Continental Shift

Where are you going? September 1, 2009

After you’ve decided you definitely do want to live and work overseas, the first step is to decide where to go.

Camping in the Sahara

If you’ve been given a transfer by your company, that decision is made for you, and in many ways, that takes the pressure off you.

If, on the other hand, you’re moving overseas off your own bat, you have over 200 countries to select your new home from, and your final choice should not necessarily be the first country you think of.

Chances are that if you are reading this guide, you already have a new country in mind. However, you should work through this chapter anyway, to help you analyse whether your choice is the right one for you, narrow down which area of the new country would suit your goals best, or at the very least, to help you prepare better for the challenges you will face in the new country.

Remember the most important guiding light in making the final choice for your new home is your reasons for moving overseas in the first place, which you clarified in the first chapter.

The selection method here follows a similar method to that given by the useful website International Living, in their once-free report How to Prepare For a Move Overseas—A Checklist; it used to be available here, but doesn’t seem to be any more, though that link has lots of other useful information.

The best place to live is a personal decision. Begin by listing your priorities – those things that are important to your quality of life. Such a list can include:

• Cost of living
• Cost of real estate
• Climate
• Health care – availability, cost, quality
• Infrastructure (internet access, reliable telephones etc)
• Job opportunities
• School system
• Safety and stability (crime rates, political stability, corruption level etc)
• Availability of country or beach-side living
• Taxes
• Language
• Cultural and recreational opportunities
• Accessibility to your home country (distance by air, difficulty in travel arrangements, visa options etc)
• Special benefits for your situation (e.g retired, small business owner etc)
• Work opportunities.

This list is by no means exhaustive and it is vital you identify your own priorities, which are personal to you and your own situation.

Once you have a list of your priorities – everything that is important in maintaining your quality of life in your new country – you should rank them in order of their importance. This is as simple as assigning a ‘1’ to the priorities which are most important to you, and a ‘5’ to those which are least important.

For example, if you or your partner suffer from a chronic problem needing regular medical care, the availability, quality and cost of health care will be of paramount importance on your list of priorities. You mark that with a ‘1’.

If your children are finished school or you plan to leave them in boarding school in your home country, the education system would be a pretty low priority, a ‘5’. On the other hand, accessibility to your home country and good communication infrastructure might assume extra importance in terms of visiting and contacting them.

CASE STUDY
You will recall from the first chapter that my partner and I were tossing up between Austria, with an Austrian company, and Libya, with an Australian company. Our reasons for moving were an expat salary, travel to Europe, and cultural experiences. Therefore, our priority list included:

• Salary and relocation package offered by each company
• Career advancement for my partner
• Work opportunities for me
• Proximity to Europe
• Non-English speaking host country (for language and cultural opportunities)
• Ability to visit Australia easily
• Ability to return to Australia, easily and with employment, at the end of the assignment, if we so desired.

With all these in mind, the obvious choice was in fact Libya, not Austria. Our decision was easily made because we were only considering two countries. You may have many more on your list. Continue with this chapter to narrow it down.

ACTIVITY
Make your list of priorities and rank them in order of importance.

How to move overseas. That’s it for this week. Next week, we’ll continue this chapter and go into narrowing your choices.

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