Repatriate Me!

Now that I’ve been back in Canada for 5 months, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on life as a returnee after 15 years abroad: what I like, what I don’ t like, things to do, things not to do and how things are different than expected.

If you are a short term expat, probably less than 5 years, then much of this will not apply to you to the same degree of someone who has lived abroad for longer than 5 years. The longer you’ve lived abroad the more this will apply – at least in my mind that’s how it works

Have a Plan

Before moving back, have a plan. That seems obvious, but it really is necessary. This blog was created initially to be a stream of consciousness for me to organize myself and help keep focused on the plan of moving back to Canada.

One thing to remember is that plans never go according to plan. The important thing is having the plan so that you can end up with the best result. My plan involved having a certain amount of money available for living on while looking for work and buying a house, choosing a city and neighborhood to live in, employment, education for my kids and figuring out what to ship with me and what to buy new after arrival.

The two most important things to consider when moving back is where are you going to live and how much will you need to spend each month to live the way you want to. I’m originally from Winnipeg, but did not want to move there for various reasons. I’ve lived in Vancouver, the city where my wife wanted to move to, but didn’t want to live there either. My original choice was Ottawa and stuck to my guns over my wife’s objections.

Due to not knowing anyone in the city, I decided to do a scouting trip and learn more about the city and neighborhoods. This went really well and I was very satisfied with the results of the trip. However, as I said before plans don’t always go according to plan. In Dec 2010 or Jan 2011 we switched plans to move to Toronto instead. This made my wife happier and I also realized that it would be better for me for job reasons that have 100% worked out.

Plan – finding a place to live

If you’re moving back to where your family is, you can stay with them short term while looking for a nice place that you can afford. If not, then it’s hotels or finding a short term rental while looking for a better place. I originally was looking on http://kijiji.ca in short term rentals but ended up finding a place with http://airbnb.com that was great for.

When coming back with a family there are different things to consider than when returning alone or even as a couple without children. What I determined to be the best course of action was for me to go to Toronto alone and find a place to rent, buy a car, and get basic amenities set up in said rental. Taking care of all this alone while jet lagged was difficult enough, but imagine driving around all day every day for 2-3 weeks and eating in restaurants/coffee shops spending all your free time online looking at house rentals and used cars and then throw in two young children who are bored to death. It would’ve have been exponentially more difficult to the point of unbearable or impossible.

Renting a home after being abroad for so long presents its own difficulties. I was prepared for this in some part, but not entirely. Landlords do not want to rent to people with no history or past landlords that they can do reference checks with. You will be dismissed almost strait away as soon as you fill out the rental application and have no job or recent rental history. If you can, get a co-signer and you’ll be good to go. If, like me, that isn’t possible then you’ll need to talk to landlords and tell them that you can pay multiple months’ rent up front. Remember what I said about needing money to survive the move back – this is part of it. Even with a six figure bank account and offering to pay three months, six months or more rent up front I was still turned down by several landlords. I finally found a place that I was not entirely satisfied with but got it after paying six months’ rent up front (which is being applied to the last six months of the contract).

Money to live on for at least a year

You will need enough money to live on for at least a year. That includes buying a car and living in a Canada the public transit system sucks so you’ll need one, paying rent, buying food, furniture, small appliances (coffee maker, rice cooker, toaster, blender etc…), TV, DVD/blue-ray (if you want). You’ll also need to have enough money for monthly bills including electric, water, natural gas, cellphones, internet, cable (if you watch tv), and insurance (car and tenant). Yes, you’ll need to have tenant insurance as most places make it a requirement to have before renting and it’s just a good idea and not too expensive.

Add all of this up and then tack on another 15-20% because it will be more expensive than you think. This will also give you a bit of a buffer for unforeseen expenses. An example of an unforeseen expense for me was car insurance. Not unforeseen so much as the cost of it was exponentially higher than I initially expected. I got a good deal on a car via a friend and when I went to get car insurance I was initially told it would cost me $7,500 for one year of insurance. Yes $7,500! I knew car insurance was much more than what I paid in Korea, but this was about 40% of the entire cost of my car – freaking insane.

Why was it so high? Because, I had no recent driving or insurance history due to having been abroad for 15 years and was being categorized as a new driver. Fortunately I was told that if I could get proof of insurance and driving history from Korea, my rates would go down significantly. Since my wife was still in Seoul, she took care of that for me and my rates when down to $2,100 a year. This is still almost 350% more than I was paying Korea but more in line with what I was expecting.

Good furniture is expensive, really really expensive. Even the cheap, crappy quality furniture from Ikea is expensive, but it’s almost the cheapest around. Unfortunately if you buy Ikea you have to spend hours assembling it, which in the end makes it more expensive due to time lost – but at this point you are probably still unemployed so its likely the best option. In Korea I wasn’t entirely happy with the furniture, but the quality was better, it was cheaper, delivered same day or next day, and was fully assembled.

In Korea it was/is common for expats, including myself, to complain about the expat tax. This can range from a simple not available for foreigners to requiring large deposits for services such as cell phones and credit cards. Canada is no different. As mentioned above I had to put six months rent up front in order to rent a house. I’ve also had to put down $460 in order to have electricity turned on at my house. My wife was also not able to get a cell phone without putting down a large deposit until we put the phone in my name (opposite of what we had to do in Korea). The point here is to expect extra expenses.

Public transportation in Canada is inefficient and super expensive, but I already knew that before returning. Unfortunately, I wasn’t prepared to have to wait 45 minutes or longer for a bus at rush hour. The schedule on the post next to the stop says every 12 minutes, but that’s clearly a pipe dream. There’s no electronic pass system like the T-Money card in Seoul. Instead I buy tokens to use on the bus. If you like that retro 1950s feel, tokens are for you.

What to Ship

Shipping your stuff is expensive, there’s no way around that. We went with Hyundai Shipping as did at least one other person I know who moved at the same time we did. For the most part we were very satisfied with everything. One problem we had is that after they had packed everything up we noticed that several pictures/artwork were left on the walls which meant we now had to put them in our suitcases or pay for them to go by post. The lesson here – triple check the walls before letting the movers leave. Other than that everything went smoothly on both ends with no damage or unforeseen extra charges.

When shipping your stuff, you don’t pay by weight but rather by volume. WE had to pay a minimum of $1300 (my memory may be off on this point) for the first 3 cubic meters of space. Each additional cubic meter of storage cost $250. The key is to make sure what you ship is either irreplaceable (sentimental stuff) or worth more than the space it takes up. $50 bookcase is definitely not worth shipping, but your books probably are.

Post move and in light of my dissatisfaction with prices and quality of furniture in Canada, I probably would’ve shipped my sofa, dining table, and bed. Though, if I had done that the dining table would’ve been a mistake because it wouldn’t fit in my current house. Since you don’t know where you’re going to be living or how big it is, shipping furniture is also a crapshoot.

Before shipping anything electronic take a look at the back/bottom for the specs on the electrical current it will take. If it says something like 100-240 then you’re good to go; all you’ll need to do is buy plug adapters which I recommend buying before you leave if possible. In any case most modern electronics are capable of handling different voltages – the only exception I found was small kitchen appliances. This meant I could take all 5 computer monitors and both DVD players. I also shipped my computers, but had to replace the power supply in one of them because it was 240v only. We had a crappy tube TV which was going to be replaced anyhow so left it behind and bought a new panel TV here in Canada.

Education

Education in Canada is both the same and different from what I remember, but then again it’s been so long since I was in public school there should be changes. First off, it really seems like schools have become uber paranoid. Children are required to use the buddy system when going to the bathroom. Yes, if one has to pee you have to ask a friend to go to the bathroom with you. No nuts of any kind allowed! Really, if your kid has an allergy educate them on not eating other kids food. No more PB&J sandwhiches, how sad is that?

My daughter is not allowed to bring her textbooks home, yet she is expected to do homework based on the textbook. How dumb is that? Apparently the school doesn’t have enough textbooks – well that’s what public funding is for, go order more books.

On the topic of funding I’m wondering why my daughters school is having weekly fund raising events. This week it was a craft sale which we received three emails about. To even browse the sale you had to pay a $2 entrance fee, just to see the overpriced crap. A few weeks ago they were trying to sell hoodies for $40 that we could buy at walmart for $12. Every week there’s at least two emails about some thinly disguised fundraising opportunity. No word on where this money is going to.

How about charge parents a fee at the beginning of the year to cover all this stuff and then no more harrassing emails selling crap?

Jobs

Obviously having a plan for getting a job or some sort of passive income stream is a good plan. I’m not sure how difficult it is to find a job as I was very fortunate in unexpectedly landing a job very quickly after arriving.

One thing is that if you have young children it will be very difficult for both parents to work until your kids are out of kindergarten. There are not many daycare options available and the ones that do exist have line-ups and are extremely expensive. In Korea we sent my kids to daycare very close to our home and we had the option to keep them there from 8am-8pm and this included snacks, lunch, field trips (for kids over 4), and structured play time as well as optional dance classes, painting classes, and language classes. All of this for $300 a month – optional stuff was a further $60-$80.

Here I haven’t seen a daycare for less than $900 and you’re required to pack a lunch for your kid and most of them seem to have pick-up times around 6pm. Granted we haven’t looked very hard, because we’ve decided that my wife will not get a job until my son starts grade one next year.

Miscellaneous

So far the move back for us has been smoother than expected. The primary reason for coming back being that I was having trouble communicating with my kids has been very successful. Their English skills are progressing much faster than expected. In July when my son arrived he could only say hello, now he is reading books at the same level as other kids in his kindergarten. Wow!

This past summer I wasn’t the only long term expat to return to Canada from Korea that I know. I have three friends that have also returned with mixed families and kids after 10+ years. David and his wife moved back to Ottawa with two kids. John and his wife moved back to Victoria with their son. And Kevin and wife moved to Goose Bay with their son. I’m going to ask them to leave comments here on their thoughts about moving back and how their experience is the same or different from mine.