I’m not moving abroad after all—Here’s the real reason
So, I'm supposed to be moving to Europe today, but after giving it a lot of thought, I've decided to push my move date back a bit. And if you've ever moved abroad before, or if you've been thinking about moving abroad, chances are that you've changed your move date quite a few times. As a relocation consultant, I see it all the time. It's completely normal. Uh, so in this news, I'm going to share with you a few of the reasons why I've decided to change my move date and what you can expect as far as when I'll get to Europe and how you can follow the journey.
So, if we're meeting for the first time, I'm the author of Moving Abroad for Dummies, and I've been living abroad for the better part of the last 20 years. In case you missed the news where I talked about my decision to move to Europe, I wanted to do that by November 1st or like the first week of November of this year. And I gave myself a few months to do it. But in that time, a lot of extra responsibilities and travel have come up. Specifically, travel that have made it so that by the time I got back from a lot of different trips, I had about two weeks to pack everything and move. And then two more trips came up, one conference, and then also my niece's birthday. So, I really wanted to be there for that, which would have given me literally a week to pack everything and move.
So, when you're setting your move date, I like to do it this way. I like to ask my clients, what is your best case scenario, optimal move date? If you could just snap your fingers and move tomorrow, how soon realistically would you want that to be? So, we've got your best case scenario move date. Then, we have your like more realistic move date of like, okay, we're going to shoot for the moon but land in the stars, right? Like, this is the average move date. And then we have the worst case scenario move date, which is like if something unexpected comes up, if there's some type of delays, like what's the latest that you still want to be in the United States before you're upset that you're not abroad yet?
So, we definitely want to hit either the optimal move date or the like average move date. Uh we want to go for the best case scenario. And in some cases, people might come to me and say, "Hey, I want to move in the next 2 years." and all of a sudden they're moving within 6 months or 8 months because we did it a lot faster. So, a lot of things can happen there. In this case, my ideal move date was November, but now I have decided to move it back to January. Actually, I wanted to just move it to December, but my landlord, they have like a rule in this building that the minimum lease term has to be at least 6 months. And so, they made an exception for me to be able to extend for three more months. So, it is what it is. I'm paying an extra month of rent here. I'm going to be here in January when I really don't need to be here. But I'm going to make the best of it and, you know, take this time to enjoy the Miami weather. It's really nice in the winter and uh take a little bit more time with packing.
Another consideration was around the paperwork for getting my citizenship in Romania. So, there's a lot of different documents that I have to get from the US side to be able to bring those over to Romania and I have all of the documents now, but some of them need to be opposed. So, because I was traveling so much, I didn't have time to do that. And now that I'm back and I have a couple of months to be able to get those oppos, you know, just go without feeling so rushed.
So, if you're going to be getting a visa in another country, then typically you want to be able to start that process about 6 months in advance. It really depends on the country you're going to and if you need to go to a consular appointment before your move or if it's something that you can do after you get there. So, it depends on which visa category that you're going in. But, you know, you want to give yourself more time rather than less time. So, I've had clients that, you know, came to me and started the process of relocating and just went straight into that visa process and collecting their documents. And I've had a few other people that, you know, weren't sure on their timelines, weren't sure on their destination. It took a couple of months to be able to come to a decision there and then that adds an extra month or so to the process of then getting the documents, making the consular appointment, etc. So some countries can be really fast and some can be a lot slower when it comes to the availability of those consular appointments and also how fast they process the application.
So uh make sure that you look into that with a lawyer. I work in any country in the world pretty much, but we, you know, specialize in some of the more popular destinations like Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Mexico, Costa Rica. Um, but have helped people move to all different places.
Another thing to think about when you're planning your move, and this is something that had a big impact on me, is what's going on in your personal life as you're planning for this move. So, if you're moving by yourself, maybe you have some things to think about with regards to work or family. If you're moving as a family or as a couple, you need to think about that other person and what they're going through or or what your kids need as far as if they're going to be enrolling in school and like when's when's the school year starting, when's the school year ending. If you're moving with pets, I have a lot of people that have elderly pets as well, and making sure that they can travel with them in comfort is really important or in some cases maybe waiting until they pass away so that they don't have to go through the stress of moving to another country. So, there's a lot of uh external factors that can play a part in the timeline that you make when you move abroad.
For me, in the past year, my business has been busier than ever, especially, I think, due to the changes in the US administration that had a big impact on it. I've been doing relocations full-time since 2011, and this is definitely our busiest year yet. So, it's kind of become, you know, I've always really loved my job and loved, you know, what I do. But I have noticed that, you know, even though I'm a relocation consultant, I've been last in line as my client. So, I need to be more of a relocation client for myself, but I've been putting all of my relocation clients, my team that has grown a lot in the past year. I've been putting them first. I've been investing a lot of time in my business and it's been definitely adjustment an adjustment from other years when I didn't have as many people working for me or I didn't have as many relocation clients at the same time. So, I want to make sure that everybody gets the proper amount of attention and time and care and thought and strategy put into their relocations. And I found myself thinking like, oh, okay. So, I need to actually block off time in my calendar or on the weekends when I'm going to be planning my own relocation. Uh, which is kind of funny. So, it's kind of like that put your oxygen mask on first type of thing.
Now, when it comes to changing your relocation date, I think there's a window there, margin of error, where it's okay, but you've got to be really cognizant of if you're changing your date for a valid reason or if it's just something that you keep putting off, keep putting off because of a general reason like life is really busy or you're not clear on what steps to take next or you're not sure if you have enough money. There's all these very nebulous aspects of an international move that can be really overwhelming to do on your own and for the first time. So, be honest with yourself about why your timeline is the way it is and what is the longest that you want to wait, what is the soonest that you want to move.
Because I've also worked with a lot of people that some people have been telling me they've been thinking about moving for 30 years, 40 years, their whole life, and they haven't done it yet. And other people have been actively in the process for months or years and they haven't really made progress. Like they've been gathering a lot of information but not really knowing what to do with it. So, if you wish you moved last year or the year before or you're thinking like, "Yeah, I want to move in 5 years just because that seems realistic financially." I think it's really important to have a plan and a conviction about why you want to move. So, just ask yourself like what are the reasons that you want to move? In a perfect world, when would that be? And then hold yourself accountable. You know, look at what are the barriers, what are the blocks between where you are now and where you want to be and how are you going to overcome those on your timeline, whether it's 12 months or 18 months or 3 months or or 3 years.
There can be a lot of valid reasons waiting for a health report. We just had a client that decided to start the process now because she was waiting for the green light from her doctor that things were in good shape with her health and that she wouldn't have to stay in the US for treatment. So, you know, YOLO, she's ready to go and live this next chapter of her life abroad. Um, I've also had clients that were waiting until their kids graduated from high school because they didn't want to take them out of school. And likewise, I have people that want to move before their kids start school because they don't want to pull them out of school in the middle of the year or have them start kindergarten somewhere and then move before first grade.
So think about why you want to move, what's holding you back from moving, and then try to make a plan around uh what that is. So you can work backwards from your move date and make sure that you have everything ready so that you hit your target. And then if you're off by a few months or so and that margin of error, that's okay. But what we don't want is for you not to move at all because of it's never the right time to move, right? There's never a perfect time to move abroad. There's always going to be things that come up. There's always going to be travel, conferences, work is really busy, family needs something. I mean, if I leave here on February 1st, my brother is getting married in March. So, technically, you know, maybe I should wait till after the wedding to move abroad. But I don't want to let myself fall into that trap because if I wait then I have to extend another three months and then it's May and then I'm six months behind schedule.
So even if I have to fly back here 6 weeks after my move, I'm setting this, you know, this target move date in stone and really want to stick to it. What you can expect next is that I'll be documenting my own relocation plan here on the channel step by step of moving over to Europe in the next 3 months. So, you can join me on this journey and then we'll see what happens when I get to my destination of Romania, which is a country that I've never been to before. And I'm also hoping to document some of the adventures of my clients along the way as well.
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