ACTUALITES

Your Country Choice Checklist

This article is a follow up of our previous article “How To Decide Where You Want to Live Abroad”.

You can use the following checklist to make sure you have thought about, researched, tried, tested and considered every important angle and aspect of your country choice: -

• How affordable is it to live there on a day-to-day basis?
• How affordable is real estate?
• Are foreigners allowed to own freehold title to property?
• How buoyant or otherwise is the property market?
• Have you looked at renting a home abroad before committing to buying there?
• What are taxes like on income and capital gains?
• Can you earn an income there if you need or want to?
• If so, what is the employment landscape like?
• How accessible is the country from your friends and family in the UK?
• How affordable is it in terms of accessibility?
• What are the local people like towards incomers?
• Are there any other expats?
• What are the health and social care facilities like?
• Can you afford access to levels of care you may need now or in the future?
• Do you have to have a base level of income to be allowed to live in the country?
• What are the initial and ongoing visa requirements for residency?
• What are the costs involved?
• Can you import your worldly goods affordably (think about shipping costs as well as import taxes)?
• Can you import your pets?
• How secure and safe is the country?
• Will you need to learn a foreign language?
• What are the laws relating to inheritance and succession – important to consider if you end up with assets such as a property in your new country?
• What is there to do to occupy you in your new nation?
• What’s the climate like all year round – will your new home be suitably air conditioned or insulated to cope with the extremes…many homes sold to foreigners in popular overseas destinations are not necessarily well-built, bear this in mind.
• Can you get hold of goods and services you need, depend upon or desire in your new nation?
• What’s the religion, what are customs and traditions like – can you adjust?

Remember that you’re moving in to a new country so you will be the one who has to adapt, you can’t expect people or rules to change to suit you!  Have you thought about the reality of this fact?
The above list is by no means exhaustive but will hopefully give you plenty of food for thought. Living overseas can give you so much and fulfill you greatly no matter when in life you decide to relocate…but it is also a challenge and requires a lot of effort from you.  Don’t underestimate what you will get out of the move, but at the same time, don’t underestimate what you need to put in in terms of time, effort, research and consideration.

Source: Shelter Offshore.com
Date of publication: 16 April 2010

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