essexnick

Move to America, get a Degree which costs anywhere between $30,000 up to $60,000 or more. A huge debt in only 4 years.

Then spend the rest of your life paying that debt off.

You then get a job in America that gives you between 5 or 10 day vacation. With the hope that by the time you reach 40 or 50 years old you might have earned 20 days vacation.

All the while you worry about losing your job and not being able to afford healthcare, plus you will probably still be paying off that degree debt.

Or....stay in the UK, get 25+ mandatory holidays (which is law - USA has no mandatory laws regarding vacation), plus always have the National Health Service there through the good and bad times in your life. Obviously private health is optional but not law to be forced to buy it, unlike new laws planned in the USA.

Miss the weather? Well you can take 5 - 6 weeks break in the UK or Europe to travel to warm climates if that is your thing. Or take only 1 or 2 weeks to enjoy the weather in America...if you live in a sunny state of course.

Anybody see it differently to me?

dunroving

What does it have to do with moving back to the UK? Are you in the US at the moment? Are you wondering whether you should come back? If so, it sounds as if you have already made your mind up.

OK, I just found some of your previous posts - living in CA and have decided to move back, right? Well, this is the forum for getting support for your decision. Me, I think the US has lots of problems, but some people are relatively immune from many of them so I think it depends on each person's individual situation. I work a damn sight harder here than I did in the US, less free time and vacation, and the nature of the work is much less sasitsfying. And the weather sucks big time (well, I am in the west of Scotland, after all). One week in sunny Spain (if I had time to take a vacation) doesn't make up for walking the dog every day in persistent rain for most of the other 358 days of the year.

Mummy in the foothills

I totally agree, My dh is a mechanic and can do the same work wherever, but in UK will have more time off, here he works like a slave is unappreciated, get verbal abuse from the manager (like everyone else) and and gets 15 days paid vacation (starting this year after 6 years in this job)
I'm a nurse, no way will I work full time here, doing 12 hour shifts, it takes over and all you do is eat sleep work, my kids need more than that from me.

bandrui

Essexnick: Sounds as though you have that down pretty accurately.

Dunroving: Sounds as though you want to move back to the US.

Bob

$30-60K total would be pretty damn cheap I'd say

The missus was on $42K a year for her undergrad course, tuition, board, food plan. Meh.

Sally Redux

Just what I was thinking. My son is at a state university and it's still nearly $20k pa.

SanDiegogirl

Depends on which stage of your life you move to the US.

Hubby and I came in our 50's with work. We moved from Surrey and a good life style - but we wanted to experience working and living in US so took the plunge.

Our home here is better (and was cheaper to buy) than in the UK, we loved our jobs and brought over our UK vacation allowances, enjoy travelling to some pretty spectacular areas in the US, and of course love the weather in Southern California.

Yes, its got much more expensive to live here since we first moved (property taxes, health insurance, food etc) but we still think we have a better quality of life. Glad we took the risk.

robin1234

The price of a degree is complicated. $60,000 a year is pretty common for private colleges now, so that would be $240,000 over the course of four years. Of course, only people who can really afford that much, actually pay that much. For ordinary working people there are all kinds of ways of discounting it so that the actual out-of-pocket is somewhere between zero and a quarter of a million. My strategy, coming to America with a nine year old and a six year old, was to work in academia and get tuition remission for the children's eventual college, so I suppose it could be argued that I saved half a million dollars. However, one of them chose to go to state school, so I saved a lot less on her tab.

nethead

Not so many colleges offer tuition remission these days though...

robin1234

It is definitely less than it was. At our place we can take an unrestricted benefit of up to a certain amount (I think it is now around $23,000 per year per student) or alternatively tuition exchange, which is full tuition & fees at one of a list of participating colleges. The exchange is contingent on a place being available on an exchange basis.

sallysimmons

Good for you! How did you manage that? We moved with a UK-based company, but we weren't able to keep our UK holiday allowances because the company had to be consistent with its policies (lawsuit-driven US culture). We did get to keep our length of service and because that was over 10 years, we both got the maximum allowance of 3 weeks here.

Of course, we could never take the whole 3 weeks because we had to work too hard and you always felt guilty about being away.

That said, now that I work for myself, those 3 weeks seem like paradise. I've only had 2 weeks off in the last 7 years.

SanDiegogirl

It was an extremely generous English privately owned and based company which opened offices in Silicon Valley and Oregon. It transferred many people to these offices and they retained their UK vacation allowances; and all US folk who joined the company also got much better vacation allowances than most US based companies. I don't think anyone was getting less than 3 weeks, even when they first started.

I was very lucky.

alicat26

I don't see it much differently to you Nick.

I have just quit the worst job I think I have ever had. I had NO benefits of any description, low pay, total narcissist for a boss. Now I am free, I will be wrapping things up here and making a move back to the UK very soon.

I know not everyone has it this bad, but for me the past 3 years working in USA have been miserable.

I took 3 weeks unpaid leave at Christmas once to visit UK. I gave the employers 4 months notice that I wanted to do that. They were fine with it. After I returned to work it was as if they resented the fact that I left.

With NO notice at all, they then told me that I would no longer be working full time at 40 hours per week but part time at 20 hours per week. If I did have a rent or mortgage to pay I can tell you I would have been totally screwed. I barely made my bills on what they cut me down to.

So, I look forward to returning soon.

Good luck Nick

bandrui

Thank goodness you're out of there. Good for you.

essexnick

I have never understood people that get given vacation and are scared to use it?

I had 8 sick days when I was in San Francisco per year. So I used them. My boss got annoyed about me using them.
I told him that if you don't want me taking off days sick....then don't give me paid sick days to use. Same goes or vacation allowance. It's just stupid.

It's like buying a car for my wife and then getting annoyed every time she drives it. It's total BS.

I loved standing up to my boss and pointing out the obvious, of which he cannot argue against.