Reply to I'm an American expat living overseas, AMA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP you don’t qualify for this kind of AMA.  You are taken care of before you even arrive to your new destination. You don’t have to figure anything out, you don’t need to worry about how things work, utilities, rental agreements, work permits, schools for your kids, nothing. You don’t even have to pack up your things. I admire people that leave everything behind taking huge risks just for the sake of a life changing experience.

And by the way, I lived in 3 different counties, and I was very excited when I read the title. [/quote]

New poster, former expat.  Different companies have very different definitions of “taken care of” — we were expats on a comparatively modest package, so the work permit wasn’t an issue, but we had to figure out everything else on our own.  It wasn’t terrible or traumatizing, but it was often frustrating. [/quote]

Frustration is a key element of expatdom. Everyone gets frustrated at some point. Even on a generous package that paid for housing and schools we still had to find the housing and school places ourselves. We were initially put up in hotel apartments till we found our place. The company wrote the checks but I still had to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops. I had to deal with getting the utilities hooked up and the internet connected even if it was all reimbursed back to the company. I had help with the bureaucracy in HK, but in Dubai and UK we were pretty much on our own. In Dubai the company PRO arranged the visas and sponsorship (my visa proudly declares me to be a housewife  :roll: ) but other than that we did everything on our own.

There were some people we knew where EVERYTHING was taken care of. Those were very, very, VERY senior roles for the most part. C-level. Or in O&G.[/quote]

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