MidAtlantic

That is not the right approach. You should ensure that your husband is being offered the rate for the job here in the USA, which will not just be a straight conversion of his UK salary to USD.

His company should also be offering a relocation package covering such things as your relocation costs (flights, moving etc) and tax advice support for the first year. You also need to know what medical plans are available and how much you would have to contribute, especially for a family of five. You need to be clear about what vacation is being offered, because it is frequently far less here than in the UK.

You should also seek to have some understanding of whether and when the company would proceed with a green card application, giving you permanent residence. I would not think of purchasing a home until you have permanent residence.

If they are truly a worldwide company they should be familiar with such issues. You cannot come to any decision until you have this kind of information from the company.

Twinkle0927

It would seem such a waste to have 500k in savings/assets from the sale of the house and then use that to top-up a mediocre wage. What happens when you return to the U.K.? If the employer won't sponsor green cards for you then the time will come when you have to go back. With (almost) nothing. You'll have to start all over again. If you're mortgage-free in the U.K. sounds like it's quite a good life. Why leave it?

penguinsix

FWIW the British School of North Carolina is currently charging about $21,000 per student a year. I'd say on 60k a year you'll be very hard pressed to find any private education options. As such you'll need to aim for a well-regarded public school system, which frequently means finding a house in a higher income area.

Pulaski

That is, on one respect at least, TOTALLY untrue. You can get private education for a few 000's a year in NC, granted it isn't very good education, but there are plenty of private schools that charge a lot less than $20k, and in fact the British School of North Carolina is quite possibly the most expensive school in the state, I am certainly not aware of a more expensive one. .... Also the British School of NC is a good 4-5 hours away from anywhere that you are likely to find a wind farm!

Nicolastanley86

Without sharing all personal details lol I won't be paying out for private ed. it is something grandparents pay for.
My husband is going to go back to the bloke dealing with it today with questions we came up with from all the advise here. Thank you
I can't see why last year they would send him for an interview and not follow through with green card ect. However the job in Las Vegas was not for us.
Money isn't everything so Been mortgage free over here doesn't mean a better life or having big amounts of assests. And starting over wouldn't be an issue. Way may even keep one of the properties we have on so that we have somewhere to come back too. (Can't live back with parents drive me mad)
The reasons for upmoving to the USA is because of how much we enjoy it. Visited 4 times last year (3 with kids in tow)
If work can find him a good offer. In the right area And there is options for me then we will be making the move. And then will take the next steps with work and all the contracts, applications ect.
Fingers crossed for us.
Again thank you everyone for the input.

yellowroom

Regarding salary, in my industry/company it is common to take the UK salary, remove the £, double the number and then stick a $ in front of the figure. It's what happened to me. And I found out later I was still on way less than colleagues in the same office and same grade. Tell your husband to negotiate hard on it and don't let them fob him off - he needs to be in the same ballpark as his US colleagues.

its great you may gave this opportunity and I hope it all works out for you.

However this quote just raised a little red flag. In all your planning, please do consider that living somewhere is very different from visiting. I realise that may sound obvious, but the cumulative effect of lots of little trips and bumps on the way as you navigate your new life can be quite detrimental. Silly things like not being able to find an item or the US equivalent in a supermarket, or not knowing where to find something you usually buy in Boots or Superdrug, or frustrations about getting a new driving license, or trying to work out how to pay the rent can all grind you down at the start if you're not careful.

As long as you are not expecting to know it all because you've been to the US on holiday, but approach it like an adventure to an exotic and foreign land then you'll be fine. And the people here are enormously helpful too as you're finding.

tom169

Please don't think that living in the USA is like a vacation and base huge life decisions on that.

I must have visited the US at least 20 times before moving over last year.

I thought I knew what I was getting myself into, and I did for some things, but a lot I really didn't.

For example, that great weather. Try doing some much needed yard work at 6:30am on a Saturday to avoid the heat... Only to still be drenched in sweat after 10 minutes.

And who buys groceries when on vacation and cares about the price? Well you won't realize that often the food staples are more expensive.

Definitely take the advice around negotiating money. I didn't move for work, but I stayed in the same industry. My pay more or less doubled and at the time I even took a step back in responsibility.

christmasoompa

It may well be that they're happy sponsoring an employment based visa, but that's very different to a green card. Look at it from the employer's point of view, why would they want to pay thousands and thousands for your husband to then have the right to go off and work for anybody else?! Much better for them to not spend that money and have him tied to them.

So if you do think a permanent move might be what you're after, negotiate hard to get them to commit to sponsoring green cards by a certain date, and get it in writing or in his contract so they can't go back on it.

Best of luck.

Pulaski

You didn't go where I thought you were going ..... vacation allowances are almost universally less generous than in the UK. Two weeks a year is often the starting allowance, maybe jumping up to three weeks after five years service. In many industries four weeks is as good as it gets after ten or more years service and/or promotion to management. And don't bank on getting bank holidays - there are six that most people get (New Year, Memorial (UK spring bank), Independence, Labor day (one week after UK August bank), Thanksgiving, and Christmas), and another four that you probably only get if you work for the government, but if you're lucky you might get one or two of those.

On top of that, school holidays don't lend themselves to travel either - throughout the school year there are odd days off, or sometime two or three, and you might get as long as two weeks at Christmas, and a whole week sometime in the spring is traditional (but it rarely coincides with Easter), but otherwise all school holiday is lumped together in one massive block in the summer, ten or eleven weeks long!

So the reality is that you might actually have less opportunity to spend leisure time in the US if you live here than if you travel from the UK!

Twinkle0927

I'll chime in one the "we've visited and we loved it" part also. Of course you loved it. Who doesn't love being on holiday? Away from home and work, carefree, you don't even have to make the beds. But you didn't see life over here how people live it. I don't know where you went but based on your chosen areas for living in guessing it was Las Vegas and/or California. You saw other people on holiday too. That's not day to day life. There's a huge difference between being on the sidelines of life here as a visitor and being part of the "system". Everyone says "I've visited and loved it". I visited over 40 times before I moved. I've been here 6 months now and there are many things that frustrate me. And I'm not talking about not being able to get certain foods. I'm talking about looking at the latest statement from my health insurance provider and seeing how much it's costing me just to have a normal life (I have epilepsy). And you might be thinking "but none of my kids has epilepsy". Neither did I until I had a brain hemorrhage out of the blue one day as a youngster. I'm just grateful I wasn't here then.

The fact is that unless your husband secures a much higher pay offer you will not be having the lifestyle that you "loved" on holiday. It will be quite a miserable existence.

I've had a look and our state - Washington - is in the top 10 for wind power generation. So perhaps the northwest could be an option. But if you're coming for the "lifestyle" of Las Vegas or California you will be bitterly disappointed. Here we are end of June and it didn't get above 68 Fahrenheit here yesterday (although Sunday was 95 even in the mountains). It's not all "chilling by the pool" here.

Pulaski

I dream of days when it doesn't get above 68°F.

Today the forecast is for a high of 85°F, and tomorrow it's forecast to be 77°F, which is considered to be "cool" at this time of year in NC. Last summer we went for more than 60 straight days from June into August with a daily high of 90°F or higher! With humidity "off the chart" it is often simply too hot for anyone to want to do anything outdoors for most of the day. Temperatures shock me most on days when I open the front door at 7am to go to work and walk into 80°F+ heat!

Nicolastanley86

actually NO. i have not visited california or las vegas. my husband studied and lived at uni for a year in the states. We both have friends over in the states and have visited them. florida and portland. I have visited disney world and new york as holidays but every where else has been live in experiences. last year was not the only year visited on a who have been around 10-12 times in the last 10 years.
las vegas was where he travelled alone and attended an interview last year supported by his employer.
As a child i moved to a holiday resort from a big town so know that it is not all happy permanent holiday.
Hubby this morning has had a conference call about it so as soon as he is home i will update with more info if have any.

Shezi59

I couldn't agree more, Tom! I moved here in 2012 and, like lots of folk here, having been out for long-ish visits more than a dozen times, I wasn't expecting much of a culture shock. I couldn't have been more wrong! I hear what you're saying about previous experience, Nicolastanley86, but believe me - it is never quite like you think it's going to be; you have live it to understand it.

I opened the door yesterday morning to 59°F - in June! In East TN! I almost put the heating on The fact that it eventually made it to 84°F notwithstanding! I can stand the heat, it's the humidity that gets me - have to tumble dry laundry otherwise it won't dry... by the time I've blown my hair dry it needs washing again...

aless02

I cannot fathom how people do salary "conversions" with zero research. I know it's not easy to grasp what a good salary for a certain role is, but just some basic research can give a reasonable indicator. I kid you not, my husband's salary, in pure numbers, will be 2.5x what he makes here (remove the £, multiple the number by 2.5, then add a $). Not ALL jobs will see this, but it takes two seconds on Glassdoor.

To the OP, the best thing you can do is get clarification re: salary. It's simply not worth moving across the whole world for a job that doesn't actually pay "well" for his expertise. I'm usually the last person to say this, but I think people moving under employment visas need to be understandably much more cautious.