Leaving the UK for LA

JBod

JBod

JBod

Soldato
Joined
1 Sep 2007
Posts
5,315
Location
Santa Monica, California
I am looking for other people with experience of leaving the UK and joining the new world in the good old US of A. Even better if it is LA.

My job is asking me to relocate my wife, 2 children (ages 5 and 4) and of course myself out to LA for roughly 3 years. All the money side of it is fine, they will pay all the way and the salary is more than suitable. The decision has not been made yet, I am going back for 4 weeks at end of Jan to help figure it out. But I know it is a once in a life time opportunity that I will regret for the rest of my life if I don't snap it up.

Just a couple of questions, reading up on the H1B they say "a Bachelors degree or its equivalent". I only have an HND but I have been in full time employment in the same field (IT) for the last 13 years - without break. I have found some sources that suggest 3 years relevant experience counts towards 1 year of higher education with 4 years of higher education needed. Anyone any insight into this? The company will be using their lawyers to handle all this but since we are now closed for Xmas these will be playing on my mind for the next couple of weeks!

What is concerning me the most are the obvious big things - where to live, filing my own taxes, HEALTHCARE! and last but not least schools for my children.

Then there are the hundreds of tiny things that constantly keep occurring to me. What do I actually ship out there and what do I leave behind in storage. From buying simple things like plates, cutlery etc... to needing two cars now (I work central London so don't need my own car). Driving on the wrong side of the road (I have never done this, not even in Europe), turning right on a red light is a thing! Also I have never driven an automatic.

So if you have moved out to the big new world what were the surprising things you came across and what advice can you offer?
 
My dad lives in Marina del Ray. I can't help with any of the formalities but I'd say go for it. You don't often get that sort of chance and LA is a really fun place! Slightly tricky with your kids but I lived in Connecticut for 3 years when I was 7-9 and that never did me any harm. 3yrs will fly by!
 
Sounds like you could be in for a lot of fun - very best of luck with it!

I emigrated in 1997, from the UK to West Africa, initially for two years but ended up staying for three. I'll try and describe our situation and experiences but appreciate that they might not be the same as your own.

At the time we left we were doing ok, but nothing hugely special except that I worked for a global shipping company that meant an overseas move could be an option. We were pretty mortgaged up at the time, 90% or so, living in Essex (Kelvedon) and commuting to Canary Wharf every day.

We decided to sell up and have a clean break. We had good, stable families back in the UK that we felt that we could rely on to stay with when we came back. Being situated in a fairly nasty area, we knew that we'd want to come back pretty regularly, but the hassle of looking after a house back in the UK, either keeping it empty or renting it out, didn't appeal. So we sold it, sold the cars (just rented when we came back) and pretty much sold all the furniture too, other than the items that weren't sentimental. Due to where we were going we knew that anything we took would be at risk of not coming back (and indeed, pretty much none of it did!) but you probably won't suffer the same problem in LA.

We also gave Powers of Attorney to UK family, again because we were going to a fairly dangerous place, but we did keep UK bank accounts and savings to keep a 'presence' back home because we knew that we'd always be coming back one day. Ultimately, we didn't get sentimental about much at all - if we could take it we did, and if we couldn't then we took a really unemotional view on whether we'd really still want it in a few years time.

We found that lots of other ex-pats in the same situation stored lots of stuff in the UK and then came back to it only to end up replacing it all within a few months. The money we earned and saved was more than enough to cover the basics, such as white goods, furniture etc. It was all part of the opportunity of leaving.

Ultimately though, these are all the little things, especially as you're expatriating to an equivalent country.

What is concerning me the most are the obvious big things - where to live, filing my own taxes, HEALTHCARE! and last but not least schools for my children.
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These are indeed the big things, but they're not as big as you think - this is the US, not West Africa! The standards will be more or less equivalent, I'd imagine, and less risk in the choices you end up making.

Once again, it sounds like an amazing opportunity. Grab it with both hands, keep an eye on the family to make sure that they adjust ok because the last thing you need with making work adjustments is a whole load of upsets at home too, and you will be great.
 
I come to LA for work (sat in our Irvine office now in fact).
Driving takes a couple of days to get used to, but all the roads are in a grid pattern and is very logical (if also very boring!). Turning right on red makes perfect sense and you'll easily pick it up.
It's almost as cheap to eat out as it is to buy in, so the culture is very restaurant heavy - which isn't great considering the stupidly large portion sizes!

Personally, I couldn't live here permanently, but if my employers offered me an extended stay I would take it as it's an opportunity to live in a different culture (with the advantage that they almost speak the same language!).
 
Few points:

- Kids will take a serious mental hit

- After 3 years or 6 years you will most likely have to move back to UK, another hit for kids mentality.

- Insurance is a pain, look into IMG Europe insurance, unless your employer takes care of it... Its by a mile cheaper and better to what you`d get here.

- IRS filing taxes is very annoying, especially with double taxation stuff with UK.

- Life would be dependent on cars, you`d struggle to find "local co-op" to pop into for a sausage next to your house on west coast.

- Driving is pretty relaxing in USA, roads are huge and wide, barely any round-abouts but there is a lot of start-stop on lights.

- Automatic is extremely easy, dont try to use both feet, just use your right or left if you are left-handed.

- Another major problem is that since there is a limit of time you will spend in USA, it will almost feel like as if you are existing, rather than living... This is especially difficult to endure when you have a family.

I personally dont like California or Florida, which are number 1 places for expats from UK.

I would hate having to drive literally everywhere, hence why I live in Chicago... Pretty much everything is within 10-15 min walk distance from where I live, its like living in central London but paying tiny rent in comparison.
 
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I would say that your entire family needs to go over their for a few weeks on a holiday and suss it out. Personally I have travelled around a lot of America (by car) over the years and LA still stands out as the worst place I have been to.

I would definitely not base potentially the next 2 years of your life and all of the drama that goes with moving country, if none of you have ever been there before.
 
Make sure you scope out the areas that are actual potential for your income level, and what they are offering you in terms of relocation. There are plenty of dodgy places in LA that will make your life an utter misery. While the company may be paying enough to get you over there, are they truly paying enough to live somewhere decent?

Culture shock won't be SO bad with the US, but your family will take time to adjust, without a doubt. Prepare for lots of arguments that will seem completely ridiculous once they've played out.

Don't cut all ties over here. Ask the company if they're willing to put you up for a couple of weeks and drip feed the family over. It's harder with kids. Do you perhaps have some family nearby that you can leave the kids with for a few weeks while the wife joins you in your new neighbourhood? If you do, then take the chance... an outside view of where -- and how -- you're potentially going to live will be invaluable.

When the kids arrive, then it's cemented.

From what I hear, though, Santa Monica is absolutely gorgeous. I'd jump at the chance, personally, but it's just me and wife and no kids to worry about (a couple of dogs, but we'd just get them shipped and through quarantine!)
 
Office in Santa Monica? Bite their hand off!

Congratulations you should be able to live and work in the only nice part of LA and its lovely. If you are smart about where you live you shouldn't have issues with traffic because you will be cycling to work, 360ish days of the year is shorts and t-shirt weather so there's no excuse :D

You may end up needing two cars just because of the kids but you could always get one familymobile and one funmobile :D

I didn't really find any culture shock moving over, but then again I like beaches, sunshine, BBQing and being outdoors so it wasn't exactly tough adapting. Mind it helped that Santa Barbara is basically a European city in America in terms of lack of giant 8-lane freeways down the middle of the high street, no billboards or enormous strip malls etc. Santa Monica is very Euro-friendly though, there are loads of British expats there and a couple good British pubs also.

The main downside to be prepared for is that you will miss out on a lot of things like weddings, birthdays and get-togethers of your friends and family because you have to make tough decisions about what you can and cannot do in terms of travel and trips. However on the flipside, you often get people coming through on California road trips which start/finish in LA so that helps! I had the benefit that my wife's family are here also, from other people I've chatted to it's definitely harder transplanting your family here without a pre-existing family/friends network in place.

There are times when I get frustrated because of the completely retarded healthcare system and the politicians here make the ones in the UK seem positively virtuous and efficient, however an average temperature of 20C year-round and 5-6 rainy days a year make it all worth it. :p

*edit*

If you're coming back end of January, drop me an e-mail and either come up to SB or I'll come down to LA and we can grab a beer and have a chat!
 
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areksnumbr1sxylady said:
Few points:

- Kids will take a serious mental hit

- After 3 years or 6 years you will most likely have to move back to UK, another hit for kids mentality.

- Insurance is a pain, look into IMG Europe insurance, unless your employer takes care of it... Its by a mile cheaper and better to what you`d get here.

- IRS filing taxes is very annoying, especially with double taxation stuff with UK.

- Life would be dependent on cars, you`d struggle to find "local co-op" to pop into for a sausage next to your house on west coast.

- Driving is pretty relaxing in USA, roads are huge and wide, barely any round-abouts but there is a lot of start-stop on lights.

- Automatic is extremely easy, dont try to use both feet, just use your right or left if you are left-handed.

- Another major problem is that since there is a limit of time you will spend in USA, it will almost feel like as if you are existing, rather than living... This is especially difficult to endure when you have a family.

I personally dont like California or Florida, which are number 1 places for expats from UK.

I would hate having to drive literally everywhere, hence why I live in Chicago... Pretty much everything is within 10-15 min walk distance from where I live, its like living in central London but paying tiny rent in comparison.
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Damn, you know, iv always wanted to live in America but after what you just said then, ill stay put here where I live, I mean iv got a shop half a mile away which when I live on the moors isn't far, iv got everything I need really within half a mile, and half a mile the opposite direction im on top of the world, can see about 20 miles on a good weather day. don't know what more I need really.
 
Don't think so, it wasn't an overly complicated move though as I was just renting a flatshare in London, no kids so the move pretty much entailed packing up my favourite clothes into 3 or 4 big holdalls, donated the remaining stuff to charity or the bin. Tech-wise just gave everything but my Kindle and laptop to my flatmate and off I went :p
 
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Rich_L said:
Don't think so, it wasn't an overly complicated move though as I was just renting a flatshare in London, no kids so the move pretty much entailed packing up my favourite clothes into 3 or 4 big holdalls, donated the remaining stuff to charity or the bin. Tech-wise just gave everything but my Kindle and laptop to my flatmate and off I went :p
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There is certain things i would like to see in LA like the Griffith Observatory, but what i read on here a lot is LA just good for a few days at most, what's Santa Barbara like.
 
L.A. proved too much for the man
(Too much for the man, he couldn't make it)
So he's leaving a life he's come to know, ooh
(He said he's going)
He said he's going back to find
(Going back to find)
Ooh, what's left of his world
The world he left behind not so long ago
 
Hey man, I moved from Peterborough to Washington DC a couple of years back. I've had a decent time here, but had quite a few problems that were mostly down to bad luck but from these problems I learned how I would do things differently if I had a chance to redo my move...

1. Taxes are a bitch, You pay state and federal taxes here. Adding to your deductions will be healthcare, dental care, life insurance, 401k (which seems utter **** compared to a pension) etc to name but a few. You have to watch your bottom line, just taking into consideration these things I was worse off with the move.
2. If you are only here for a finite time it might not be worthwhile paying into a 401k, my plan was to pay into it to reduce my taxes, then wait until after I've gone home to the UK and cash it out in a US tax year where I earn nothing to try and minimise taxes. Not sure if it was a good idea or not, but something to devise your own strategy on?
3. Your company will most likely pay less into your 401k than they did into your pension, my company in the UK matched to 9% but in the US only matched to 5%, lost money.
4. Holidays are way less, and not all US companies grant public holidays, mines was really stingy and I lost a lot of holiday allowance and public holidays.
5. Secondment is better than localisation, I did the latter and should have done the first.
6. Cost of living is pretty high for same standard of life, my rent here is $3,100 per month, my mortgage back home is £650. Granted the location is in the heart of DC. Irrespective of that I generally found things much more expensive, cable TV, mobile phone contracts and healthier food that isn't pumped full of chemicals and preservatives etc.
7. Education for your kids, my colleague moved over too and his kid was placed either 1 or 2 years above his equivalent grade in the UK. Meant his kid was mixing with older kids which was good from his learning perspective but socially had he not been a good kid might have meant he was introduced to stuff by his peers, he may not be ready for. My colleague also put him into private education over here, I think you have to choose the public schools carefully and pretty much pick your house to fall in the right zone to insure eligibility.
8. Tax returns are a breeze, I paid a small scale accountant a few hundred bucks and they done mine the first time, thereafter I used that as a guide and done my own. Make sure you calculate your points and pay a little more, better to be paying a little extra every month than getting a big bill at the end of the tax year.
9. Watch the exchange rate, I had to send money home to pay my mortgage regularly and it was painful, send more home when exchange rate is good. Best way to send money home is US bank account -> US PayPal account -> UK PayPal account -> UK bank account.
10. Use +US and +UK on your gmail address to differentiate accounts that you sign-up for to make it easy to manage your online accounts and emails.
11. Purchase a VPN account to watch UK TV in the US and vice versa, worth every penny will also allow you to use UK lottery accounts and betting sites.
12. Sell all electrical goods before you leave, but them all new here, saves hassle. I did bring some games consoles, all you have to do is buy the US power brick, PS3 is region free but Xbox and Wii are region encoded. TVs and stuff like that are super cheap.
13. I never brought any furniture just went to IKEA over here and loaded up, so cheap.

One of the biggest issues I faced was the VISA, you pretty much loose your freedom of movement as you are not a US citizen you can't just apply for any job without incurring costs and hassle to transfer your VISA, not all employers are interested when they can hire local talent without the cost and hassle overhead. I found this limited my freedom and options, my company was a **** show and outsourced my department to India not long after arrival so my job became rather **** and I felt stuck. The locals all just left or were paid off, I'm one of the lucky few retained to do all the work of the 50+ that left.

Also watch your cash, I started going to 3 NBA games a week, hockey, baseball and then NFL on Sunday those tickets are expensive and all add up, but I kept thinking screw it how often do you get the chance to do this. Needless to say after paying for season tickets for all 4 sports this year I'm skint lol. So take your time no need to see everything all year round.
 
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