Ever since we moved to the DC area in February, we have gotten by without a personal vehicle. We are lucky to live near a Metro station, and I am also lucky to work near a Metro station. We live within walking distance of three supermarkets. We have used Zipcar when it has made sense to do so, but for the most part, we have walked or taken Metro to get around. As someone who has never been comfortable driving, I have found living a mostly car-free existence to be tremendously satisfying. I felt like I was sticking it to the man when I reflected on how much additional exercise I was getting walking everywhere and how much money I wasn't spending on parking, insurance, and gas.
However, thanks to Scott getting a new job (yay!) in a location not Metro-accessible (shouldn't everything be clustered around Metro stations??), we are now getting a car. We picked one out on Saturday and plan to bring it home on Thursday.
A vehicle necessitates auto insurance, of course. We thought it would be a fairly straightforward process. We last had auto insurance through Allstate before we moved to Kazakhstan, and we currently have renter's insurance through them, so we figured we would just go back to them.
It was not to be.
Scott first tried getting a quote just by filling out one of their forms online. The system was unable to give him a quote, so he emailed the local agent. The local agent said he couldn't give us a quote either, and that Allstate couldn't insure us until we had a year of insurance coverage elsewhere. The reason? Because we had a gap in auto insurance coverage. Why would we be so irresponsible as to have a gap in our auto insurance coverage, you may ask? Because we sold our car before we moved to Kazakhstan. Even if we had wanted to throw our money away on coverage we couldn't possibly use, we actually had nothing to insure, since we no longer had a car.
Clearly, having Allstate insurance had become an oddly exclusive club, so Scott consulted Consumer Reports and decided to call Amica, which was highly rated. Amica at least was willing to provide us a quote....to the tune of $4,000 a year. Um, no. I will say that trying to gouge us at least seems like a plausible business strategy, as opposed to Allstate's deciding not to cover us at any price. The reason was the same, however: our gap in coverage due to our period of time not owning a car.
In the end, we went with Esurance. We're still paying more than we ever have for auto insurance, but at least it's less than $4,000. I guess this is another one of those hidden costs of working abroad, or at least returning to the US after working abroad. Come to think of it, this could also be a hidden cost to anyone who sells their car and uses mass transit in order to save money, and then decides to have a car again at some point. I will be very happy if the US can ever move past the narrative of continuous car ownership being an integral part of adult life, but we are obviously not there yet.
Showing posts with label working abroad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label working abroad. Show all posts
Monday, September 12, 2016
Saturday, September 3, 2016
So You Want To Work Abroad: Tips On Dealing With All Your STUFF
I've been wanting to write this post for a long time, but I put if off because I wasn't sure how to make it useful to anyone. After all, different people in different stages of life have different quantities and qualities of STUFF. Someone moving overseas directly from a college dorm room will have fewer possessions to think about than a family with a house, kids, and pets. Similarly, different overseas jobs have different policies for transporting your stuff. Some employers expect to help their new employees transport a large amount of household goods; others expect you to carry anything you want in suitcases on the plane.
I'd say we fit somewhere in the middle. We didn't have a house, kids, or pets, but we had been out of school long enough to have acquired a fair amount of stuff. A lot of our furniture was either hand-me-downs or IKEA, but we had some pretty decent kitchen wares. In terms of transporting stuff, our employer was willing to reimburse employees up to a certain sum for good transported within the first six months. At first, they said that shipping boxes through USPS was the best option, but then after we had shipped quite a few boxes, they said it was best to just pack a lot of suitcases.
Anyway, this post will be about lessons we learned from transporting our stuff to our specific job in Kazakhstan. It will include things we did right, as well as things I would do differently now. With luck, anyone contemplating a move abroad who stumbles upon this will find something useful!
I'd say we fit somewhere in the middle. We didn't have a house, kids, or pets, but we had been out of school long enough to have acquired a fair amount of stuff. A lot of our furniture was either hand-me-downs or IKEA, but we had some pretty decent kitchen wares. In terms of transporting stuff, our employer was willing to reimburse employees up to a certain sum for good transported within the first six months. At first, they said that shipping boxes through USPS was the best option, but then after we had shipped quite a few boxes, they said it was best to just pack a lot of suitcases.
Anyway, this post will be about lessons we learned from transporting our stuff to our specific job in Kazakhstan. It will include things we did right, as well as things I would do differently now. With luck, anyone contemplating a move abroad who stumbles upon this will find something useful!
- Decide what you need to take with you first. Then decide what to do with the rest of your stuff. What do you need while you're working overseas? Think about clothing you will need, things you might need for your job, material for any hobbies you might have, etc. Don't be too skimpy here (for instance, you might want more than one pair of pants in case you fall and tear a hole in the knee), but not too expansive (you probably don't need ten pairs of pants). How much stuff did you end up with? Is it possible to transport it given the parameters of your specific job? If not, you may need to cut down. If there is anything you have in large quantity--whether it's shoes, craft supplies, framed family photos, or anything else--you probably won't be able to conveniently take your whole collection with you. From our experience I will also say that if you are an academic and need lots of books that aren't readily available in-country to conduct your research, you should seriously reconsider taking this job.
We sort of thought of this issue in reverse. We first decided what we were going to put in
storage (having decided early on that there were things we didn't want to part with that were not
practical to take to Kazakhstan). Then we started either discarding things or shipping them off
to Kazakhstan. The end results were that we had more stuff over there than could comfortably
fit into our apartment, a lot of stuff was held at customs for weeks (we actually had to buy Scott
a second winter coat over there because the box we shipped his coat in was held up at customs),
and we had to pay hefty customs fees to get a lot of our stuff, some of which naturally broke in
transit.
- Think creatively about transporting items. Many jobs overseas offer plane tickets home as part of the compensation package. Our job in Kazakhstan was generous in that it would pay for tickets twice a year. One thing I wish we had done looking back was to think about what we needed from August to December, and pack/ship only those things initially, with the idea of picking up more of our stuff later on. If you aren't planning on traveling back to your home country, are any friends or family planning to visit you? Maybe they would be willing to to bring you an item (or even a suitcase of items). If nobody is planning to visit you, you might be able to pay a cash-strapped teenager or young adult in your life to pack and ship boxes of things. If you can't store those items with anybody, you could designate a small storage unit as being one with the "nice to have" items, or put them in clearly labeled boxes at the front of a larger storage unit.
- On a similar note, don't rule out using storage units. I originally hoped to get rid of everything we weren't taking with us to Kazakhstan because I didn't like the idea of paying to store stuff I wasn't using. If you can do that, great! It's probably easier that way. But storage is a relatively small price to pay compared to replacing household goods. Aside from a few small "what was I thinking" items that I attribute to mental fatigue, I was very grateful for all the things we kept in storage because they were all things I didn't have to buy again. I recommend climate-controlled storage, even though it costs more.
- Consider keeping a list of any immediately useful household goods you store. This isn't the biggest deal in the grand scheme of things, but it would have been nice to know that the shower curtain rings were going to be in the last box I opened before I bought a new set at Target.
- Declutter, declutter, declutter. It's fine to pay to store things you like and things you can use when you return to your home country. But if you have something like ratty old furniture that you've always wanted to replace, now would be an excellent time to sell it or donate it. There is no point paying either to transport or to store things you don't really like.
- You can get money from selling things, but donating things gets them out of your way faster. Sometimes, you really just need to get some stuff out of your home quickly in order to better sort and pack. Donation is great for that. Selling can be great, too, but with these caveats: (1) It will take time and effort that you may need for some other aspect of your international move, (2) Most secondhand items will not net very much money, and (3) You may not be able to get rid of things on the schedule you want if you sell. I would suggest worrying more about selling big ticket items (your car, etc.), and not worry too much about finding a buyer for your used gym shoes. That being said, some methods of selling smaller items work better than others. I may write a future post about my experience with those.
It also pays to think creatively here. Scott's TA was aware of our situation, and expressed
interest in buying both our car and any household good we were interested in getting rid of.
I'd like to think we came up with a win-win: He got a lot of household goods for a low price.
We got some money for our household goods, and we were able to continue using them right
up until the end before we moved. Would we have made more money selling these items
individually? Maybe. But it would have taken considerably more work on our part, and
we had plenty of other things to deal with at the time.
- If you're being reimbursed for transporting household goods, keep a good paper trail. This may not be as big of an issue elsewhere. Kazakhstan is a very paperwork-oriented place. We were told to keep receipts from shipping/extra luggage fees, and to keep any customs forms. It turned out once we got there that we also had to provide credit card statements with the same charges as were on the receipts. So, use credit cards, rather than cash or check, to pay for any shipments. If you are going with a spouse/significant other, and only one of you is being employed, it's probably a good idea to make sure to use the credit card that is in the name of the employee.
- Buy a luggage scale. I was too cheap to buy one initially. I figured that with my lack of upper body strength, if I could lift a suitcase even moderately comfortably, it must be less than 50 pounds. It turned out I was stronger than I thought, and I had to engage in a horrible suitcase shell game on the airport's dirty floor while wearing the pants I was going to wear for my entire trip. Gross.
- Try to look at this as an opportunity. In spite of the aggravations, I now view the massive declutterings we had before moving to Kazakhstan and before moving back to the US as very positive because they showed me that I had too much stuff, and that I could get rid of a large portion of stuff without it adversely impacting my life. You would think that I would have learned this through my many stateside moves, but it turns out that international moves are just aggravating enough to really drive the point home.
I will probably never be a hardcore minimalist. I like craft supplies too much, for one thing.
Also, when I see something pretty, I will probably want it, at least fleetingly. This is
particularly true if I feel like I'm getting a good deal on the item in question. But I've
started to approaching acquiring stuff a little differently, since I've decided that stuff can
be as much a liability as it is an asset. I've decided that there are very few (if any) things
that we could always use extras of. I've decided that "just in case" items are very often
"just taking up space" items. When I buy things, I've decided it's often better to spend a
certain amount of money on the one item that I really want or will really be useful, rather
than spend the same amount of money to get multiple items that aren't quite what I want.
By having less stuff overall, I can keep a better handle on what we have. I know better what
we might really need, and it's easier to keep our apartment clean-ish without having to store
excess stuff everywhere. I imagine some people learn these lessons without having to move
across the world, but since that's what it took for me, I take that as a positive aspect of the
experience.
Happy moving to all, and don't let your STUFF keep you down!
Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Arriving Late To The Frequent Flyer Mile Party
Before preparing to move to Kazakhstan, I had never really bothered with frequent flyer mile programs. I think I signed up for one years ago, but never accrued enough miles to benefit, and just got bored with the whole thing. But after we accepted our job offers in Kazakhstan, someone suggested that we look into frequent flyer miles, and it made sense to me, since we would be earning a lot of miles over a fairly short period of time.
So we signed up for a program with Star Alliance, and most of our flights home were with its member airlines. I checked after every flight to make sure more miles were added to my total, but didn't really understand how to redeem them for anything.
Fast forward to our return to the US. Two of our closest friends we made in Kazakhstan got married while they were planning their move out there, and planned to have a larger wedding party for this coming summer. The celebration will be in England, where they are from. We decided that if at least one of us had at least a job offer by that time that we would try to go. I was fortunate to start working pretty quickly, but living in the DC area has a funny way of eating up income pretty quickly, so I decided it was time to figure out how to use our frequent flyer miles.
I checked my account, and, to my delight, found that I had (and by extension, Scott would have) enough miles for a one-way trip between North America and Europe. But then how would I book the other half a round-trip ticket? And how would I book for both of us?
I decided to experiment. I started a booking to see if there was any way to input two account numbers so that I could combine our miles and book for both me and Scott at one time. Nope. I then tried to book a round-trip ticket just for myself, and was invited to purchase the additional miles I would need, to the tune of around $1,000. Um, no thanks.
It looked like we would have to each book a one-way ticket separately in order to use our miles, and then book another one-way ticket together to pay with "real" money. Scott had scoped out one-way ticket prices and found that return tickets were more expensive. So we sat side by side with our laptops and booked the return trip tickets together. We even managed to book seats next to each other. I was surprised that we had to pay some money for those tickets even though we supposedly had enough miles to cover the tickets, but maybe I should have been, considering that airlines are stingy even with cheap snacks these days.
Then we booked our tickets to fly to England together. Being a frequent flyer mile novice, I have no idea if the somewhat convoluted process we used to book our tickets was the best one. But we did save a considerable amount of money over what we would have paid to purchase round-trip tickets without any miles. And frankly, flying between the US and Kazakhstan several times a year was very taxing, and I was glad to have a tangible benefit come from it. I doubt we'll accrue this many miles again anytime soon, but I'll certainly keep any eye on how many miles we do earn, with the hope of more affordable travel in the future.
So we signed up for a program with Star Alliance, and most of our flights home were with its member airlines. I checked after every flight to make sure more miles were added to my total, but didn't really understand how to redeem them for anything.
Fast forward to our return to the US. Two of our closest friends we made in Kazakhstan got married while they were planning their move out there, and planned to have a larger wedding party for this coming summer. The celebration will be in England, where they are from. We decided that if at least one of us had at least a job offer by that time that we would try to go. I was fortunate to start working pretty quickly, but living in the DC area has a funny way of eating up income pretty quickly, so I decided it was time to figure out how to use our frequent flyer miles.
I checked my account, and, to my delight, found that I had (and by extension, Scott would have) enough miles for a one-way trip between North America and Europe. But then how would I book the other half a round-trip ticket? And how would I book for both of us?
I decided to experiment. I started a booking to see if there was any way to input two account numbers so that I could combine our miles and book for both me and Scott at one time. Nope. I then tried to book a round-trip ticket just for myself, and was invited to purchase the additional miles I would need, to the tune of around $1,000. Um, no thanks.
It looked like we would have to each book a one-way ticket separately in order to use our miles, and then book another one-way ticket together to pay with "real" money. Scott had scoped out one-way ticket prices and found that return tickets were more expensive. So we sat side by side with our laptops and booked the return trip tickets together. We even managed to book seats next to each other. I was surprised that we had to pay some money for those tickets even though we supposedly had enough miles to cover the tickets, but maybe I should have been, considering that airlines are stingy even with cheap snacks these days.
Then we booked our tickets to fly to England together. Being a frequent flyer mile novice, I have no idea if the somewhat convoluted process we used to book our tickets was the best one. But we did save a considerable amount of money over what we would have paid to purchase round-trip tickets without any miles. And frankly, flying between the US and Kazakhstan several times a year was very taxing, and I was glad to have a tangible benefit come from it. I doubt we'll accrue this many miles again anytime soon, but I'll certainly keep any eye on how many miles we do earn, with the hope of more affordable travel in the future.
Monday, April 25, 2016
So You Want To Work Abroad: Lifestyle
Working somewhere is a reality for most of us, and I don't think too many people get through their careers without having had a job at some point that wasn't their "dream" job. But just because most of us need to make money doesn't mean that what you want out of life doesn't matter, or that you should stay at a less than ideal job for longer than necessary. Jobs outside your home country needn't necessarily be any better or worse than jobs inside your home country from that standpoint, but being outside your comfort zone and away from your usual support network may make the experience more challenging. Based on my own experience, here are some points that may be worth considering:
1. Working abroad is probably easier if you really want to do it. Scott and I did a lot of travel when we were younger, and I think some people assumed that our move to Kazakhstan for work was an encore to meeting in Egypt, spending time together in Syria, and moving to Jerusalem for a year shortly after getting married. The truth is that while we were not opposed to working abroad, we also weren't chomping at the bit to do it. The other truth is that we did not specifically seek out going to Kazakhstan; we went for the job opportunities, not the country per se. I'm glad that we went, but I also think some of the more challenging moments would have been easier if I had honestly been able to tell myself that I had always wanted to go there.
2. Find out as much as you can about where you will really be living. When we accepted our Kazakhstan job offers, we were living in a small town in the US. I was eager to live in a city again, even one where I didn't speak either of the official languages. Once I arrived, I found out that I would actually be living several miles outside downtown Astana, on the university compound, a living situation that lacked most of the amenities of city life and included quite a few aggravations of small town life.
3. Also, remember that free housing has drawbacks, as well as benefits. The obvious benefit, of course, is that you can save a lot more money if you're not paying rent. The drawback is that in turn, you will have no bargaining power at all because you can't threaten to move out and go someplace else. Also, you can't decide you want a larger place, a different location, etc., and actually make it happen. I don't want to rehash our housing issues here and now, but suffice to say that if I had some of the problems we had there in any apartment in the US, I would have moved out.
4. Think realistically about the language situation. Is a language you speak widely spoken where you are going? Great! If not, is the official language something you would like to learn? If someone gave you the money and time to learn a foreign language, would that one be the one you would choose? Would it land anywhere in your top five languages to learn? Does your employer provide language training? Scott and I started taking Russian classes, but didn't continue. I think it's safe to say that Russian was not among our top five languages to learn, and it was taking up a lot of time, a precious commodity that we thought would be better spent on other endeavors. I have mixed feelings about stopping Russian classes now. It would be cool if I had learned more Russian while I was over there, and our lives might have been easier while we were there. But everything has trade-offs. I would have actually loved to have learned some Kazakh, but there were no obvious opportunities to do so.
5. If you are going with a significant other or your family, talk beforehand about what action you will take if circumstances at your overseas job are not what you had envisioned. It's not a happy topic, but it could happen. Are there circumstances that you, your significant other, or other family members would find untenable? Are you comfortable terminating your job contract early? Are you comfortable with one person returning to their home country while the other person stays? Is there a maximum length of time you want to spend there, even if you don't have a job offer elsewhere?
6. Investigate education options for your kids. Not having kids, I can't speak in detail on this one, but just be aware that there will likely be trade-offs in terms of education. A major benefit--which for some families may outweigh any potential drawbacks--is the opportunity for the kid(s) to become very fluent in the local language. But their education will likely be different in other ways. They may learn very different attitudes about gender roles or events in world history, for instance. Some educational systems value "outside the box" thinking even at the expense of accuracy. Others place a premium on memorizing facts. It is worth thinking about what you would like to see in your children's education, and think about what course of action you could take if you turn out to be dissatisfied with the education they receive overseas.
I'll write some tips on dealing with worldly possessions and moving sometime soon...until then, wishing everyone jobs in their dream country with comfortable free housing!
1. Working abroad is probably easier if you really want to do it. Scott and I did a lot of travel when we were younger, and I think some people assumed that our move to Kazakhstan for work was an encore to meeting in Egypt, spending time together in Syria, and moving to Jerusalem for a year shortly after getting married. The truth is that while we were not opposed to working abroad, we also weren't chomping at the bit to do it. The other truth is that we did not specifically seek out going to Kazakhstan; we went for the job opportunities, not the country per se. I'm glad that we went, but I also think some of the more challenging moments would have been easier if I had honestly been able to tell myself that I had always wanted to go there.
2. Find out as much as you can about where you will really be living. When we accepted our Kazakhstan job offers, we were living in a small town in the US. I was eager to live in a city again, even one where I didn't speak either of the official languages. Once I arrived, I found out that I would actually be living several miles outside downtown Astana, on the university compound, a living situation that lacked most of the amenities of city life and included quite a few aggravations of small town life.
3. Also, remember that free housing has drawbacks, as well as benefits. The obvious benefit, of course, is that you can save a lot more money if you're not paying rent. The drawback is that in turn, you will have no bargaining power at all because you can't threaten to move out and go someplace else. Also, you can't decide you want a larger place, a different location, etc., and actually make it happen. I don't want to rehash our housing issues here and now, but suffice to say that if I had some of the problems we had there in any apartment in the US, I would have moved out.
4. Think realistically about the language situation. Is a language you speak widely spoken where you are going? Great! If not, is the official language something you would like to learn? If someone gave you the money and time to learn a foreign language, would that one be the one you would choose? Would it land anywhere in your top five languages to learn? Does your employer provide language training? Scott and I started taking Russian classes, but didn't continue. I think it's safe to say that Russian was not among our top five languages to learn, and it was taking up a lot of time, a precious commodity that we thought would be better spent on other endeavors. I have mixed feelings about stopping Russian classes now. It would be cool if I had learned more Russian while I was over there, and our lives might have been easier while we were there. But everything has trade-offs. I would have actually loved to have learned some Kazakh, but there were no obvious opportunities to do so.
5. If you are going with a significant other or your family, talk beforehand about what action you will take if circumstances at your overseas job are not what you had envisioned. It's not a happy topic, but it could happen. Are there circumstances that you, your significant other, or other family members would find untenable? Are you comfortable terminating your job contract early? Are you comfortable with one person returning to their home country while the other person stays? Is there a maximum length of time you want to spend there, even if you don't have a job offer elsewhere?
6. Investigate education options for your kids. Not having kids, I can't speak in detail on this one, but just be aware that there will likely be trade-offs in terms of education. A major benefit--which for some families may outweigh any potential drawbacks--is the opportunity for the kid(s) to become very fluent in the local language. But their education will likely be different in other ways. They may learn very different attitudes about gender roles or events in world history, for instance. Some educational systems value "outside the box" thinking even at the expense of accuracy. Others place a premium on memorizing facts. It is worth thinking about what you would like to see in your children's education, and think about what course of action you could take if you turn out to be dissatisfied with the education they receive overseas.
I'll write some tips on dealing with worldly possessions and moving sometime soon...until then, wishing everyone jobs in their dream country with comfortable free housing!
Saturday, April 16, 2016
So You Want To Work Abroad: Health And Money
It probably won't come as a surprise to anyone that health and money are sometimes related. Our story isn't very dramatic, I'm happy to say, but it does bring up some points to keep in mind if you are considering working abroad.
When we were offered our jobs in Kazakhstan, one of the benefits we were told we'd receive was no cost global health coverage. I assumed this meant that we could take care of our routine check ups, blood work, prescription refills, etc., in the US and pay some sort of a co-pay. This impression was corroborated by our employer advising us to bring a six-month supply of any prescription drugs we needed to take. If they were specifically telling us to take care of some portion of our health care in our home countries, that must have meant that we were going to have insurance that worked there, right?
Not exactly. After we arrived in Kazakhstan, they told us during orientation that in the US, our health coverage was good only for emergencies during the first 28 days of any visit. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us. First of all, we anticipated some of our visits home being longer than 28 days. Secondly, what exactly did the word "emergency" mean? I knew we could pay for routine check ups, etc., out of pocket, but what about non-emergency (but medically advisable) surgeries? What if one of us got sick and needed expensive tests of some sort or another? I had a health scare a few years ago, so I have an idea of how quickly the tests (and costs) can pile up.
Another interesting wrinkle to this policy is that it meant that even if your initial medical emergency in the US was covered, follow-up care might not be. We know of at least one person who learned this lesson the hard way.
Of course, you always hope to not need to use your insurance coverage, but medical care is so expensive in the US that we thought it would be too risky to go without better coverage. One medical emergency without proper coverage could have wiped out all the money we hoped to save over there (and possible more). The first thing we tried to do was to sign up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). Unfortunately, we learned that to sign up in North Carolina, which we were using as our base of operations, we would have to physically reside there for at least six months out of the year.
Fortunately, we were eligible for COBRA coverage from Scott's previous job. Unfortunately, that ended up costing us around $1,100 per month, an amount that largely negated the benefit of free rent, in my opinion.
Obviously, every job will offer somewhat different benefits, every country has a somewhat different healthcare system, and every individual has a different level of comfort with seeking care outside his/her home country. That being said, here are some questions that might be worth mulling over if you are considering working abroad:
1. Do you want to have the option of receiving medical care in your home country while you work abroad?
2. If so, do you have insurance that will support that? Do you have any other options for coverage (COBRA, etc.)?
3. Do you have the funds to travel home in an emergency if you decide you want medical care there, but your insurance does not deem it medically necessary for you to go out of country?
4. Would you be comfortable having a doctor with whom you may not share a common language? A medical interpreter whose credentials you can't verify?
5. Are you comfortable accepting medicine or other treatment that may differ from the standard treatment in your home country?
6. Do you take any prescription drugs? If so, are there any legal or logistical hurdles to bringing a large supply with you? Remember that a medication that may be seen as fairly innocuous in one country may be viewed with suspicion in another. Oh, and as a tip, if you need a several-month supply or your prescription medicine, be sure not to wait until the last minute to get it. I used to work in a pharmacy, so this was something I already knew, but I was glad I started in advance. Even if you are dealing with a conscientious pharmacist, he/she may need some time to work things out with the insurance company or order additional supplies of your medication. If you are not dealing with a conscientious pharmacist, you may make repeated trips to the pharmacy, find out that nothing has been done with your prescription, and ultimately have to stand there and yell at him/her in order to get it done.
7. Do you have any medical dietary restrictions? If so, how easy will it be to follow your diet in the country where you plan to work?
Money is another topic to think consider, especially since the potential to save money is often a draw to jobs overseas. We did manage to save money, but there are some sneaky ways that money can get away from you. Here are some that come to mind:
1. Additional health insurance coverage. Enough said on that topic.
2. Assuming that you are being paid in the local currency and to a foreign bank account, exchanging the local currency for your home country's currency, and then transferring it to your home bank account eats up some money. Also, be very careful about unstable currencies. We always exchanged our tenge for dollars as quickly as we could once we were paid, out of fear of a devaluation. Also, find out what you can about how your employer handles a devaluation. Kazakhstan's central bank decided to let the tenge "float" during our last semester there, which resulted in an immediate and sharp drop in its value.
3. Buying things you don't already have that you plan to use over there. We had to beef up our winter clothing, and Scott in particular needed to purchase research materials that he wouldn't have access to out there.
4. Transporting your stuff. We had an allowance for shipping household goods. I'll write more about this another time, but suffice to say for now that we ended up exceeding it. We didn't exceed it by much with the actual shipping, but then we were charged an arm and a leg in customs fees. Also, if you're doing stuff like shipping research materials back and forth or traveling with additional bags, those fees add up, too.
5. Taxes in your home country. US taxpayers, if you plan to take advantage of the tax break on foreign income, be sure to know how many days you can be in the US each year. We didn't look into this very closely before we went. For a variety of reasons, I don't think we would have done anything differently, but we did just end up paying a largish chunk of change in taxes here. So this is something to be aware of. Also keep in mind that you may be taxed on certain benefits (plane tickets home, shipping allowances, etc.). In our case, at least, these were reported as income on the earnings documents our employer provided.
6. Treating yourself when the going gets tough. This one probably won't apply to everyone. If you end up getting a job someplace where you speak the language, the climate is nice, the cuisine is world famous, and there is plenty to see and do around you, you might not feel very stressed out. And...some of things things weren't the case in our situation. We spent a good amount of money traveling as a reward to ourselves. This was fine--it was something we planned to do, and we'll have lasting wonderful memories of it--but it costs money just the same. Sometimes people also treat themselves by going out to eat or drink a lot, shopping, etc., and all of those things add up.
7. Storing any stuff you neither got rid of nor brought with you.
Wishing everyone job offers in sunny, happy locations for now!
When we were offered our jobs in Kazakhstan, one of the benefits we were told we'd receive was no cost global health coverage. I assumed this meant that we could take care of our routine check ups, blood work, prescription refills, etc., in the US and pay some sort of a co-pay. This impression was corroborated by our employer advising us to bring a six-month supply of any prescription drugs we needed to take. If they were specifically telling us to take care of some portion of our health care in our home countries, that must have meant that we were going to have insurance that worked there, right?
Not exactly. After we arrived in Kazakhstan, they told us during orientation that in the US, our health coverage was good only for emergencies during the first 28 days of any visit. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under us. First of all, we anticipated some of our visits home being longer than 28 days. Secondly, what exactly did the word "emergency" mean? I knew we could pay for routine check ups, etc., out of pocket, but what about non-emergency (but medically advisable) surgeries? What if one of us got sick and needed expensive tests of some sort or another? I had a health scare a few years ago, so I have an idea of how quickly the tests (and costs) can pile up.
Another interesting wrinkle to this policy is that it meant that even if your initial medical emergency in the US was covered, follow-up care might not be. We know of at least one person who learned this lesson the hard way.
Of course, you always hope to not need to use your insurance coverage, but medical care is so expensive in the US that we thought it would be too risky to go without better coverage. One medical emergency without proper coverage could have wiped out all the money we hoped to save over there (and possible more). The first thing we tried to do was to sign up for insurance through the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"). Unfortunately, we learned that to sign up in North Carolina, which we were using as our base of operations, we would have to physically reside there for at least six months out of the year.
Fortunately, we were eligible for COBRA coverage from Scott's previous job. Unfortunately, that ended up costing us around $1,100 per month, an amount that largely negated the benefit of free rent, in my opinion.
Obviously, every job will offer somewhat different benefits, every country has a somewhat different healthcare system, and every individual has a different level of comfort with seeking care outside his/her home country. That being said, here are some questions that might be worth mulling over if you are considering working abroad:
1. Do you want to have the option of receiving medical care in your home country while you work abroad?
2. If so, do you have insurance that will support that? Do you have any other options for coverage (COBRA, etc.)?
3. Do you have the funds to travel home in an emergency if you decide you want medical care there, but your insurance does not deem it medically necessary for you to go out of country?
4. Would you be comfortable having a doctor with whom you may not share a common language? A medical interpreter whose credentials you can't verify?
5. Are you comfortable accepting medicine or other treatment that may differ from the standard treatment in your home country?
6. Do you take any prescription drugs? If so, are there any legal or logistical hurdles to bringing a large supply with you? Remember that a medication that may be seen as fairly innocuous in one country may be viewed with suspicion in another. Oh, and as a tip, if you need a several-month supply or your prescription medicine, be sure not to wait until the last minute to get it. I used to work in a pharmacy, so this was something I already knew, but I was glad I started in advance. Even if you are dealing with a conscientious pharmacist, he/she may need some time to work things out with the insurance company or order additional supplies of your medication. If you are not dealing with a conscientious pharmacist, you may make repeated trips to the pharmacy, find out that nothing has been done with your prescription, and ultimately have to stand there and yell at him/her in order to get it done.
7. Do you have any medical dietary restrictions? If so, how easy will it be to follow your diet in the country where you plan to work?
Money is another topic to think consider, especially since the potential to save money is often a draw to jobs overseas. We did manage to save money, but there are some sneaky ways that money can get away from you. Here are some that come to mind:
1. Additional health insurance coverage. Enough said on that topic.
2. Assuming that you are being paid in the local currency and to a foreign bank account, exchanging the local currency for your home country's currency, and then transferring it to your home bank account eats up some money. Also, be very careful about unstable currencies. We always exchanged our tenge for dollars as quickly as we could once we were paid, out of fear of a devaluation. Also, find out what you can about how your employer handles a devaluation. Kazakhstan's central bank decided to let the tenge "float" during our last semester there, which resulted in an immediate and sharp drop in its value.
3. Buying things you don't already have that you plan to use over there. We had to beef up our winter clothing, and Scott in particular needed to purchase research materials that he wouldn't have access to out there.
4. Transporting your stuff. We had an allowance for shipping household goods. I'll write more about this another time, but suffice to say for now that we ended up exceeding it. We didn't exceed it by much with the actual shipping, but then we were charged an arm and a leg in customs fees. Also, if you're doing stuff like shipping research materials back and forth or traveling with additional bags, those fees add up, too.
5. Taxes in your home country. US taxpayers, if you plan to take advantage of the tax break on foreign income, be sure to know how many days you can be in the US each year. We didn't look into this very closely before we went. For a variety of reasons, I don't think we would have done anything differently, but we did just end up paying a largish chunk of change in taxes here. So this is something to be aware of. Also keep in mind that you may be taxed on certain benefits (plane tickets home, shipping allowances, etc.). In our case, at least, these were reported as income on the earnings documents our employer provided.
6. Treating yourself when the going gets tough. This one probably won't apply to everyone. If you end up getting a job someplace where you speak the language, the climate is nice, the cuisine is world famous, and there is plenty to see and do around you, you might not feel very stressed out. And...some of things things weren't the case in our situation. We spent a good amount of money traveling as a reward to ourselves. This was fine--it was something we planned to do, and we'll have lasting wonderful memories of it--but it costs money just the same. Sometimes people also treat themselves by going out to eat or drink a lot, shopping, etc., and all of those things add up.
7. Storing any stuff you neither got rid of nor brought with you.
Wishing everyone job offers in sunny, happy locations for now!
Thursday, March 31, 2016
So You Want To Work Abroad...
Does anyone remember a post I wrote a while back in which I alluded to moving? Well, it's probably time to share the reason behind that move. We moved because I was offered a job in the DC area. Scott and I have resigned from our jobs in Kazakhstan, and will not be going back there.
When we first accepted our job offers in Kazakhstan, we planned to stay there for at least three years, and maybe longer. Part of me feels sorry that our plan didn't work out, particularly when I think about some of my students over there. But we also had good reasons for leaving, and in the end, very few decisions don't come with an element of regret.
It's funny thinking back on my expectations when we decided to work over there. I have very fond memories of studying abroad, and I thought working abroad would be similar, but with a salary. I started this blog in part because I imagined having all sorts of cool adventures and discoveries that I wanted to document. And there was some of that--along with an awful lot of life as usual, but without many of the comforts and conveniences of home.
Since I'm not going back, I thought I would write a small series of posts on working abroad. I realize, of course, that no two jobs anywhere are the same, and that even at the same job, everybody has their own individual experience. I'm also not trying to either encourage or discourage other people from working abroad. But I wanted to document some of my thoughts on the process and lessons learned (sometimes lessons learned the hard way) in case it would be useful to anyone else.
Since lessons learned the hard way often have an air of negativity to them, though, I thought I would use this post to list some of the very positive aspects of my experience there:
1. We met all sorts of interesting people. Between our colleagues and our students, we met a lot of great people, many of whom we may never have met otherwise. Isn't it funny how life works that way? You do something seemingly random, like taking a job in Kazakhstan, and end up gaining a social circle.
2. In spite of the constant interference from work and "real life," we took some great trips. Uzbekistan had been on my list of must-sees for a long time, but I don't know if I would have seen it if I hadn't already been so close. We saw some great things in Kazakhstan itself, too--particularly the flamingos and the Aksu Zhubagly nature preserve. Georgia hadn't even been on my radar until eating Georgian food in Astana,and I'm really glad we went! We chose Austria for our spring break trip last year in part because of the direct flight from Astana, and I'm very happy to have visited it, too. I had never seen Europe (aside from airports and the European half of Istanbul), and now I'm anxious to see more of it.
3. We were able to save some money more quickly that we would have in the US. Not having to pay rent makes saving much easier.
4. I got to stretch my wings professionally. My teaching experience prior to going to Kazakhstan consisted of having been an adjunct instructor for a year. Then, all of a sudden, I was starting a program and making all my own teaching decisions. I'm very grateful to have had that opportunity.
5. My attitude toward stuff has changed for the better. Having a massive forced de-cluttering session before moving to Kazakhstan and back to the US has changed the way I think about possessions. I doubt I'll ever be a hard-core minimalist (too many craft supplies, for one thing), but I am thinking much more carefully about both stocking up on anything "just in case" and holding on to stuff I'm not really using "just in case". I think I finally have it in my head that more stuff does not necessarily make life any easier.
Stay tuned for lessons learned and (possibly) helpful tips!
When we first accepted our job offers in Kazakhstan, we planned to stay there for at least three years, and maybe longer. Part of me feels sorry that our plan didn't work out, particularly when I think about some of my students over there. But we also had good reasons for leaving, and in the end, very few decisions don't come with an element of regret.
It's funny thinking back on my expectations when we decided to work over there. I have very fond memories of studying abroad, and I thought working abroad would be similar, but with a salary. I started this blog in part because I imagined having all sorts of cool adventures and discoveries that I wanted to document. And there was some of that--along with an awful lot of life as usual, but without many of the comforts and conveniences of home.
Since I'm not going back, I thought I would write a small series of posts on working abroad. I realize, of course, that no two jobs anywhere are the same, and that even at the same job, everybody has their own individual experience. I'm also not trying to either encourage or discourage other people from working abroad. But I wanted to document some of my thoughts on the process and lessons learned (sometimes lessons learned the hard way) in case it would be useful to anyone else.
Since lessons learned the hard way often have an air of negativity to them, though, I thought I would use this post to list some of the very positive aspects of my experience there:
1. We met all sorts of interesting people. Between our colleagues and our students, we met a lot of great people, many of whom we may never have met otherwise. Isn't it funny how life works that way? You do something seemingly random, like taking a job in Kazakhstan, and end up gaining a social circle.
2. In spite of the constant interference from work and "real life," we took some great trips. Uzbekistan had been on my list of must-sees for a long time, but I don't know if I would have seen it if I hadn't already been so close. We saw some great things in Kazakhstan itself, too--particularly the flamingos and the Aksu Zhubagly nature preserve. Georgia hadn't even been on my radar until eating Georgian food in Astana,and I'm really glad we went! We chose Austria for our spring break trip last year in part because of the direct flight from Astana, and I'm very happy to have visited it, too. I had never seen Europe (aside from airports and the European half of Istanbul), and now I'm anxious to see more of it.
3. We were able to save some money more quickly that we would have in the US. Not having to pay rent makes saving much easier.
4. I got to stretch my wings professionally. My teaching experience prior to going to Kazakhstan consisted of having been an adjunct instructor for a year. Then, all of a sudden, I was starting a program and making all my own teaching decisions. I'm very grateful to have had that opportunity.
5. My attitude toward stuff has changed for the better. Having a massive forced de-cluttering session before moving to Kazakhstan and back to the US has changed the way I think about possessions. I doubt I'll ever be a hard-core minimalist (too many craft supplies, for one thing), but I am thinking much more carefully about both stocking up on anything "just in case" and holding on to stuff I'm not really using "just in case". I think I finally have it in my head that more stuff does not necessarily make life any easier.
Stay tuned for lessons learned and (possibly) helpful tips!
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