Lilly77

Great post and informative for us especially, as we are in the midst of choosing which shipping company to go for!
Regarding shipping, is there anything you wish you'd taken with you but didn't? Or anything you could've/should've left behind?

hungryhorace

I wish I had left my UK cables and hairdryer. I brought most of them back with me a few months after when I returned to the UK for a week.

hypascend

Ponyo - I am interested in your choice of location. We are about to embark on move to NYC and we are weighing up locations at the moment. Can you let me know why you chose Brooklyn (might be as simple as work location)?

Clrsth

Great post -we're moving to Philadelphia in the summer - I'm excited but nervous too - my kids are about sames ages as yours so glad it's working out for you

steveq

We're moving to State College, Pa. about 3 hours out of Philly in the summer too.

Steve

mrsmaccmoo

Really interesting post..... my husband has been here (Connecticut) since January this year and I've had multiple trips back and forward, finally joined him with our 2 dogs last week (was very worried about the dogs travelling, but they both arrived safely, thankfully!). Our initial impressions are just how expensive some things are.... cars, car insurance, property taxes, food, compulsory tipping etc. We're trying to find a house to buy and finding the process with real estate agents very frustrating.... I wanted to spend last Friday viewing houses, but my realtor was fully booked, so I need to wait til she has a slot (is it OK to contact the selling agent direct to arrange viewings or does it have to be realtor to realtor?). We have good corporate health cover, but really struggling to find information on how things actually work and what things mean (lots of alien terminology), husband's HR support rarely replies to emails and HR's phone usually on voicemail. We are currently struggling to see a lot of positives, although I know it's early days, so I'm sure things will get easier.... and encouraging to see so many others are very happy here.

hungryhorace

I only lease, but when I was looking at cars I found new cars to be cheaper here but used ones are going for silly prices. My car insurance I think is quite reasonable - $1k for me - but I've been told that with Geico in CA apparently you can insure an Aston Martin and a Mustang for $1k a year, but I don't think $1k is too bad. It's around what I was paying in England.

I've found realtor's to be generally a waste of time. Just look online yourself, sign up to their mailing databases, and attend open houses.

I still haven't found many positives about 'living' in America frankly. It's a great place to visit on holiday, but live here? Unless you're a millionaire who can afford to live out on the West coast, then personally I don't see many positives to living here.

Sally Redux

Don't buy a house if you're struggling to see the positives.

H Bomb

Great post!

We are 68 days away from our move to NYC (still doesn't feel real at the moment). Visas all sorted and packing well under way (although not as far as we would like).

Did you and your partner go on L1/L2 visas?

Nutmegger

So glad that the dogs arrived safely -- that is very good news! I'm afraid that Fairfield County is indeed a very expensive place to live. Perhaps you could put your foot down with the realtor and suggest that she assign a colleague to take you out to look at houses -- or just go to another firm (I presume you have nothing in writing as you are only looking at this point?). However, I would second Sally Redux's suggestion that you not buy a house until you are sure that the US is for you. And your OH should let his CEO or department head know that he is getting no support from HR -- this is no time to be polite and British!

mrsmaccmoo

main reason for wanting to buy is that the rental options with 2 dogs are really dreadful and very expensive.... we'll be here at least 2 years, so we're calculating that if we buy carefully, it will be less of a financial loss than renting for 2 years (even after factoring in real estate agent fees etc).... hopefully!

hungryhorace

You could just not tell them you'll be keeping the dogs?

Bluegrass Lass

Errr..pretty much every lease we've ever signed specifically states that if you don't have prior approval to have pets on the premises, it can be grounds for eviction if caught with them. Not recommended to go this route.

hungryhorace

Mine has that as well. A couple of thoughts:

1. They're not going to evict you. It will cost them far too much to secure another tenant and serve notice on you.

2. You can simply state 'we collected <pet's name> yesterday and we were going to let you know later today'. Let them prove otherwise.

That's my approach at any rate. Landlords attempting to charge more for pets is an outrage, which simply motivates me to have a '**** you' approach to them.

Leslie

Well not everybody takes such pride in being a liar.