If you’ve made the decision to move abroad, you’re going to feel a range of emotions. You’ll be afraid of the step you’re about to take, but equally as excited of the unknown. Most people fear the unknown because obviously it’s not what they know or what they love. But moving abroad is a different kind of unknown. You know that no matter what, if something goes wrong, you can get on a plane and just go back home again.
When you’re calling around moving companies to get quotes, and when you are trying to figure out which visa you need, the biggest step is making that decision to say yes, you are going to move abroad and you are ready to do it. There’s a lot to do before you move to another country, though, and that means you need to get your thoughts in order so that you can ensure that this move goes as smoothly as possible. Let’s take a look at things that you need to do before you move abroad.
- Apply for the visa that you want. You need to look into the visa options for you for the country you’re choosing to move to. If you’re looking to move to Australia, for example, a working holiday visa might be your first option. You might also want to consider whether permanent residency would be for you, which means you might need to look at the eligibility criteria for moving abroad to stay there permanently. Ideally, you won’t get a visa or a permanent residency anywhere until you’ve at least visited first.
- Splash the cash on the plane ticket. For some people, when they are booking a one way ticket somewhere completely new, they tend to choose to go to a few destinations before they land at their final destination. Let’s take Australia for example again. If you are planning on flying all the way to Australia then it may be worth stopping off at a few places to see the world as you go.If you’re flying there from England, you might stop off at Bali or Thailand to have a holiday. You may even want to explore Singapore. If you’re flying from America, you might want to land in Fiji or New Zealand before you hit Australia’s waters.
- Do as much research as possible into your new home. It’s not just about picking up your life and moving somewhere new. New countries have new traditions and they have their own values, which means you need to get on board with them. If you’ve got your visa in your plane ticket, that’s great, but if you’re going to be landing somewhere new, you want to ensure that you are going to be going somewhere. You will be able to understand the language, or at least understand some of the traditions before you get there.
- Don’t wait around. It’s important that you start the moving process early when you’re moving abroad because this is a very big move and it does take a lot of time. Once you start that process, there’s very little you can do to reverse it. So get your research done and get going.
