.
The credit history thing is an interesting one. As Keith wrote, it doesn't follow you from country to country, not even in the EU (at least back then). However the credit history and score seem a lot more important in the US that they are in Europe. in Europe you obviously run into issues when you want to borrow money and have no or bad credit, but it doesn't make your car insurance rates explode and potentially cost you a job like over here.
In the UK I mainly lived in the Southeast where people are used to immigrants and did have few problems there - other than the border guards asking me every time if I was going home (with an implied "finally") every time I went on a European vacation. Friends of mine from Eastern Europe didn't necessarily have the same good experience.
In the US, I think the combination of everybody being from someplace (and often "someplace else") and being at least the right shade of pale has generally have me fly mostly under the radar. I got the "coming here to steal our jobs and women" once or twice in the fifteen years since I've been regularly traveling over here and hte eight years I've been a permanent resident. Living in Nevada where it's not always considered polite to ask people where they are from (and in some cases in the backcountry, potentially hazardous to one's health) can be a factor in this, though.
I'm also a bit of an in-betweener like Adrian mentioned. I can't see myself going back to Germany for a lot of reasons (and that's before I'd even look at much lower salaries and higher taxes there) and I've not felt "at home" there for a long time. I might get more German the further I get away from there, but I'm not when I'm there.
I felt a lot more at home in the UK than I did in Germany, and now the same feeling is slowly developing in the US. I'm not a citizen yet, but I'll probably be in a few years. We haven't quite found the right place to live for us yet anyway, so we'll be trying the East Coast for a while, and the area (NoVa/WV) reminds me very much of the area in Britain I used to live in. Right down to that dang rain.
Oh, and what Adrian said about the outdoors lifestyle is very true. Basically in most of Western Europe you can only go four wheeling in a disused quarry. I have a few friends who a big into Landrovers in the UK and often go "green laning" (basically going on trails that represent ancient rights of way, maintaining them and keeping them open) and they've been getting a massive backlash from both the horsey set adn ramblers (hikers) that are trying to block their access.
Wow! What a wealth of Knowledge from the hive. Covers a lot of different things that I hadn't anticipated. In my narrow view I hadn't really anticipated experiences of relocating to the United States.
I'm Swedish and I have lived and worked in Italy (18months), Germany (24months) and the US (first stint:24months, second stint is at 24months and ongoing).
I could write a small book about this, but here are some key points I picked up:
- As long as you stay in the civilized world, there is no such thing as good or bad countries. There are different ways of doing things and you may fit very well, or very poorly in the society you just moved to.
- The stereotypes about the different cultures are true. This may sound like a joke, but I'm serious. I worked within the same company in Sweden, Italy, Germany and the US - same processes, same rules, same company, vastly different experiences. The Germans very painfully pedantic and followed the processes to every letter. The Italians broke all the rules, was always late with everything, borrowed money between the projects and threw the entire R&D force on the last 2-3 months of every project to catch up. Which of course meant that everything else got delayed. And repeat...
- Accept and embrace: People who go to a new country and try to keep living just as they did in their home country are not going to enjoy the stay. You have to embrace the new culture to at least some extent. Example: When planning what to cook this weekend, don't try to cook the same meals at home. You will just get frustrated that you can't find the right ingredients. Google on local food sites, try local food. If in Italy, don't try to go to dinner at 6pm. If you move to Germany, buy a BMW and join your colleagues on their "same beer at the same table at the same pub, every Wednesday"-routine. If in Sweden, accept that for 15min in the morning and 15min in the evening, plus 45min lunch, all work will stop. You will leave your desk, sit down in a designated area, have coffee and socialize with your colleagues, or else you are weird.
- Take care of your spouse. I've seen this 100 times: One spouse get the international contract and the family moves to a new country. The husband (most often) get a new workplace from day one, get to know the colleagues, spends the working days busy with stuff and... the other spouse is bored to tears at home, dumped in a new country and city where she (most often it is the wife) knows nobody. And 6months later, they move home, or divorce, or both. If you know nobody at all, it is very hard to build up a new social life. The days can get very long and very boring.
- Don't make temporary homes. I've seen people say "We are only going to be here for 2 years, so we don't need to waste cash on real furniture. Or a nice car. Or furniture for the yard. Or a fancy grill. Or... They end up hating all of the 24months. They also screw all their chances of falling in love with the new country and staying longer. Sure, it has to be within reason. But remember that if you look back on the stay and regret all the stuff you didn't do, didn't buy, didn't allow yourself, then it was all a waste.
Got to write about an example of frustration: 1 have lived here in the US before, 10years ago. My drivers licens went into some hybernation state when I left, so the insurance company all see that I've had a drivers licens for 10+years. No problem.
My wife has not had a US drivers licens before. She has driven for 10years in Sweden, in manual cars, on snow and ice, on small B-roads. The Swedish drivers licens process is among the most demanding in the world. Yet, she is considered an "unexperienced driver" here in NC. Because Sweden doesn't exist on some list of approved countries from which driver licenses are approved.
When my wife realized that she was considered a bigger danger on the roads then the texting soccer moms of Charlotte, she was absolutely livid. Our insurance costs are no fun...
BoxheadTim said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
Ran into the same thing when I had a house in the UK while living in the US. Made for a fun tax return, especially as the tax years don't fully align.
As my client today seems to want me to be on call, I can elaborate on a few things.
The comments re the health system are something I can pretty much confirm after having experience with the German system, the UK one and the US one. The German one isn't really single payer but people are required by law to have health insurance from an approves provider. It's not as expensive as over here, but coverages have been cut for decades. The social safety net has also been eroded somewhat, and that can lead to funny choices - my cousin and her other half have been together well over a decade, own a house together and all that, but refuse to get married as that would make them responsible for care cost for each other's parents. The other half went through this with his mother and it nearly financially killed him to the extent that he can't afford to go through this again. And other parts of the safety net now have a lot of holes in them as well.
The UK system mostly works as designed - emergency stuff tends to get dealt with quickly, the other care has to wait. It's going a bit downhill though with frequent funding cuts and now with Brexit (the UK employs a large number of EU and non-EU personnel in the health care sector). The rest of the safety net is also not that great and like in Germany, my generation isn't sure if it'll be around until we retire. But at least the UK doesn't take a huge chunk out of one's paycheck for the state pension system and tell you at the same time that you probably won't get much or anything back out.
The one emergency-ish I had in the UK was dealt with in the same quick manner I would have expected from the system in Germany. I had been suffering from what my GP (family doctor) thought were bruised ribs, but they weren't healing. It also felt link there was a lump under the ribcage. I think I got to about the 'p' in lump before he had his receptionist call the local hospital for the required tests, which started within a week or so, followed by about six months of monitoring. I did have an out of pocket cost for some of this (a pound or two for parking at a hospital further away).
The 'not from here' kinda has been following me around since birth, so I never really noticed it that much. The area in Germany I was born and grew up in has a strong regional dial
I'm also a bit of an in-betweener like Adrian mentioned. I can't see myself going back to Germany for a lot of reasons (and that's before I'd even look at much lower salaries and higher taxes there) and I've not felt "at home" there for a long time. I might get more German the further I get away from there, but I'm not when I'm there.
I felt a lot more at home in the UK than I did in Germany, and now the same feeling is slowly developing in the US. I'm not a citizen yet, but I'll probably be in a few years. We haven't quite found the right place to live for us yet anyway, so we'll be trying the East Coast for a while, and the area (NoVa/WV) reminds me very much of the area in Britain I used to live in. Right down to that dang rain.
Interesting thread. We have some German friends both in the US and in Germany, have visited a few times and enjoyed it. My wife always talks about wanting to live somewhere abroad at least a few years. It sounds fun in theory but the logistics with kids seem painful and I'm a physician so I would take a mega pay cut and potentially have a difficult time finding work. Care to expand at all on why you don't feel at home there? I understand this is potentially a very personal and/or political question. I've enjoyed discussing the differences and similarities with our German friends, one who works for the EU in pensions and one who's married to an American physician and lives nearby in the wannabe Germany of the Midwest, Wisconsin.
Adrian_Thompson said:Keith Tanner said:Pete Gossett said:Are there any countries that offer good universal healthcare, are generally friendly to Americans, and don’t suffer from this thing called “Winter”?
Australia? I'm assuming the kids that used to throw rocks at the "Yank" back in the 80's have grown up a bit. There's also NZ. If you don't want to speak English, there are a bunch of options. A friend of mine cut ties to the US, moved to NZ, then Thailand and has now ended up in Spain. He's from the Bay area so you know he can't handle a real winter :)
Both those two countries have pretty strict residency laws. You need some combination of youth, education, earnings potential and savings to get it. Roughly speaking the younger, better educated and wealthier you are, the easier you'll get in. Irt'ss easy in your 20's, not so much in your 40's and beyond. I know people who did it when young and it was easy (my sisters BFF who I've known for over 40 years) They've been there over 20 years now and love it. I know other people who have looked into it once they were in their 40's and the bar was high enough that they dropped the idea.
Yeah, I thought about mentioning that but I wasn't sure it was really relevant. It can be done - Rick moved to NZ and got his citizenship when he was in his 50's - but it's definitely a hurdle.
Torkel said:- Don't make temporary homes. I've seen people say "We are only going to be here for 2 years, so we don't need to waste cash on real furniture. Or a nice car. Or furniture for the yard. Or a fancy grill. Or... They end up hating all of the 24months. They also screw all their chances of falling in love with the new country and staying longer. Sure, it has to be within reason. But remember that if you look back on the stay and regret all the stuff you didn't do, didn't buy, didn't allow yourself, then it was all a waste.
Actually, that's how I moved to the US. I was in my early 30's at the time and it worked just fine. My living room furniture was camp chairs and my bed was a futon mattress on the floor. I basically walked out of my Canadian home and left everything behind other than what would fit in the old Land Rover. It gave me the ability to try out the new country/job/environment. It did lead to a surprising moment where I returned at Christmas and realized that I'd mentally moved to CO and had completely forgotten how much stuff I'd left behind. I actually didn't move all of it until I'd been in the US for about five years. Turns out real furniture and a fancy grill isn't what makes a home.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
I'd like to say we've probably moved on from chucking rocks at "Yanks", but like anywhere in the world, there's always going to be those that are accepting of and embrace migrants and those that aren't. Kids are cruel aren't they.
New Zealand is probably a bit more progressive than Australia at the moment, but not by a huge margin.
Climate wise, Australia has a broader range to chose from when compared to New Zealand. If you don't want to deal with winter, anywhere from Brisbane and above on the east cost of Australia is a decent choice. You could also do darwin, it seems to have a reasonable US expat community there, and you get two seasons.... Hot and wet or hot and dry.
Cost of living in either Australia or NZ will probably be a rude awakening compared to the US
daeman said:In reply to Keith Tanner :
I'd like to say we've probably moved on from chucking rocks at "Yanks", but like anywhere in the world, there's always going to be those that are accepting of and embrace migrants and those that aren't. Kids are cruel aren't they.
As has been noted, people are people everywhere. This was when Australia was looking to take the America's Cup for the first time, so national pride was running high and it wasn't a great time to have a North American accent in a small town high school environment. I'm kinda hoping Dirk is in jail now :) Most of the students were accepting or they just ignored the weird Canadian kid, as people do.
turtl631 said:Interesting thread. We have some German friends both in the US and in Germany, have visited a few times and enjoyed it. My wife always talks about wanting to live somewhere abroad at least a few years. It sounds fun in theory but the logistics with kids seem painful and I'm a physician so I would take a mega pay cut and potentially have a difficult time finding work. Care to expand at all on why you don't feel at home there? I understand this is potentially a very personal and/or political question. I've enjoyed discussing the differences and similarities with our German friends, one who works for the EU in pensions and one who's married to an American physician and lives nearby in the wannabe Germany of the Midwest, Wisconsin.
No worries, it's not really a big secret or anything. The Germany I grew up in - small historic town with some high tech, generally very conservative - is a place I experienced as very conformist. Germany is a very rules based society (the old joke goes something like this - the main difference between German type law and AngloSaxon law is that in German law, anything that isn't explicitly allowed is prohibited, whereas it is the other way around in English Common law) and there is a pretty strict distinction between things one does (or at least ought to) and things one definitely does not do. And things one doesn't do are things like starting your own business unless you are a master tradesperson, with the only allowable excuse being that you are successful. Taking time to figure out what you want to do and most importantly, make mistakes isn't really the hip thing there either.
Combine that with me growing up in a country that at the time was very stagnant (Kohl was chancellor for too long and the only part that saved his behind was the reunification) both politically and economically and it's not that much of a recipe for opportunity. The fact that I didn't really manage to gel with the higher education system didn't help much either - university in Germany is very different than college over here, with much more focus on academia. And if you can't hack it, well, you're not one of them and will never get the important piece of paper (like me, I never actually got a degree) that allows you to have a meaningful career, even if it is mediocre.
The other part of not belonging is that I eventually found out I was kinda sorta adopted (dude on my birth certificate isn't my biological father). Finding out that you actually come from a long line of sometimes batE36 M3 crazy composers, conductors and other artists and interesting types[1] makes you figure out quickly why you always felt like you didn't belong in a family that was essentially third generation civil engineer. Although my mum always pointed out that I very much resemble a great uncle on her side who was apparently a bit of a "character" - think sharp dressed con man, but I never actually figured out what he did to deserve the reputation. Anyway, at least the family tree explains why I like bombastic metal - it's genetic.
The funny thing is that if I had grown up or at least moved to one of Germany's more odd places in the 80s (like West Berlin), I'd probably still be there and would've felt like I found my tribe. At least until the politicians moved in.
All that probably made me a little eccentric by German standards and still perfectly normal by UK standards. Eccentricity, after all, is expected over there and not merely tolerated.
Oh, and the big joke was that I ended up working for some German companies in the UK who wouldn't have given me the time of day in Germany, and pulling down more money (like, considerably more) than my German colleagues.
[1] My grandpa on my father's side had a bunch of achievements, but the one that left most of an impression on me was that he crashed one of the Porsche Type 64s (and got away with it). The funny thing was that I finally found out about that in a British classic car rag. I guess that's where both my biological dad and me got the car gene from.
We did the "temporary home" when we moved to Hungary and basically ended up buying duplicates of everything we left in the states over the course of 4 years (tools? nah, we can leave 'em. It's only four years...)
When we moved to Kuwait we went the complete opposite direction. Every little thing in the house got packed up. All the way down to my folgers can of miscellaneous hardware to the random scraps of aluminum. (it really drove the movers nuts!)
Many years ago, if a half dozen friends/relatives had died or moved away with no forwarding address, I think I would have expatriated. I'm too old for that now.
Having said that, I've found this thread very interesting. Good first hand information & great civility.
Please carry on.
I'm going to offer a completely different perspective on the whole healthcare thing....
My wife and I are both originally from NZ - I moved to the US in 1998 and my wife moved here in 2011. In 2011 I was diagnosed with Melanoma- long story short, it metastasized and the prognosis was not good. I was eventually put on an immunotherapy treatment that completely reversed the progression of the disease. I'm now 'NED' (no evidence of disease).
At that time the same treatment was not available in NZ - it was not an 'approved' drug so people needing the treatment in NZ had to pay for it themselves, or travel overseas to get it. So while the US healthcare system most definitely has it's faults (and high costs) I may not be alive today if I had been living in my home country instead of the US.
The NZ health system is pretty good, but it can be several years behind the US when it comes to available treatments. There can also be long wait times for anything that is considered non-essential treatment or care.
From time to time we think about moving back to NZ - and we may eventually do so. The health care I get here is a big factor that keeps us here (that and the insane house prices in NZ compared to the US).
Very cool thread!
I wrote a novel, but decided to leave most of it out as I dont even know you guys care to read things like how I became a citizen or the background of why I moved here with my family.
With that being said, I moved to the US in the mid 90's when I was 18 with my parents and brother. I moved from Argentina.
Below are some of the things I found different and worth mentioning:
I did not read the whole thread yet, but Adrian’s post was great, and I agree with it 100% with his toughts.
Keith Tanner said:My dad is fighting terminal cancer right now in Canada. His biggest complaint is the cost of parking, but if you buy a monthly pass it's about $5/day. In the US, we'd be worried about losing the house and we'd need a member of the family to work full-time on the paperwork. He'll never be able to see my new house because he can't get insurance to come visit me. Of course, everyone has anecdotes or has learned some titillating tidbit from their favorite media source - but if you've got sick family in both countries, the differences are pretty stark.
It may be political, but it's a real factor in deciding what country you want to live in. You choose the US despite the health care, not because of it.
My mom's cancer drugs were $7600/month. She paid 0$. Unfortunately Cancer took her in June, She was on those drugs for over a year.
Not wanting to make assumptions for BoxHeadTim, but one comment to add on the 'not feeling at home in where he grew up in Germany' comment. Something I think that most people over here forget is how young a country Germany is. It's only about 150 years old, even younger than the USA. While the constituent states are very very old, what people think of as Germany is really made up of the many smaller independent Germanic states with the exception of Austria and Switzerland. Due to that relatively recent incorporation (and let's not even get started on the re-unification of East and West) I think there are more and more ingrained differences than most other countries, with the possible exception of this one. The big difference is that the wide diversity within the US is spread out across this massive country, that similar level of diversity is contained in an area about the size of Montana.
BHT, thoughts? Am I way off base here?
I tried to move to Australia about 12 year ago. There was a University position available. I got a call from the Dean there and the first thing he asked me was if I was an Aussie ExPat living in the USA. When I said no, I'm American, that ended the interview.
Something about the Visa laws made me unemployable there.
Pete Gossett said:Are there any countries that offer good universal healthcare, are generally friendly to Americans, and don’t suffer from this thing called “Winter”?
When I visited Australia in the late 1960’s and again early 1970’s the mothers lined up in port to have their daughters introduced to the fliers off the carrier.
The men in bars wanted to fight us, Not out of any animosity, but it seems that’s how they got to know each other. The men in bars and didn’t understand the serious trouble we would be in if caught fighting.
Women kept separate from men and I’m sure we offended a lot trying to errr , •••meet? Ladies. Let’s be honest, months at sea tends to make sailors, ••••shall we say Impatient?
However English speaking, isn’t really the problem. Nearly every country I’ve visited the ordinary person spoke at least little English and understood even more. I found If I tried a smattering of words in the local language, smiled and pantomimed the concept, even the poor English speakers would help.
I remember in Japan every person I spoke to and asked a question of they would stop and try to help me or find someone who could. Same with China, Germany , and Singapore.
I’m embarrassed with Americans lack of language skills. I had the hardest time with Australians and British. They may speak English but at a speed that I simply failed to comprehend.
Non political question....what rest of world visitors/residents view of violence/gun aspect of american culture? Militarization of domestIC LEO's? Feel safe here?
Please...can we stay away from gun control discussion?
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