Don’t forget the…

Are you a forgetful type of person? I didn’t used to be so bad until I had kids and developed mum brain. I remember once going to the supermarket and completely forgetting to buy any food. Also can clearly remember when Maya was a toddler and I forgot to give her dinner one night :/ I don’t know what it is about motherhood that kills your brain cells but from talking to my other friends who’ve had children, it’s definitely a widespread phenomena.

Of course forgetting you made yourself a coffee or forgetting to put salt in the bread dough (not that I’ve ever done this, ahem…) are not exactly life or death examples. When you’re leaving your home country to go and live abroad for a while, maybe forever, things you forget can have more consequences. Forgetting to give notice to your landlord or telling your bank you’ll be out of the country can cause their fair share of headaches (and I’ve had enough experience of trying to call banks from a pay phone in the mountains of Vietnam because none of my cards are working to know this)

I was actually pretty organised when it came to leaving the UK but I think this was because I’d been planning my escape for a long time. If you only have a short time to organise moving to a new country (as is the case with many expats when they’re sent to a new location for a job assignment) and there are kids involved, things get a lot more confusing.

There’s a handy emigration check list infographic on the HiFX blog that includes most of the tasks you’ll need to complete before you leave the country, listed by timeframe – things like redirecting your mail, checking your passport, cancelling insurance and even organising your leaving party! (I remembered mine as you can see from the photo above!) The list starts from 18 months before you leave, which may sound like a long time, but organising these things can take quite a while especially if you have a house to sell. Vaccinations, saving money, rehoming pets all take a long time. Also a personal tip – always allow double the time you think you need for anything to do with visas or passports.

Honestly I don’t think there’s anything major I forgot about when I left (although I did have my parents back home to sort stuff out for me!). If I were to do it again and knew I wasn’t coming back I would definitely have made better arrangements with my bank as I’ve had my cards blocked more times than I can count and I dread to think how much I’ve paid over the years in fees from drawing money on card that aren’t great for using abroad. I’d also sell more stuff – I got rid of a lot of things before I left but I still had a few boxes of precious possessions. Of course 6 years later and I don’t miss anything in those boxes and some of it is worth quite a bit of money (rare playstation games and limited edition prints). Difficult for me to ebay it from 8,000 miles away!

I’m so lucky after I left I never had one of those heart stopping moments when you realise you’ve forgotten something super important – have you?

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