The Grown-Up's Guide to Running Away from Home, Second Edition: Making a New Life Abroad (26 page)

Personal Experience

Retire Early Lifestyle

www.retireearlylifestyle.com

The personal website of a couple who retired at thirty-eight to travel around the world. Postings include their journal of adventures plus links to related financial, travel, and motivational topics.

Destination Information: General

American Express

www.americanexpress.com

Access to a travel and destination section that provides information on vacation specials, flights, and car and hotel bookings, plus information on American Express business and financial services.

CNN Travel

www.cnn.com/TRAVEL

Links to travel news and resources, including currency, city guides, online reservations, and other travel-related happenings.

Destination Information: Country-Specific

The following are just a few sites to whet your appetite. Use your internet search engine to explore a wide variety of sites that appeal to the expatriate and expatriate-to-be.

France

France Info

www.france.com

Information on French regions, history, culture, architecture, and activities. Also includes news (in French), online cafes, forums, classifieds. Offers French books, helpful if you’re studying and want to practice.

Tennessee Bob’s Famous French Links

www.utm.edu/departments/french/french.html

Francophile sites, books, art, music, history, language, and more, including access to numerous other sites for information on everyday life in France.

Italy

Life in Italy

www.lifeinitaly.com

Helpful site specifically written for the person wanting the inside scoop on living in Italy.

Expats in Italy

www.expatsinitaly.com

Input on the many aspects of daily life, paperwork, and a members’ forum.

Mexico

Lake Chapala Society

www.lakechapalasociety.org

A wonderful reference site from the largest expatriate group in Mexico.

Mexico Travel

www.mexico-travel.com

Designed primarily for vacationing but helpful for anyone researching the most popular Mexican tourist areas.

Mex Connect

www.mexconnect.com

Excellent for people moving to Mexico, planning a trip, or just Mexicophiles.

Spain

Spain Expat

www.spainexpat.com

A very practical site that offers information on the moving process, cost of living, legal necessities, technology, and more.

Living in Spain

www.livinginspain.org

Bills itself as “the complete guide” and offers extensive resources on daily life in Spain and moving to the country.

Language Training

If you’re preparing for an adventure in a country where English isn’t widely spoken, start learning the new language. Here are a few sites that will help.

Travlang’s Foreign Language for Travelers

www.travlang.com

Choose from multiple languages and categories to learn basics, such as directions, times, dates, and so forth. Also includes helpful links to other sites, such as dictionaries and pronunciation guides, plus a currency converter.

News

CNN Interactive

www.cnn.com

Current events, travel facts, weather, and features to keep you updated wherever you land.

International Herald Tribune

www.iht.com

Includes IHT special reports, features, classified ads, and much more from the paper designed specifically for English speakers overseas.

Health and Overseas Advisories

Centers for Disease Control

www.cdc.gov/travel

Comprehensive resource provides health recommendations based on geographical area and notes danger spots based on disease outbreaks.

U.S. State Department

www.travel.state.gov

Provides travel information for Americans and consular information sheets with background on specific countries, including passport and visa requirements, announcements, and travel warnings.

Bureau of Consular Affairs

www.travel.state.gov

Provides a range of information relevant to U.S. citizens abroad.

International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers (IAMAT)

www.iamat.org

The service helps travelers locate English-speaking doctors and hospitals overseas. Registration is free (donation requested). No registration required for links to various other medical sites such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Transportation

Airlines

Major airlines maintain websites with helpful information on flights, fares, and miscellaneous travel information. Many of these sites even let you book flights online. Start dreaming about your trip here:

Aeromexico
www.aeromexico.com
Air France
www.airfrance.com
American Airlines
www.aa.com
British Airways
www.british-airways.com
Delta Air Lines
www.delta.com
Lufthansa Airlines
www.lufthansa.com
Northwest Airlines
www.nwa.com
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
www.klm.com
Qantas
www.qantas.com
Singapore Airlines
www.singaporeair.com
Swiss International Airlines
www.swiss.com
United Airlines
www.united.com

Many travel search engines are available; some of the more comprehensive include:

Expedia

www.expedia.com

Checks flights, car rentals, hotels, cruises, and related travel services.

Sidestep

www.sidestep.com

A terrific search engine that checks multiple travel and airline websites to find the least expensive fares, with choices of alternate airports. Also provides information on hotels, car rentals, and related travel services.

Travelocity

www.travelocity.com

Allows you to request routing alternatives for U.S. and world sites, check fares, and follow links to airlines and destinations.

Rail

Eurail

www.eurail.com

Information includes guides, maps, and data on European train travel including rail pass information and online ordering.

I frequently go two or three consecutive days without leaving the house; sometimes only to take out the garbage! Truth is, that I could entertain myself endlessly “surfing the net.”

—Claire, Algarve, Portugal

Rental Cars

Avis

www.avis.com

Information on reservations, rates, and locations worldwide.

Hertz

www.hertz.com

Access rates, reservations, and worldwide locations.

Housing

The Caretaker Gazette

www.caretaker.org

A subscription provides lists of people requesting house-sitters; most are within the United States, but about 10 percent are overseas.

International Home Exchange Network

www.homexchange.com

Host travelers or exchange your home for another. Charges a fee to list your home or subscribe to the website.

Moving Companies

Allied Van Lines

www.alliedvan.net

Site helps you locate agents near you and provides tips on moving.

Vanpac International

www.vanpac.com

Information on moving services, rates, and agents, plus links to related moving sites.

Tax and Financial Information

MasterCard Currency Converter

www.oanda.com

Supplies tips on money exchange overseas, with conversion tables, forecasts, and links to other financial sites.

Bloomberg Cross Currency Rates

www.bloomberg.com/markets/fxc.html

Chart of key currency rates in eleven major world currencies.

Cost of Living Survey

www.mercerhr.com

Designed as a corporate tool, this survey provides a snapshot of the comparative expense of living in 143 cities around the world.

IRS Publication 54: Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens Abroad

www.irs.ustreas.gov/plain/forms_publs/pubs.html

Find the tax form needed for Americans residing abroad at this site.

Technical Information

Walkabout Travel Gear

www.walkabouttravelgear.com/wwelect.htm

This site is packed with essential information on international electricity, voltage, plug adapter, and modem requirements overseas. Provides the option to purchase the adapters, converters, and transformers needed for any area in the world.

Work, Learn, or Volunteer

Earthwatch

www.earthwatch.org

Information on the Earthwatch program and upcoming expeditions.

Overseas Jobs

www.overseasjobs.com

Provides hints on getting a job outside the United States.

Peace Corps

www.peacecorps.gov

Information on volunteers, applications, countries, and opportunities available.

18
Handling Finances from a Distance

There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way

—Christopher Morley

When you run away from home, you won’t want to run away from your money. (If you do, give me a call, and I’ll be glad to take custody of it.)

However, you will need to simplify your affairs. It’s difficult to relax with an aperitif on a sunny Mediterranean patio if you’ve just perused the
International Herald Tribune’s
financial pages and are now frantically trying to reach your broker to yell, “Sell!”

Once you’ve determined to run away, begin organizing your financial affairs so that they’ll run on automatic pilot or the closest thing to it. This assumes your investments are not already so extensive as to require a cadre of trusted advisors (each of whom drives a Mercedes, thanks to your business).

If your money is spread far and wide, in individual stocks or other investments that require continual monitoring, appoint a responsible and trustworthy administrator who can manage them for you when you’re absent, or consolidate and simplify. Your choice depends on your specific financial situation, how long you’ll be overseas, and your willingness to entrust financial affairs to someone else.

Our decision was to simplify, for one important reason: once out of the rat race, we didn’t want complications with our finances. We weren’t running away to spend the time concerned about market timing or wondering where our next baguette would come from if the stock market went south.

We consolidated investments with one broker with whom we had worked for several years. We closed one of our two U.S. checking accounts and kept the other one to be used for bills that would have to be paid in dollars, such as our credit card payments and health insurance. The U.S. checking account was refreshed monthly, thanks to Social Security and the rental income from our house in the States, so that account also funded daily
living expenses abroad such as groceries, gasoline, and entertainment. We accessed it overseas through automatic teller machines. We just slid in the U.S. bank card and out popped the local currency.

We also opened an overseas checking account near us in France. We used the French checking account to pay expenses such as the mortgage and utilities. It’s easy to open checking accounts in most countries, and expats who are overseas for more than a few months need them to pay bills in the foreign currency.

We simplified to the point that we paid the U.S. bills on just three mornings a month—the three mornings that we received forwarded mail with the bills in them.

Putting Investments on Automatic Pilot

Having investments that don’t require continuous oversight makes your adventure easier. The downside of this is that it limits your choices to investments that stay on an even keel. You may have to sell individual stocks or trust them to continue safely on track. You could probably leave Treasury bonds, or even Coca-Cola stock, and count on your money being around when you return. You could choose many other investments as well—but that hot little software stock that could turn on a dime is not one of them.

Of course, many financial firms enable you to manage your portfolio online, and it’s a useful service. But even that requires sitting at the computer rather than at a sidewalk café watching the world go by, so I’d still recommend simplifying to some extent. One way to simplify is to decide on a solid mix of funds: stock, bond, and money market. Funds are already professionally managed, so from your point of view, they pretty much run themselves. Automatic reinvestment of dividends keeps your money earning while you’re away, or you can have your broker deposit any interest or dividends in a money market fund, which you can draw from for living expenses.

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