What to ask for in a package to move overseas?

[mommyoffive]

Tell me what to ask for in a package to move overseas

 

Dh is being talked to about this and I need to come up with what we want in financial package. 

 

 

Ok go.

[Hen]

I haven't done this, but a good friend did. I know they got the company to pay for moving expenses, including a shipping container to take their belongings. The company also paid for the private American school tuition for one or two of their kids. 

[foxbridgeacademy]

From what I've heard/seen most homes overseas are significantly smaller.  Depending on how long you'll be there maybe a storage unit here could be needed.  If I were only going for a year or two I wouldn't even try to take my own furniture or other big items but I definitely would not want to sell it all and have to try to rebuy new to replace it all 2 years later.  So a storage unit with insurance for contents.  Also medical insurance, many countries have universal healthcare or something like that.  You might not have access to that and it will cost you a little to a lot out of pocket.  Taxes, you will still be getting taxed here, you likely will be getting taxed there as well, pay should be adjusted for that.

[Twolittleboys]

A lot will depend on where you go (col, language etc.), for how long, and what they are offering (e.g. large companies that send many people overseas usually have a set policy). Tell us a bit more and maybe we can help better.

[Lanny]

I do not like to assume, but I am assuming that you are U.S. Citizens. U.S. Citizens are taxed on our WORLDWIDE income.  The USA is one of 2 countries in the world that does that. American Citizens Abroad is trying to get that changed to RESIDENCE based taxation, but at the moment it is WORLDWIDE taxation. 

https://www.americansabroad.org/

 

You need all of the following, and much much more, in a written contract that has NOTHING ambiguous in it:

 

The employer will pay for the Attorneys who get your Visas, so your DH can live and work overseas and so that his family (wife and DC) can live there with him too.

 

The employer will pay ALL of your moving expenses, including Customs Duties in the destination country.

 

The employer will pay ALL of the fees for the Accountants who prepare the Income Tax returns for the Destination country and your U.S. Tax returns.

 

The USA has tax treaties with some countries, so that one doesn't pay taxes to both countries.

 

After one is a bonafide overseas resident for a certain time (18 months?) one is eligible for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion.

    https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion

 

There is close to a zero percentage possibility that your U.S. Health insurance is also valid overseas. There is only a tiny chance that if it is valid overseas, that a provider overseas would accept it. You will need Health insurance from a company in your Destination country.

 

They should pay for a trip home, once a year.

 

There should be provisions about what will happen, if the job ends sooner than expected for any of a variety of reasons which can include resignation, firing, layoff, etc.  In that case, they should pay to ship all of your stuff to your origin and get it through U.S. Customs for you. 

[mommyoffive]

A lot will depend on where you go (col, language etc.), for how long, and what they are offering (e.g. large companies that send many people overseas usually have a set policy). Tell us a bit more and maybe we can help better.

 

No set policy that I know of.  They want us to come up with what we want. 

 

 

Czech Republic would be the country. 

[Lanny]

Follow on: I left out education costs for your DC.  Let us assume the city is Prague.  Let us assume there is a U.S. accredited school in Prague. If your DC are going to a brick and mortar school, the employer should pay the costs of them attending the U.S. accredited school in Prague. Assuming there is one.  If not, some other good school.  If you are Home Schooling, the employer should pay the costs of shipping what you need over there and getting it through Customs for you and delivering to your house there.

[Laura Corin]

Resettlement costs or guaranteed job on return if it is an overseas secondment rather than a new job.

 

Medical evacuation insurance if you are not sure about the quality of the medical care there. If it's something serious, you might prefer to be on home turf anyway.

[TheReader]

What Lanny said.

 

When we did this, the company paid:

*all the fees associated with getting our Visas, including getting our passports upfront (none of us had them)

*all moving expenses, including the option to move our furniture or buy furniture there, on the move to AND on the move back from 

*a housing allowance while there (so, our housing was paid while we lived there)

*moving expenses during our stay there if we moved house (we did)

*DH had a car but we should have asked for a car allowance for me too so we weren't a 1 car family while there

*DH had a phone for work

*we had medical expenses covered on their employee private insurance 

*an educational allowance (more on that in a bit) for the kids' education

*they took care of filing our in-country taxes for us (we paid whatever actual tax was due, but they paid to have it filed) (we maybe should have had them do our US ones also)

*contributions to your retirement fund to continue while working overseas

*substantial raise besides all of this

*trip home for the whole family once/year (including the time off; we came for 3 wks)

*they paid for all Visa renewals, driver's license changes, etc. for the duration

 

On education,  you will want to really research what it's like where you're going. We really really really should have had a better idea on the homeschooling front before we went; it was legal, so we did, but the expat scene is almost entirely through the schools (and the social scene, period, for kids) so we were a lot more isolated than I could have ever imagined. Especially as a one car family, and we didn't ever live in a neighborhood with other expats, and it was just hard. So, I'd look into that, for sure, and if there is an American school I'd insist on that, honestly. Or at least a school with classes in English, even if it's not the main American school.

 

You'll also want to find out if you're being paid in US currency or local currency, and if you have a preference, or if you can get it split between the two. If you will have any US bills remaining here while you're working over there, you will want some of your pay in US currency & deposited in the US for you (or them paying the fees to send it) so you aren't dealing with exchange rates. If you aren't going to have any bills here in the US while working there, then you may want strictly local currency, again, so you aren't impacted by exchange rates. And you'll want to determine which way you want the salary calculated initially, because you'll be locked into that initial exchange rate if you decide on a US number, then they translate it and pay in local currency. 

 

If I think of anything else, I'll come back. Feel free to message me if you like; we were in Brazil 6 yrs (back now for almost 4 yrs), but it was as a transfer with DH's current company who sent us and then brought us back. 

 

Oh, on that note, find out if there is a definite end date, if you'll be there until they need you back in the US, or if you can request to move back after a certain amount of time, and if so, if there will be any penalty for asking to come back. We had to renegotiate things on our return because the "approximately 5 years" turned into longer and we needed to be back but they didn't have anyone to replace DH in Brazil. So, expect to do some negotiating on the flip side, but get the move back at least written in the initial contract. (and know that due to customs laws, you may or may not be able to easily bring out things; if you'll be charged duty on things you bring out when you come back, maybe get written in that they pay for that as well as part of the move). 

[Lanny]

TheReader in post #9 brought up important things about how the salary is paid. Partly in U.S. Dollars? Partly in local currency? Is the Exchange Rate calculated on the day the payment is made?

 

You MUST be prepared for currency devaluation of the U.S. Dollar. The U.S. Dollar was extremely weak, until approximately mid 2014.  My family personally suffered greatly because of that. I read that many Overseas Americans (there are approximately 8 million of us) reluctantly had to move to the U.S.A., because of their lack of purchasing power where they were living, with a weak U.S. Dollar.

 

The U.S. Dollar is very strong now and hopefully will remain strong, but there are no guarantees in life.

 

One thing you should know if you are U.S. Citizens is that it may be difficult for you to open a bank account in a foreign country. That varies from country to country.

 

Also, if you do not have a U.S. Mailing Address, you may find that your bank accounts, credit card accounts, etc., in the USA get cancelled by your banks. Why? U.S. regulations regarding overseas citizens and others having those accounts.

 

This is not all a bed of Roses, but also it is not a guaranteed hellish experience and it may be an excellent career move for your DH to get the overseas experience on his resume, depending on what kind of work he does.

 

If you move overseas you will need to go with the flow, have a sense of humor, and be willing to occasionally be frustrated by bureaucracy.  

 

You may find yourselves eating some wonderful food and seeing some places you have never dreamed of being in for more than a few days, for weeks or months or years.

 

You will need to be sure that you and your company continue to pay Social Security Retirement benefits, so that you don't lose out on that and also $ into your company retirement plan.

 

This is not something to enter into lightly, or unprepared, and you were wise to come here for ideas.

 

The son of one of my cousins works for a U.S. Government agency you are familiar (3 letters) with and he was encouraged to go overseas, I think about 8 or 10 years ago now.  I believe they shipped one of their cars over there. I would probably not be shipping a car that might stand out like a sore thumb, and that spare parts might not be available for, and that mechanics might not have any experience fixing.

 

They were there for about 3 years and at first it was really great. My cousin and his wife went to visit them several times. After they came back, a year or 2 later, he was sent there for a couple of weeks. He then told his Mother, "I never want to go back there!".

 

I would suggest that you spend some time on the web site of the ACS (American Citizens Services unit) in the U.S. Embassy in Prague. Read the Travel Warning or whatever they have for that country.

 

Try to see if there is an expatriate U.S. community there. Try to see what the medical care there is like. It might be excellent. It might be horrible.

 

I am retired and have lived in Colombia for 22 years.  With very rare exceptions (1, possibly 2 Americans) all of the Americans and Canadians and other foreigners we have met here are very positive about this country and their life here.

 

I hope if you go overseas that you will enjoy your life there.

 

ETA: The one American I remember as not being happy here was here on a Temporary job assignment. 

Edited October 23, 2017 by Lanny

[Anne]

I didn't read all the other replies - but help with taxes would be high on my list - taxes for expats can be very difficult!

 

 

And yay for the Czech!!  I have friends who've been and say it's a beautiful country.

 

Anne

[Twolittleboys]

I would ask for:

 

*Pre-trip cultural preparation class
​*Help with finding/securing housing, setting up a bank account/paperwork etc., drivers license

Company car (or help in getting a vehicle)

*Relocation expenses

*Language classes

Tuition for International/American school/nursery school (not sure how old your kids are) - you'd have to see whether homeschooling would be a possibility (it isn't everywhere)

*Tax preparation/advise

*Good health insurance (might be automatic there)

*Maybe flights back to the States

Additional money to adjust cost of living (Czech Republic may be comparatively cheap but you would want to cover additional cost due to taxes, two homes (if you keep your US home)

 

Depending on how long you are planning to go for, a job after your return or help finding one, relocation back home

 

I did a secondment (18 months) to the US from Europe about 15 years ago and that was pretty much what I got. We had a two day intercultural training in our home country, three weeks of training in the US (language and general stuff), got a flight home once a year, had our taxes done for us, and got a set amount for relocating both ways. As it was a limited time program we had our old jobs to come home to. The company offered decent health insurance (for all employees). We also got a lump payment (I want to say maybe two months salary) at the beginning to help pay housing deposits, get a car, furniture (relocation money wasn't enough to take a huge amount with us) etc. We earned the same (more or less) as regular American employees with the same experience. However, our office in the home country also paid us half of the regular yearly salary in addition to what we earned in the US. I didn't have kids/spouse so don't know what they would have done for them.

 

Please note that the above was for something that was more of an "exchange program". While we all had worked for the company for a couple of years and worked just as much as regular employees etc. we were not experts in the sense of doing something others could not (other than of course an exchange of ideas/intercultural/language etc.). If your husband has some very specific, in demand skills I would expect the package to be better.

 

Relocating is EXPENSIVE so I would look for at least a decent package (Unless this is a great career step worth more than the package itself)

[TheReader]

Oh, YES to language school. Our company paid for lessons for DH & I ahead of time, plus for the kids once we got there, until we finished one full semester/book and were functional. Not fluent, but,... After that we used our educational allowance for the kids to keep paying for their lessons, and I just got by learning through immersion, more or less. By the time we left, dh & I were fluent, one kid was semi-fluent, and the other 2 could understand most things even if they didn't speak as much as the rest of us. 

[mommyoffive]

Thank you everyone!

[Deb in NZ]

What we have required in our OE years:

• housing paid for including 24hr hot & cold water (we lived in the Pacific Islands)
• clean drinking water provided
• electricity costs covered
• airconditioning &/or heating provided
• work truck
• yearly flights to home country for family
• shipping of household gear beginning & end of contract
• necessary VISA for work, etc.
• living allowance to cover excess costs of living in a 3rd world country

Other things worth asking for:

• schooling costs for any children to local international school (our dc were under school age for most of our ex-pat years)
• medical insurance, if required (the countries we lived in all had universal healthcare & anything really serious the company would have medivaced us to NZ)
• phone / internet costs (our ex-pat years were before the internet was common, we didn't even have a phone in our house)
• make sure that the flights are not a set $$$$ amount.  We were caught out on our last ex-pat job as when we moved there our dc were 4mo & 28mo old.  When we moved home to NZ our dc were 3 & 5 years old & their tickets cost 75% of an adult ticket not 10%.  

JMHO