Mummy in the foothills

From your list (which most if not all is true) I wouldn't bother moving. It's a hugely expensive and stressful thing to do for a move to somewhere you don't really want to be. Once you have children with your future wife, you will be trapped here at her mercy if you want to help raise them until they are 18.
Why not move to a different part of the UK, somewhere where more people speak English maybe?
One bit of advice from an older more seasoned married person.
Don't get married or have any children until all this is sorted out, don't get bullied or bribed in moving anywhere, even just for a few years, this many times turns into a lifetime and many of us know it.
Good luck with your dilemma. Get your fiancee to be honest about her reasons for wanting to move, they are many US places where lots of people aren't speaking English and there is crap weather here all over too at different times of year. Does she want to spend her life living near her family? (can't blame her for that) Does she see herself raising her kids they way she was raised in the US near her family?
Does she care that you will no longer be a Police officer and retire at 55?
Does she care you'll work a whole year with no vacation be fore you are eligible for one or two weeks off?
Does she realize how expensive healthcare has become and you (and she) may be tied to a job just to keep coverage and be able to afford the co pays and % of your share on top of the premiums.
Her family may not be as wealthy as you thought, many appear to the outside world as rich, but are drowning in debt.
If you stay in UK she will be able to take long summer hols over to see her family and still have time to travel Europe as a family as you get so much time off.
Oh I also meant to say, Malibu is fantastic and super super expensive to live, if I were a millionaire (I think I need to be Billionaire) I'd live there too.

Egon

Hello

I've been in the US for 5 years. My thoughts on your questions:

1) Healthcare is (to my mind) horrible. Disturbingly, $1500 a month isn't even enough to be assured good, adequate coverage. Oh and the debates - if you can call them that - are ugly.

2) I can only answer for NYC but there does seem to be a changing work-leisure time balance here. The commute is expensive, crowded and tiring, but no worse than London.

3) Yes. I get 10 days and that's pretty generous.

4) Yes. I've had people on Thanksgiving highlight the 'irony' in me celebrating (I say 'celebrating' I mean 'being here during November') as 'its all about us getting away from you'. I don't find it aggressive as such but it's something where you'll have no luck convincing some Americans that the whole of the UK doesn't consider 4th of July a day of nationwide mourning.
Pledging allegiance varies from school to school. I'm similar to you - I'd rather my child not do it (I'd feel the same if the UK did it). Thankfully in NY a lot of school no longer do it.
In general I do feel like there's a big shift happening in the US - the whole 'we're number 1!' thing can still be found but attitudes are changing as the demographics change. Quite a few Americans now would joke about the idea of American cars being bad.

5) No idea - I don't drive and rarely get asked for ID buying beer. The US is too big to find anything 'typical'

6) It depends - on the job, location, what the qualifications are, the economy. I've been very lucky and had my qualifications and experience recognised. It seems that a legal degree might pose more problems, though others are more qualified to know about that.

7) I don't have a car. I wouldn't want on in NY. It'd be handy but to my mind not crucial.

8) It varies a lot, again by location, job etc. I don't get healthcare through my job. In short, it's not a good situation at the moment. We survive but other options are being considered - different job, moving to the UK.

9) If you get cable it's fine, but I still download UK TV. I'll be honest, my temptation was to just say British TV is better but I admit I do cherry pick the best shows so I have a distorted view (in my happy shell 'Take Me Out' and 'Jeremy Kyle' do not exist)

To cover a few other points; politeness varies as does service. Crime also varies. You mention the weather a few times so I assume it's important for you and your girlfriend, but for me the weather isn't a huge factor. In fact I find the UK weather preferable to NY where the winters can be long and bitterly cold, the summer is too hot (a month or more of 90 - 100 degrees is wearing on the body and expensive on the AC)

What area would you be thinking of moving to? That will be a huge factor in these questions. Similarly, has your girlfriend been in the UK long? It may be a case of 'the grass is greener' and really a move out of London into another area of the UK would be better.

Egon

I think a lot do move for the 'better standard of loving' (see how many 'I want to move to Florida' threads get made here) but find something totally different when they get here. Not always worse - but nearly always different.

A few posters have said they're in a similar position of having their other half live in the UK and then moved to the US to 'do the immigrant thing'. I'm in doing it the other way - 5 years in the US and very close to moving back to the UK with my American wife.

Jerseygirl

That is one of the things that really p*sses me off with this country.

Have to say I thought it funny that your girlfriend is complaining about foreigners/foreign accents in the UK. Doesn't she realise she is a foreigner with a foreign accent when she's in the UK?

SanDiegogirl

With your list of questions and obvious reservations about the US (one of your comments was that it was not somewhere you would have thought of moving to), PLUS if you were to move you would not have a job to go to, I would suggest that you stay put.

Hubby and I moved when we were 50'ish. We had a very pleasant life in the UK and we would NOT have contemplated moving to the States,without a job, good prospects, health cover etc etc; and we had visited and loved the States at that point.

Stay where you are, retire and get a good pension at 55, maybe get a second career based on the police experience and visit the States.

ian-mstm

If this was deliberate, well played!

Ian

Egon

Oh god... I wish it was... I dread to think what that slip says about my state of mind!

Sally Redux

I don't think the pros are going to stack up for you.

HumphreyC

I'd say don't move. I have a feeling that if you did you would go into a downward spiral and be back on this forum in a year to six months to start threads complaining about points 1-9.

Have to say the TV thing shouldn't be a consideration because you can watch UK TV easily here with a VPN and an Internet connection.

Pombat

Here's our story: we moved here with OH's job. He works for an American company and started with them in the UK, then we moved with them to Australia, and then to California. So we have not had to deal with the stresses of finding employment. He also negotiated to retain his UK holiday entitlement so luckily that has not been an issue for us.
We left the UK in 1999 thinking we'd be away for 2 years.....and here we are 13 years later. We jumped at the chance to experience living in another country, and I don't regret our decisions at all, but I am definitely over it now and really want to move back home to be closer to family.
We were financially better off in Australia than we are here. Our health insurance costs have mushroomed in the 6 years we have been here even though we are all pretty healthy with no ongoing conditions or prescriptions.
In terms of your GF's concerns about London, some area of the US are just as multicultural. We are in silicon valley and as white English speakers we are probably in a minority.
Good luck with your decision!

bobbedford

Not trying to be too contraversial, but I would say the healthcare over here is awesome... if you can afford it. Hurt my wrists playing golf, went straight to the specialist. It would have taken me 6 months on NHS.

My first impressions are that the "higher earners" will enjoy a much better quality of life in the US than in the UK, but that it is better off being a "middle or lower earner" in the UK. I know that's an enormous generalisation, but just my first impressions, and I am sure there are many exceptions to this.

MoshiMoshi

We're near Westwood. Love Malibu!

Bleurgh! I lived with some American students in England, and although most of them eventually settled in, there were one or two who never lost the USA! USA! USA! attitude. Now I've lived in a couple more countries, I can confidently say that this is b@llocks. Of course, the USA is best for some people, but it's by no means 'the best place in the world'.

I agree. If I were mega-rich, I'd happily stay in California. Nice weather, lowish taxes, beautiful scenery. But I don't think I'm going to be a millionaire. (I know that seems pessimistic according to the American Dream philosophy; to me it's just realistic.) I don't want to get old in the USA. My job -- which I consider professional, or at least semi-pro -- doesn't provide health insurance, or any paid vacation, or a guaranteed salary, and I can be fired without notice. And I had to fight off plenty of other candidates to get it! It's a perfectly nice job, but I can't imagine being 40 or 50 in the same situation.

I'm glad I got the chance to live in America, but I know I'm leaving someday (by choice, and by visa requirement!). It's very different when you're moving indefinitely, and giving up a career. I wouldn't say definitely don't do it, but I wouldn't say it was unreservedly the best choice, either.

LillyRobeson

Just a thought - could you try the UN police force in New York? They have secondments of up to a year from national police forces.
http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/si...ruitment.shtml

MadRad

Astonished at your girlfriend's attitude. TBH, the US is NOT the best place in the world - it's not better, or worse, than the UK, just different. Given that she's made the move the other way and is clearly not wanting to stay, she should understand your reservations about moving in the opposite direction. If she can't, that's a whole other issue.

I think most of the concerns you've raised are valid. The cheapest way to get healthcare seems to be through an employer - I would imagine the $1500 a month is some quite of individual plan rather than a group one, either that or it's for a huge family. I think ours is about $400 a month, through my husband's employer. You have out of pocket expenses though on top, basically an excess - a recent nasty cold and asthma flare up cost me $170 (without the insurance it would have been 3 times that).

We moved because of my husband's job. It was (and is) a huge adjustment being here. It's isolating and I haven't had much opportunity to meet American friends - all my good friends here are other expats (and it is good to have expat friends as they do understand the experience you go through). Husband works lousy hours here - supposedly office hours but early morning and late night conference calls are very much the norm (he did this occasionally in the UK, maybe once a week, here it's several times a week). Cost of living is not particularly cheap here in Colorado, though you can buy a huge house for a lot less than the UK. Standards of driving are dire. Cars are cheaper to buy but pricey to insure. Petrol is cheapish but you do need to drive everywhere. Being 'a stranger in a strange land' to coin a song line can be interesting, challenging, fun, or hugely frustrating. The American patriotism thing can be moving but it can really annoy me too. Overall, I enjoy being here, as the weather is generally good except in the summer and the winter sports are awesome, but it's not a move you should do until you're fully prepared. Sounds like many confabs with your girlfriend are needed first, so she can really understand your concerns.

penguinsix

Honestly, you sound pretty negative on coming to the US, and you are certainly going to have some of the negative points you mentioned reinforced within only a few months, heck, a few weeks of arriving.

This can lead to a real downward spiral, in what I often call "the dog shit" problem. You aren't happy here, insurance is expensive, jobs suck, holiday suck and then you walk through a park and step in some dog crap and just are like "that's it--this is the worst country in the world. I hate it, I hate everything. There is dog crap in the parks. Just let me go home now!"

Of course, to be fair, jobs suck and things are expensive and there is dog crap in the parks of England too, but when you are taking a "half empty" view of things it can easily build up into something much worse. Everything that is negative simply reinforces what you are already expecting, sometimes so much that you miss the positives that are out there and go into this real downward spiral. We've seen divorces and depression come out of these cases, and it's often rather difficult to untangle from the mess.

I'm not necessarily saying you have to come over all 'rah rah USA' or even with some rose-colored glasses, but if you are serious about coming over, you're going to have to understand that things are not necessarily better or worse, often times they are just different, and you're going to have to learn to live in a different world if you want to survive here.

For example, yes, you can get a bigger house here, and it probably costs less than you would find for one in the UK. But it's made of wood rather than stone, and the fact you now have a 5-acre yard and all your neighbors have a 5-acre yard and the subdivision next to that has 5-acre yards means that in 10sq km there are only 1,000 people, with the infrastructure (groceries, pharmacies, restaurants) that your would find in 1sq km back in the UK. So everyone needs a car, and then there is more traffic. And yes gasoline is cheaper here but you use more of it and you have to pay for insurance, and etc, and so forth.

Better? Worse? Different.

If you can live with it being different, and not constantly live in a state of comparison, then you might try it out for awhile. But if everything is going to be "the TV isn't as good as the TV back home" then you are really setting yourself up for a rather miserable adventure, I'm afraid to say.

You might want to check out this message board. It's for people who are fed and frustrated living in another country and cannot take the work culture, the difficulty in making new friends, the parochial attitudes, etc. It's for US expats living in the UK, and the problems they face dealing with the problems in the UK (many of which you might not even notice). You can then take a look at the British Expats 'homesickness' board and see some of the exact same problems, though from different countries.

http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?board=68.0
http://britishexpats.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=61

What I'm getting at is that being an expat can be tough, really tough, and coming at it with low expectations isn't going to make it any easier. If the things you listed are "game stoppers" than really, I wouldn't start playing.

Good luck with the tough choices you have ahead.