Hi everyone,


When I first came here we were looking at a move back in 5 years so I was looking at 2020. Then I made some discoveries about my pensions and brought it all forward to 2019, then 2018 and then.. early retirement deal put forward soo.. moving back hopefully April no later than May next year!!! I can't wait!


We will be using Category E and I would love to hear from anyone who has used or is using that route.


Also, is anyone else hoping the pound stays at this level to help with the 18,600 requirement?


And I realize it has probably been done to death but if anyone has any recent experience with good airlines/prices for shipping dogs USA to UK that would be wonderful.


Because Illinois is so cold in the winter we have already started the selling process, we have decided not to ship anything except us and the dogs! We have items on Craigslist and we have let friends know on Facebook and a few of those have contacted me about buying things already. We will be having a garage sale next month at the latest. I have already taken clothes, jewelery, shoes, perfumes to a consignment store to raise some cash. We sold all our old vinyl records on Saturday.


I can't wait to be with my kids and five grandchildren, I am so excited the next months until it is time to go will be SO slow! LOL

You certainly chose a good time to be transferring currency!

We did catagory E in 2015, it was very easy as the evidance is minimal. We only needed award letters from Social Security Administration showing the amount for pension in payment and that it had been in payment for more than 28 days and that payment would continue if we were living outside the USA. One bank statement showing the payments going into the account within the last 28 days. We also got a statement from 401k pension showing value and amount in payment and one bank statement showing that payment as it gets paid into a different bank account.

You might want to set up a My Social Security Account online at the SSA website as this lets you see your payments and print award letters and tax documents from anywhere. Once we were back in the UK we contacted the SSA department at the London Embasy to arrange to have our pensions paid directly into our UK account. It was very easy to do and works very well as it is paid in £ so we dont have to worry about conversion rates and fees. if you have any other questions I can try and help..

Hi Dundee, ours is a little different as we will not be drawing SSA for some time. I am using an early retirement incentive from my employer and three private pensions from employment in the UK plus my husbands VA disability pension (he is at 40% and still works full time).


So it looks like I need letters from all of the pension providers and bank statements showing the payments made into the account and that is it.


Part of the early retirement incentive is a lump sum paid in Jan for the next three years so perhaps a letter confirming that would be good too?


If the exchange rate changes and I don't have enough to cover the $18,600 I will sign up with a temp agency and ask them to give me a letter saying they expect to be able to offer me work and the hourly rate for that. Does this all sound good?

You need to show that your income will continue at the amount of £18,600 or more once you are both in the UK. I think you can use more than one catagory to meet the £18,600 so you can combine pension with income and/or savings. Do you have a house that you will be selling as you can use the money from the sale to meet the requirement.

No we are renting and will rent over there, we are moving to Telford, Shropshire where my children and five grandchildren live. I am already in touch with a really nice Estate Agency who are also Property Manager's so I don't think that will be difficult.


The only difficulty then of course is that they tell you not to part with any money or rent anywhere until you have the visa but you have to give an address. The only thing I can think to do there is to show emails between me and the agent and have them state that they will offer us accommodation as soon as the visa is granted.


I will have two, hopefully three lumps sums coming in January that we will use to pay all the expenses to do with the move. Unfortunately we don't have enough in savings. We are selling absolutely everything apart from vital papers and some sentimental things we can ship or carry in luggage. Everything else we will buy new or secondhand for the new home there.


I am so excited to be going home.

We used my sons address for our visa as we could not secure a rental until we were in the UK.. We just needed a letter from our son saying we would be staying with him until we found our own place and he sent us a mortgage statement and the land registry document showing he owns his house and it would not be over crowded with us there.

We had to keep a close check on the exchange rate they use to convert your pension when we applied because it had been changing a lot at that time. The entry officers use the date of your application as the date for the exchange rate they use. You can keep track of it on this website https://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/ you can select whatever date you want and it will show you the rate they will use. I worked out what our monthly income would be in dollars and then used that as the amount to convert to GBP.

Thank you! We are not able to use my children's addresses. My daughter is in a rental and is already at capacity. My son lives with his girlfriend and she owns the house, my son will not allow us to use that address.


The only thing I can come up with is to send my daughter to check out rentals and rent ahead of time so that I can put the address on the visa form. Then it means for a period we are renting two places but to be honest even if my husbands visa is not granted I will have to leave and he will have to stay with relatives until we get it all sorted out. If the letter from the property manager will suffice that would be the best all round of course.


We are also flying three dogs.. agency have been great about that too!