Totally agree, my plan is to rent a furnished place for at least 6 months to figure which areas suit us best. The $50k is money I will put aside for when we do eventually buy, just wanted to have a realistic budget to work with.

GREAT ... thanks for the extra tips, will make is easier to compare and plan!

Brilliant, always figured there would be some deals and sales that you probably wouldn't know about until you've been there for a while.

Going to have to look at schools next! My wife thinks I'm planning it all too much and should just plan to get there and then let it all happen ... against my nature though (for the major things ... house, school etc)

Good job she married you, then.

Fail to plan; plan to fail.
Getting here and "let it all happen" with a family to provide for is inviting disaster, as a quick shufty through some of the threads on this forum will quickly reveal.
Fine if you are footloose and fancy free single, but most of us are neither of those things any more.

I think you are being admirably well organised.
If you have most of the basics covered, then you will have room to think and tackle anything unexpected that hits the fan when you get here.

There will always something that you haven't thought of, but if the whole thing is left to chance then you end up having to firefight on too many fronts at once.

Good Luck with it.

I think there's merit in this. Suppose your spare room is, well, spare, it contains nothing but a couple of empty suitcases. It would be a bedroom but lacks a built in closet and so is left to masquerade as a bonus den thingy.

Tout a coup, you adopt three children. They have nothing on which to sleep! A person who thought ahead would have filled that room with bunk beds so as to be able to deal with this crisis, or a financial one to be alleviated by taking in illegals or a desire to keep the pool cleaner by engaging live-in help to polish it in shifts.

Really, it's quite derilict to move to a far country without a furnishing, and probably decor, plan for that possible room of unknown dimensions.

I am very much like you, were doing our first reccie in may to Hants NS and ive got a scrapbook dedicated to who i want to visit in the area and a list of questions i want to ask. I'm currently devising on a similar spreadsheet on set up costs. I think my OH thinks i'm a bit sad but i'd rather over do it than sink. My advise, keep on planning!

Thanks for the kind words!

I think in all honesty, she doesn't know where to start and is hoping I do what I always do, which is fine.

I like to be organised, will feel much better as I sit on the plane waiting to takeoff!

I've planned to put a spare bed in my spare room for when the inlaws come to visit ..... our live in babysitters

I have spreadsheets all over the place, with different scenarios on selling house here ... renting out house here ... buying house there ... renting house there .. buying apartment there and renting it out as well as buying a house there and renting the one here ....

I think I may have gone over the top!

Take my word for it, you can't go over the top if you planning a succesful move. My wife had spreadsheets for everything. There wasn't a night that passed without us researching something on the internet prior to and after our recce trip.
After a great 5 months here, I am pleased to say there hasn't been anything that has crept up and bit us in the arse.

Great to know!

I always expect the unexpected, and try to allow 'buffers' in the budget for them .... which I guess kind of makes them not-so-unexpected??

Glad your 5 months has been a success so far