tht

it’s not juts kids activities, we spent nearly $5k on skiing at local mountains (passes and lessons only) with our kids lessons … our groceries for 4 are $1200-$1500 a month… take out for 2 of us is $80 a pop once you get it delivered and tip…

The LIRR goes right in to Penn, so that sounds fine… what you do have to do is look at the real door to door commute time… from Fairfield CT the train (longer after CV19) is about 1h20, but once you add driving to the station and parking etc it is closer to 2h “door to desk” if the office is 5 min walk from Grand Central… I did it for 2+ years 4 days a week and wife did the same with a 4h round trip assuming no delays… and there often are..

I married an American after I got my LPR, and having her family close to help was invaluable… her mother came 3 days a week for nearly 2 years when me and my wife would both commute in… day care required you have someone who can pickup within 10 to 15 mins and if they were sick someone needed to be here.

If you get paid enough I think the standard of living here is much higher than the UK would be for a similar role. But I have had a few Brit couples I know who left after getting LPR because the lack of support and distance to family was not workable for them….

destone

You'd hope no regrets on their behalves. More doors open once they become citizens and it is a peace of mind to have multiple citizenships. You never know what the future may hold.

tht

becoming a Citizen would not help them, they have siblings /cousins in the UK so grandparents would not be moving… and at some point would be to old to visit economically with healthcare etc.. they had moved for work vs. being desperate to move here… waiting for citizenship would have been another 4 years here… I don’t think they even considered it… their son was born here so he is a USC.. but second child born in UK

Pulaski

Becoming a US citizen makes almost no difference. I have been a US citizen for 15 years and the only differences it has made to my life is being able to vote and being called for jury duty.

Hypothetically it also means that my citizenship would persist for the rest of my life if I left the US (unlike PR, which I would lose sooner or later), which I am not planning to do, and that if I moved overseas and had more children, they would also be US citizens, but neither of those are likely individually, never mind combined!
Indeed, and that is one of several reasons we left NYC before putting down roots. The best case scenario for me was a 2 hr door to desk time, but 2½hrs was probably more realistic even though I worked only 5 minutes walk from GCS, meaning that "commute time + office hours + reasonable amount of sleep" exceeded 24 hours per day, and commute time and office hours would be fixed, except nobody dared leave before the department manager, who always stayed 1-2hrs past the usual 5pm EOD. For my own health and sanity, I bailed on New York.

Lem84

I’ve had a look and dancing seems to be about the same price albeit for fewer classes per week than she takes now. I think we’d look to join the Girl Scouts as she does brownies here and that looks to be cheaper than it is here. The only thing which I think will be more expensive is swimming lessons. And the cost of holiday camps etc. we do have some support from grandparents as they live locally to us and we know it will be hard without that support. They collect her from school one day a week and generally have her 2-3 days in the hols so we’d miss that for sure. I think my husband is going to sound his cousin out for advice on the commute from Long Island. I think it could be nice to live close-ish to them and their kids but I’m going to look at New Jersey as I think the commute would be shorter from there.

Nutmegger

Long Island is a pretty good-sized area -- I think you need to check out whether it is Nassau County or Suffolk County that you are interested in, or specific towns. That way we can perhaps be of more assistance. Each town has its own education system, and, as pointed out earlier in the thread, some are very definitely better than others, so you need to start zeroing in on somewhere specific. That will also enable you to understand what kind of a commute your OH will face. New Jersey may indeed be a better option.

tht

As with all things.. no point comparing the cost of any single item… you have to look at total net comp and total cost of living, some things cost more here, but you pay relatively lower taxes if you earn a good salary.. who cares that the cell phone costs $80 a month vs. £20 when the biggest cost is tax and then housing… which can also be more predictable with 30 year fixed rate mortgages.

christmasoompa

Oh, I know, and I know it’s way more expensive there - we get a ‘cost of living’ adjustment as part of our relocation package and that’s over £3k a month. That’s the extra that an independent company reckons it will cost us just to live in the US versus the UK, it doesn’t even include house, utility bills, cars and healthcare, so that’s just for basics like groceries, haircuts, clothes, meals out etc.

But even so, weekly volleyball for my son in the UK costs us £10 a month. In the US it’s $700 a month.

tht

I don’t understand a “cost of living” adjustment with an international move. you get the current UK salary + £3k a month x exchange rate ? You could be way below local market rate like that.

Surely it would be better to get the same rate as a local US employee living in that area gets… or are you saying you will get £3k a month more than a local US employee gets?

Glasgow Girl

That’s the way many UK government transfers are handled. Same salary as in the UK but a cost of living adjustment to try to ensure the same standard of living. Some times there are constraints requiring that a persons salary stays within the standard UK scheme for the company or organization.

christmasoompa

It’s an expat assignment so my husband is staying on his UK salary, but with the COL adjustment and the big things paid for (house, cars, medical, school fees). Fairly standard for a fixed term corporate expat assignment.

I don’t want to take the OP’s thread off track too much, but hopefully they’re doing something similar so it may all be useful info. The only thing I’d say for the OP is that the housing allowance is ridiculously low so they should renegotiate on that. It may be they’re using out of date numbers and have stuck with that for the past few years, but if NYC is anything like Boston, rentals have gone crazy and rents have soared so they need to recalculate it based on the current market.

Lem84

It’s a promotion so would be more than his current salary but it would also be classed as a 2 year secondment so that we got benefits such as money towards housing, money for flights each year, relocation expenses paid. They have said we would get the help of a uk and us tax expert for the duration as well.

christmasoompa

Exactly the same as us then. But they need to rethink your housing budget! Ask them to go back to whichever company did the calculation and redo it for the current market.

Good luck to you.

Lem84

I think our feeling is that the initial potential package is too low for us to go and have the same lifestyle over there as we have here. We wouldn’t want to uproot our daughters life for any less than she has now. There is just so much to consider!

Moses2013

Not in the US myself but that sounds very sensible. The hardest part for some is to actually accept that their life isn't that bad right now and to me it also looks like you'd only be replacing streets and houses for more expensive streets and houses with no real benefit.