ededed

Hi all,

We have been offered a job in the US - PA to be exact. We are busy going through the emotional questions / kids & school etc, not seeing family blah blah blah - but need some guidance on some of the costs we'll incur living in the USA. I appreciate that it will be hard to give accurate numbers, but some ball-park figures would be really helpful, based on your experiences. Costs I need are:

Monthly grocery bill - 2 adults, 2 kids (4 and 1 year old)
Eating out in average restaurants once a week
Childcare - either live in nanny, or nursery school
Cellphone (wife talks a lot!)
Cable TV
Internet package
Water / electricity / rates - on 3 bedroomed house
Car insurance (medium sized family sedan worth $30k)
Bank charges

Any approximations would be really helpful in working out what salary we should be asking for!

Thanks y'all.

Ed

Michael

The following two links should give you an idea of the cost of living in the area you are moving to. Us New York City Manhattan (similar to the costs in central London) or New York City Queens (similar to costs in outlying London area) as the comparison to the city that you are moving to.

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/movecalc.asp?a=0

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costo...tofliving.html

The two cost of living calculators may give different results due to the way they calculate their figures but it should give you an overall ballpark range. It also may be able to give you some of the individual costs that you want.

penguinsix

For many retail purchases, such as restaurants and some other items, you'll be budgeting in $ what you spend in £s (this is really rough). A dinner that is £20 would be $20 in the US. A movie that is £10 in London is $10 in the US. As for groceries, how much are you spending in the UK per month? Some things will cost more, some less. Might be a wash.

Cable and Internet (package) probably $200 tops (if you get every movie channel in HD and multiple tvs). You can shop around for less.

Cell phone. $50-$100 a month, but there are so many plans it will make your head spin.

Child care and utilities will be highly dependent on what city you live in. Kind of hard to assess on a national basis. If you are in Philly or Pittsubrgh it's one price, if you are in the central rural area is considerably less.

cybersecretary

It would be worth you asking the company to provide you with a relocation agent - not for the physical removals but to calculate what the differential would be between your current income/expenditure and the proposed one in the US. My husband's company provided this for us when we relocated - unfortunately they got it wrong and we have had to renegotiate a year in, but if done properly can be v useful. All the other stuff you can probably find out from the internet I would have thought. We have certainly found that its NOT as cheap as we expected to live here. Also factor in that you will probably be spending a fair bit on entertaining yourselves to replace the social life/family life that you have in the UK.

I dont know exactly how it works but husband gets a salary and then also a COLA (cost of living allowance) payment. I would think its done that way for taxation purposes. Talking about tax, make sure the company offers you (& pays for) a tax specialist to sort out all your personal taxes.

Additionally you wont have any credit history here, thats a pain in the arse too. My insurance for my car (mini cooper - dont know how much it cost) was $1800 for the first year as I didnt have a US driving licence (I have been driving with no claims for 25 years and that doesnt figure anywhere).

jumping doris

Where in PA?

I am in Pittsburgh and we find it to be more expensive than the UK was when we left. (Three years ago ).

Our monthly grocery bill is about $1200- $1600 for a family of 4 (5 when the eldest is home from college). That is at one of the cheaper supermarkets. If I shopped in Wholefoods/ organic place it would be much higher.

Eating out ....lots of chains here which are fairly reasonable and they are not as fast foodlike as macDonalds/burger king. Average bill $40

Non chain ...we ate out last night for OH's birthday. 4 main courses, 2 beers and 2 glasses of wine, with tip...$80

Childcare...haven't used it here but I gather from friends it's expensive.
Cellphone...family plan with shared minutes $140 per month for 4 phones. If you talk a lot out of network the cost soars!!!!!

Cable TV ..we have one premium channel...HBO and all the basic ones and our internet and its about $160 per month if we don't order movies.

Water....$120 per month...more in the summer if you water the garden.

Gas we pay a budget account and it's about $150 per month but we don't use much gas in the summer so that is really all for the winter. Before we did the budget account our highest gas bill was $400 one month. It is very cold in the winter. Generally need heat from October to April/early May.

Electricity...the air con is electric so that bumps up in the summer. Again we have a budget account and it's about $135 per month.

No rates here....lots of taxes instead. The biggie is property tax which is paid to your township for your schools. If you don't live in the township you don't go to school here. Therefore the better schools are in high property tax areas.
We pay just over $1000 per month on top of the mortgage. We have superb schools however.
We also pay income tax to the township and that funds the library etc. That is a % of your earned income.

Then you have all your sales taxes/state tax and federal income tax.

Bank charges can be very nasty if you go overdrawn.

Then there are all the extras...school and school team sports are very big here and most children are in lots of teams and the cost of equipping them and travelling with the team is an added cost we hadn't anticipated.
We find we are always being asked to put our hands in our pocket for something.

Car insurance..our relocation agent hooked us up with AIG International and they took our UK driving history into account and we pay $850 per year for two cars. That is very cheap but we have good coverage.
Our cars didn't cost $30k each though.

jumping doris

PS...You mention nursery/nanny but will your wife be able to work here?
If she doesn't have a work visa you will need to factor in the loss of her earnings(If she works in the UK).

Also you will need two cars as you really cannot walk to many places here.

ededed

Thanks everyone - really useful info.

Doris - it's Philly, although not sure if we'd live there or drive over the river. We are doing the UK expat thing in Jo'Burg so have a feel for the hassles and opportunities of relocating, but the info provided today really helps - we'll def.be talking to the company and getting a relocation agent, and making sure everything is taken care of - I'm not moving to the US then becoming a hobo! (as cute as that dog was on the TV show...) The wife will be working for the same company - that's part of the deal.

Really appreciate the feedback - it helps more than you know. (penguin - you've helped me before, and cybersec & Michael!).

Cheers

Ed

Bob

What's the visa out of curiosity? L1 I hope...if it's an H1, you won't be doing much for a while unless it's with a uni, spouse won't be able to work though, so that's childcare saved.

The_English_Bride

Also, make sure you find out what kind of health insurance you will get through your company. It's not cheap, and there are often co-pays for doctors visits and other treatment depending on the type of plan you have.

Englishmum

I live in a small colonial house.

I had the window cleaner in last week...and it cost a whopping $400...!

The gutter cleaning was $97 and it will have to be done again in November as there are so many trees around our neighbourhood (New Jersey).

A live in nanny in our area tends to be paid around $600 per week, it costs more for a live-out nanny. They will expect to have use of a car to ferry your children around, unless you come into an agreement if they drive their own car. If using their own car you might need to check the insurance policy (as an employee I guess they'll need some kind of insurance covering work/business use) or the safety implications if they're driving your offspring around in an old banger.

cindyabs

Obviously I have the wrong job.

Englishmum

Hey Cindy....what is the best price for a RTW air ticket (in economy) on Star Alliance airlines and for OneWorld?

My spouse will be in London and Zurich in mid-November and then returning to Singapore. Hes suggested that I meet him in Europe and fly back to Singapore with him (he will probably fly with SQ but would consider BA). I'll return to the States approx 2nd week in January.

SQ is doing a promotion on their website from JFK (sadly my local airport EWR only has their all-business class flight nowadays) via Frankfurt and it's about $1300 inc. taxes but no airmiles being awarded.

I might go for it but I do know that some people say that a RTW ticket can be the cheapest way to do multiple stops? What do you suggest?

Jerseygirl

$1,300 is a great price. I've been looking at prices for next week and they are around $9K.

scrubbedexpat097

I know.........I bought the ladder today. I'll start cleaning windows next week in the evenings and then doing a bit of Nannying during the day.

Woohoo.......I'll be retiring before I'm 90 now

jumping doris

I'm thinking more of plumbing or funeral director. Then I should be able to retire at 80