velocitysurfer

Wow the day is nearly here .

I'm moving to Indianapolis on a L1B visa, with the wife and two children.

We went out the other week to source rental accommodation, temporary accommodation, open a bank account and look at schools.

Our UK house was packed up into a container last week (with a small amount of items going air freight), both UK cars now sold, and were currently living at the in-laws!

As it's an L1B, the company I work for is paying for lots, including all travel and shipping costs, accommodation rental, as well as a lease car for me!

Once we have our SSNs we then need to find a car for the wife (we're ok for the first 28 days as my company is supplying a hire car) - the advice seems to be to buy a cheap (!) 2nd hand car rather than lease; especially as we're there for 2 years initially, with a potential option for longer.

Bink

Firstly congrats!

Be aware that you'll have no credit history here and so are likely to be hit with higher deposits on things like accomodation, utilities, cable etc... It can be expensive at first trying to cover all of these deposits.

2nd hand cars aren't that cheap here. It's not like the UK where you can get a decent runabout for a couple of grand and it will tide you over for several years comfortably. Cars here get a lot more abuse and you'll probably be looking at closer to $10k to get a decent nick runabout. About $15k your options start opening up and there's plenty of choice of good motors. If you know what you're doing you can buy private and spend less but at the franchise car dealerships, that's about where you're at. VW have a scheme for expats who are over on visas. If you search for it on here you'll find plenty of info - I believe they do leases as well as purchase.

Bob

The company grossing up those expenses? If not, set aside the hair raising tax hit.

Anyway, good luck and enjoy it!

Wiki should help with info on understanding credit history and all that other boring stuff

velocitysurfer

thanks for the replies!

I've emailed vw to see what they come up with. I have a uk amex credit card, which I'll be transforming into a us one once i have ssn etc.

Yes, my company is paying all my us taxes whilst I only pay the tax i would have paid in the uk.

SarahG

Lots of Expats in the Indy area. (I just moved to SC from Carmel.) Check out MeetUp.com and look for British Expats in Indy if you want to meet some people from the UK. Eli Lilly and RR employ a lot of Brits so there are lots in Indianapolis, Carmel, Fishers, Zionsville and Noblesville.

velocitysurfer

We are moving to Carmel!! We looked at both Fishers and Carmel, but we preferred Carmel - must be all those traffic islands!

SarahG

Carmel is a lovely town and the schools are really good. We only moved away because my husband got a job in South Carolina. If you'd like to know anything about the town feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer.

Bob

Income taxes is one thing, the employer portion and the employee portion.

What I was talking about was all your relocating costs, if they haven't grossed the cost out to you, those costs will be considered as salary when you file your taxes and as they wouldn't have had tax paid directly, you'd be on the hook, so they need to gross up the sum so you don't end up out of pocket. It catches a lot of people out and can be a large chunk of change.