Well thank you all for this, I am not really any clearer, a house to own, a job, and enjoy my social time with my wife, Florida yes, as we have long standing friends there, so and of course my Diabetes, I have looked at a lot of info on forums about this in the USA, and based on costing I could afford $120 per month for that, I have about 3 yrs supply in testing stuff, and as for what comes next in time, well 9 yrs hasn't show much of a problem so far, good control counts for a lot, but really guys some on here come over very bitter.

I asked for advice, not personnal experience what you suffered, but taken on board, I can buy a house outright there, never here, thats my only goal..

You may come across bitter after experiencing the "American" way if you come as well. Some people are ok here and some aren't. As I said, I'm not in your circumstances and neither are any of these other people..... So all I can do is wish you the best of luck. Life isn't a bed of roses anywhere.

Unfortunately the true cost of living in Florida is never seen by visitors
and it would appear that your friends may not have told you everything ...
water, and electric bills are rising very fast

Unemployment is over 10% here now ..and expected to rise

Medical is the most frightening ..a day in hospital can be $10k
I never could get insurance as I have high BP

Not sure how you arrive at that cost is seems very low and test strips are not that expensive if purchased online.

My wife is type 2 diabetic which is well under control and has no other issues caused by it and no medical insurance company would accept her. The only reason she has medical insurance is Oregon has its own medical pool for people who the insurance companies will not cover. Her premium for 80% cover is $608 per month plus co-pays plus prescription charges. She uses generic drugs so they only cost $10 each per month under her insurance plan but still her total medical costs for the year are over $8000 and she only has seen the doctor for diabetes, fortunately there has been nothing else.

If we didn't have medical insurance I dread to think what her treatment and prescriptions would cost us. At great deal more than we pay and a lot more than $120 a month. She is older than you so your monthly premium, if you can get cover would be less, but I can't see it being anywhere near the cost you quote.

Yes, because who can afford a beach hut??

I know you asked for advice, not personal experience.... sorry, but its a little hard to separate the two for me.......

I am Australian born and lived there for my whole life up until a year ago.
I have never been to the UK.
I have been living in California for 1 year on a work visa.
I have a wife (not working) and two teenage kids.
Some observations.

You only get 2 weeks vacation a year. Thus, you can pretty much forget about traveling to see the country while you are here for the first 2ish years. Those 10 days a year will be needed for different appointments and the like, unless you have an amazing company that are happy to give you time off for those sorts of things.
This might change after you have been here for a while, and no longer need time off to get your drivers license and such.
Its really really really expensive to live here. Clothes, food, cars, gadgets, the lot. Thus, even if you do get time off, you will not have the money to afford to travel much.

Food here is really really different. We have all put on weight and my wife home cooks everything from raw ingredients. Walking down the bread isle you can smell the sugar. Thats just one example. Its hard to control our diet like we used to. Its taken a year and we are only just getting a handle on it now.

Medical insurance. You have to have it, it costs a staggering amount of money.
Pay rates are much lower than in Australia.
You work far far harder here for the money.
Americans are hard people to get to know. You are going to be lonely for a long time. Thus you are going to become even better friends with your wife.

Its going to be hard to buy a house straight off. You don't have a three digit credit rating. Thus you are a vapor, a non-person. Thus, you are a credit risk. Unless you have enough cash to buy one outright (and ~10k extra to prove that you are not going to be a drain on the system), its going to be really hard for you to find a bank that will lend you the money. Plan on renting for a year to build up a credit rating. (Note, have lots of money in your pocket, you will need to give it to the bank so you can borrow it back so you can pay it back so you can build up that credit rating).
All the letters from the banks back home will not even be looked at. Remember, you don't exist here. The whole housing crunch came about because banks lent money to people like you, they are burnt and are really tough to win over.

Have lots of money in your pocket when you come, you will need it to buy a car and get insurance. You will not be able to get a car loan because you do not have a credit rating. You can not pick up the car you paid cash for until you have insurance. You will not be able to get regular (ie, what most people pay (which is probably still FAR more than you pay now)) insurance because you do not have a drivers license. You will need to pay cash for the special risk insurance.
There is no public transport in America, you will need to rent a car at the airport and drive it for a week or two while you buy a car.
Because you do not have a credit rating, renting a house will be expensive, they will ask for 2-3 months rent in advance because they can not do a credit check on your back ground.

The American dream is out there. The current recession is moving it around a little.
The wealth in this country is staggering. You will work hard. You will work well past when you would have retired back home. You will have a much lower quality of life for a while. But then you might just land on your feet and get a shot at living your dream over here.

Am I bitter? No, not at all. Just giving you a small hint of what its really like to get started over here.
I have a great family, a fantastic job in an amazing country. Its been the hardest most rewarding year of my life.
Just because we all speak a form of English (don't get me started on how they treat you because you sound different) does not mean we are the same. Its a totally different culture. Stuff you never thought would be an issue is a life breaker, things you plan and worry about turn out to be a non event.
Living in a different country really does put the world in a different light.
Study it, talk about it with lots of people, talk to your wife lots and YOU make up your mind. Its fun at first, then it gets hard, then it gets grueling, then you get into the swing of it and it becomes what you make of it.

Winning the DV lottery is the easy bit.

Cheers,

Ben.

Cheers for that Ben, can I ask how old you are and work visa( own business )??

sorry to jump on the doom & gloom bandwagon....but that was why I moved here rather than my US husband moving to UK, because we would be cash rich once I sold my house in UK.

So we bought an amazing house which we could have never afforded in England, and we are now struggling each year to pay the astronomical property taxes and oil to heat it in winter. I have a law degree and yet I am working an entry level job in a hotel. I know I live out in the sticks, but that still tells you something about jobsearching here.

Sorry, I know you want to hear positive things, but it's better to know these things if you do decide to come over.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

I think Beno has made a pretty excellent and succinct set of observations there.

I am not sure that Americans are hard to get to know, though. In a short time I've managed to amass a fairly decent squad of excellent mates. Having said that I am quite young and have only lived in progressive places such as Seattle or San Francisco - I imagine that makes a difference. I'm not sure what it's like if you are all grown up.

I'm 43, and its a 2 year work visa. I have to renew every two years.

I don't mean to make it sound doom and gloom, its just real. This is what happens, this is life over here. It takes a while (like a year and counting) before you are sort of on your feet.
(Assuming you have a well paid job..... I cant believe that I am getting just over 30 thousand a year more here than back in Aust and I have never been more broke in my life... haha, and to think, when they told me my salary, I thought 'wow... I wont be rich, but at least we will live more comfortably than in Aust'. Hah! It cost us about 35 grand to relocate, NOTE, this is on top of what the company paid, which was a fair bit (ie, they paid airfares and shipping for the stuff we bought). For the first 5 months we were drawing on our Aust savings just to survive).

Anyway, thats probably more than you wanted to know.... I had read heaps on the web, this forum was really helpful, my wife spent a lot of time looking into schools and all the rest.
We were as prepared as we could be..... You can talk and talk, but in the end, you have to decide to jump. Doing it on a green card will make it a little easier, as you know up front that you are going to be in the country for as long as you like (or can survive).

Cheers.

Ben.

Really, REALLY good post Ben. I hope radion reads it carefully and takes the time to understand that this is not a move to be entered into lightly at his age with his medical history.

...and for those of you suggesting he just "gives it a go", I suggest you think long and hard about the advice you're giving. This is not some 20-something single person just starting out in their life and their career. If radion chucks it all in in the UK and heads for the gold-paved roads of Florida he could, in the worst case scenario, end up jobless, with a big home in Florida that he can't see, quickly bankrupted by his medical bills and with nothing to return to in the UK. Personally, given the information we've been provided, I think that telling him to "give it a try and see how it works out" is reckless.

If the OP reads all that he is reading here and does his research and still decides to go, then I wish him the best of luck. You and everyone else can only give your best advice. Whatever he does after that is his choice. He's a grown man and hopefully not foolhardy.

And his worst case scenario isn't something you can dream up for him. Unless of course you know him?

well said Beno, we moved with a really realy good relocatation package but house prices droping ect, even with the company buying our old house in the UK we are looking at a $100,000 loss and no garentee of a job in a year, I can't work, well, I could because I have a work permit but as a nurse I am finding the maze of paperwork inpenitrable, I can't drive after 11 months of living here and I don't even have a non drivers ID as every time we go, the rules have changed!!! I have even phoned the day before to find out what I need!!! no luck so far! and this wasn't a not being from here, problem! on one occation the DMV was in near riot because they book ahead here, about a month for road tests, the DMV where cancelling everyones tests because they hadn't done the new, the week befores legislation of a drugs and alcohol study (as in learning not blood) and people where quite rightly saying "well couldn't you have written to us about this?" the answer "it is your responsibility to check" I added fuel to the fire.."well I phone yesterday and asked if anything was different and Sharon said no!," my ss card was lost 3 times!!! because even after I wrote down and scored out their spelling of my address they continued to use the original WRONG address, there is an awful lot of slack happy and incompetent people working in public service here, far more than I found in the UK, but a side note would be of course I understood the system there I don't here!
I don't know how to find a doctor? I use a drop in clinic, varying results so not impressed at my kids school stuff which is a legal requirment here! missed stuff off and did totally different tests on each child, dispite the fact they are twins concentrating on one which I felt they had mistaken him for his brother! who had health problems! and I mentioned it a few times "have you got the right one?" they gayily cared on!
but when I went very impressed with the Doctor!, in short you need med insurance a good one and somehow learn the medical system here!

regarding medical - dont just think about what you have to deal with now. Think about what would happen if you got a new illness - or were in an accident. It could totally NOT be your fault and you could be badly hurt and cop a huge medical bill. You need insurance over here or you risk bankrupcy if something bad happened.

A big thank you to you all, good advice given and taken, as we have talked long and hard about moving ahead or stopping right now, as a couple, we are moving ahead with the green card, I fully agree with good health coverage and will endeavor to research this as much as humanly poss.

Thank you again for your valued input, and in the coming months I will keep you posted in new posts, I am looking at all neg.probs at this time and trying to come up with an attack plan for these, so I have some sort of idea how to tackle them, thats all I can say about this, as we haven't even been approved yet, this could be all pie in the sky