Re: H1-B Blues???
 

Hmm. Maybe it would be smarter to use the salary leverage on a buy-to-let mortgage in the London Olympic village developments, and just rent in the US for a few years till credit history builds up?

Re: H1-B Blues???
 

My husbands company applied for the H1-B visa in 2005 but they missed the slot and we had to wait till 2006.

We were told to wait up to 3 months for response but had it in 10 days!

Im sure you know the visa starts in october.

Big piece of advice, if you have kids starting in Oct is a nightmare for schools!

Im in New Jersey so things may be different but we have found the cost of good meat/veg much higher than in UK, and poor quality too but other than that not much else, although a lot of our bills come on 2 week basis so feels like were always shelling out.

Re: H1-B Blues???
 

I'm moving to Novi in Michigan next week :eek:

Here are some basic calculations based upon a slary of $130k, showing the different tax bands (note that this shows only income tax). Don't take them as 100% accurate - they are a ballpark guide to the bands:

We already own a house there, as of about 3 weeks ago. Wells Fargo have been great, allowing us to purchase the house without actually having the visa. They closed the mortgage deal with an 'exception' on that part of the deal. The visa is on its way, so we'll get the exception cleared by the end of this week (suffice to say that I would NOT recommend anyone diong this, as it is a huge risk, but I've never been shy when it comes to taking a risk or two :thumbup: )

In the area we purchased, it was not worth renting when we could get as good a mortgage deal as we got. The market is flat, it might not be at the bottom yet, but we paid $100k less than the current owners did and it's 3 years old with many improvements. As the Americans say, you do the math ;)

One thing that surprised me was the property taxes. We paid $550k and the yearly property taxes are about $11k. We had to pay those up front.

Sorry I can't help with information on the visas. I've no idea about H visas, as I'm on an L-1A and the wife's got an L2.

One last thing - joining the AIG immigration service has been the best money we've spent so far. I reckon we've saved the $400 fee many times over already and will continue to do so with upcoming car insurance etc.