Moving to New Jersey in May!!
 

Hello and happy new year to everyone!
My husband's company has offered him the opportunity of a lifetime - a job and moving costs for us all to move to the US and start a new life there. After lots of negotiating and weighing up all the risks we've decided to go! We have 3 children (2, 6, 8) and have a great life here but you just can't pass up such an amazing adventure so going to go for it. Very scared of being homesick and leaving close family is a daunting thought but I'd like to be prepared as much as possible so would be so grateful of any advice on how to cope with missing people back home, how to rent out your property in the UK and how are you taxed on the rental income when you live abroad, for women who stayed at home with children for a bit - what was the job market like and how did you find getting a job after a few weeks out of work? What are other families like, are they friendly? can you get a school place easily or are they very oversubscribed like in the UK? Any advice would be AMAZING!! thank you in advance xx

Re: Moving to New Jersey in May!!
 

Welcome to BE and good luck with the move!

A lot of those questions come up pretty regularly, so you'll have a good head start if you look down a bit and have a little search.

So many threads on NJ/NY/CT and that whole commuter belt area, so you'll find loads of great info about towns and schools but for schools, they're tied to the address, so you move to a house in that school catchment, then you get in but the house across the street might be in a different school district and the reason why the value is very different.

Re: Moving to New Jersey in May!!
 

Too busy on a Friday night to post more than a couple of lines....first of all as NJ is a State (albeit a small one) where exactly in NJ will your spouse be working? North or South Jersey?

Will he be working in New York City?
There are hundreds of large and small towns in NJ....some are great, some are downright dangerous (eg. Camden and Newark).

I live in Millburn township (Short Hills section) which is on the MidTown Direct train line into NYC (spouse works in Times Square). Children go to the public (state) school in the zipcode where you live.

There are websites like Greatschools and City-Data.com - Stats about all US cities - real estate, relocation info, crime, house prices, cost of living, races, home value estimator, recent sales, income, photos, schools, maps, weather, neighborhoods, and more (also go to the forum for NJ) which will have school info.

We do rent out our house in Essex (and live in Essex county here in NJ too lol!)

I am not working - I was very briefly with BA at Newark airport but left due to the rubbish annual leave (especially compared to doing the same job in the UK) as to start off with you only get 10 days annual leave and it takes years to build up more days off....this is not unusual in the US for new hires :( Maternity leave is a joke in the US too.

Happy to give more info over the weekend. :)

Re: Moving to New Jersey in May!!
 

Hi Josiesjourney

We are a couple of months ahead of you....we are moving to NJ in April from Sussex in the UK. We have 2 children aged 6 and 8 and a 2 year old dog (my 3rd baby!) As we are on the same journey as you not sure I can offer much advice as I still feel like I'm working it all out....but I can say I feel the same! Have had lots of wobbles and so have the kids - we are very close to family here in the UK too - but have decided like you that it will be an amazing adventure! After lots of house hunting we have decided on Summit for lots of different reasons although we also loved Westfield but didn't find a house there. We have rented our house out on the UK and if you get a form from the UK tax office you won't pay tax on the rental income that you receive while you are living abroad - your letting agency should advise on this too. Not sure what would happen if you moved the rental income to the US though.

Good luck!

Re: Moving to New Jersey in May!!
 

As you are living in the US you must declare U.K. rental income on your US tax return.