Hello and welcome back to another exciting week here at AAA! Today’s post was su-post to be a reflection of all the moving around that I have done over the last 6 years (spoiler alert - it is a lot). Unfortunately, I haven’t quite finished the piece because I have been distracted by preparing for my current move back to the US.
While fretting over what I would post this week, I had the idea to share about all the little things no one tells you about when you decide to become an expat. Prepping for this move has reminded me that there are a thousand little things that need to be done in order to prepare for a move like this. Some of these actions may seem obvious, while others may not. Please forgive me as I once again hop on my soap box to rant about the unseen side of being an Expat.
As a reward for listening to my troubles I have also included a short section at the bottom detailing some of my last days in Singapore. As always, thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoy today’s piece.
Work & High level Travel overview
Tuesday evening at 9pm on July 25th I will depart Changi (SIN) Airport on flight UA28 for my hometown of South Bend (SBN), Indiana after connecting through San Fransisco (SFO) and Chicago (ORD). The flight number and airport codes are for my plane friends XOXO. Due to portal technology (aka timezones) I will actually land in San Fransisco at 9pm local time on the evening of July 25th. Doctor Who is that you?
Since one 16 hour overnight flight isn’t enough of an challenge I will then immediately board a second overnight flight but that one is only 4.5 hours. After landing in Chicago it is a short flight to South Bend where I will land at 12:30 pm local time. Dad, this is your reminder to please remember to pick me up because I will be tired. After not having the chance to “get horizontal” for 27 hours it will be great to sleep in my own bed again.
After spending about 36 hours at home I will begin the 1,200 mile (2000 KM) drive to my new home just outside Austin, TX (Kudos to HD for the room). After getting settled I will fly to St. Louis, MO on July 31st to spend a week at Corporate attending trainings and shmoozing with leadership. On August 4th I fly back to TX but will depart again on August 5th so that I can attend the wedding of my two high school friends Logan an Lillie. I’ll then take another overnight flight back to TX on August 7th and start my new job - Cybersecurity Business Analyst - on August 8th. Wish me luck on this marathon of travel.
Logistics of moving back to your home country
There’s a plethora of things you have to do to prep for a move around the world. Since my EIL class is the first class to go abroad in 3 years (thanks covid), there’s a lot of stuff HR didn’t prepare us well for.
Shipping boxes home
Per my contract, the company will pay for me to send some boxes home. To me, this meant that I go to the shipping room and take some boxes home, fill them with stuff, and them bring them back to be shipped. As it turns out, my company just pays DHL to do all that stuff. This means that I had to create a DHL account using my company’s charge back number, order boxes, and then schedule a person to come pick them up.
In order to ship a box from a foreign country to the US you need to fill out a US Customers form indicating each item in the box, country of origin, and value of said item. To top it all off, HR gave us the wrong DHL account number so we accidentally charged the boxes to one of the business units directly instead of the corporate account that we are assigned. This is Hermes Conrad levels of bureaucracy.
Phone and Internet
When I moved to Singapore I was given a work phone that I was allowed to use as my “local phone”. Having a local phone made it much easier to do work stuff like call my coworkers, but it also made it easier to do things like make reservations and sign up for local apps. Many US apps don’t work here because it’s Asia and they have their own way of doing things. One example of this is that Uber doesn’t do business here so you have to use Grab, TADA, Gojeck, or some other local ride hailing app. Anywho, because of having this local phone I effectively stopped using my US phone so now I’ve had to go through the trouble of moving everything back over to my US phone and reactivating my AT&T mobile plan. While we’re on the topic of apps, how soon is too soon to change my Hinge location to Austin? Please comment below.
In order to set up internet as a foreigner worker in Singapore I had to bring my passport to the internet store and ask them to politely come install an internet box and WIFI machine. Since another EIL from my program will be taking my place I had to fill out a transfer of ownership form indicating that I will no longer be the one paying for the WIFI. The only issue with this is that both parties need to be present for this transfer of ownership to occur. The interesting part is that there is no overlap between me and the person taking over my apartment… remember when I said that Singaporeans start to glitch when processes breakdown? Safe to say I had a fun time at the internet store.
Work Pass and Taxes
In order to be legally allowed to work in Singapore I had to apply for an Employment Pass (Epass) which is basically a work visa. This work visa is vital because since I am not a Singaporean citizen I need an identifying number similar to a SSN. Thus, my work pass has my Foreign Identification Number (FIN) which is tied to my passport. Since I will be leaving Singapore I have to fill out a bunch of forms so that the company can cancel my Epass which lets the government know that I am no longer living in Singapore. This last bit is important because that means I will no longer accrue a tax bill in Singapore. Still with me? Hold on it’s about to get bumpy.
The cool thing about my taxes being tied to my FIN, which is tied to my passport, which is tied to my US SSN is that I am not “double taxed'“. Since I am a US citizen working abroad I am responsible for taxes to both the US government and the Singaporean government. However, the US has a cool thing called the foreign tax exclusion which means that taxes paid to other countries will you were living in those countries can count toward your US taxes if you make below a certain amount.
In my case, this means I pay taxes to the Singaporean government and that amount can be credited to my US tax bill so I am not double paying. Sorry if that is confusing. The Spark notes version is that taxes are hard but thankfully my contract includes people to help make sure I am paying the correct amount of money but it is still a lot of paperwork.
Insurance
While living in Singapore I have been under the “Expat” insurance plan which is with a different provider than the US insurance plan. The expat plan is awesome and made getting knee surgery and subsequently finding a PT in Singapore very easy because there is no difference between in network and out of network providers. Now that I am switching plans, however, I will once again need to start paying attention to that. Since I don’t transition to the new medical plan until the 1st of August it has made finding a PT in Austin very difficult. I will need about 2-4 more months of physical therapy to fully recovery from knee surgery but more on that later.
The other type of insurance that I forgot to mention is car insurance! Since cars are super expensive in Singapore I don’t have one. I have’t driven for a year except for karting which I once again did with my boss, Sven, this past weekend. To save money I got rid of my car insurance. Now that I need a car again, I had to reactivate the insurance. Calling car insurance places from the other side of the world is annoying but thankfully I was able to do it online. Oh how I love the internet.
Bank Accounts
Similar to the phone apps; Venmo, Paypal, and other mobile payment apps don’t exist in Singapore. Instead they have PayNow and PayLah. In order to use these apps you need a local bank account. I probably should have opened a bank account here, but because I am paid in USD (because I am technically a corporate based employee) and everyone here takes Visa/Mastercard I decided to just keep my US bank accounts. This is not something I had to deal with but I still feel it is important to mention.
Moving in General
As many of you have recently just moved or are preparing for a move you know that moving takes way more time and energy than you originally planned. One year is a lot of time and moving makes you realize how much useless junk you can accumulate in that time. The one good thing about my apartment being small is that it made it harder to accumulate junk. That said, it still took me longer than I thought it would to clean up and pack my junk. Please don’t ask me about my junk.
This is most of the stuff that I have been “dealing” with over the last week on top of starting trainings for my new job and finishing out projects for my current job. The reason I bring this up is because I’ve been bad about reaching out to many of you so I ask for patience over the next two weeks as things will still be fairly chaotic for me. I haven’t forgotten about anyone :)…. yet.
Life
The fact that I leave Singapore in 48 hours hasn’t sunk in yet. On Friday night Kate and Zion both flew home and it feels like they just went away for the weekend. Major life transitions are weird... on top of that the last week has been bittersweet as I have been saying goodbye to team members and having my “Last Supper” with my team.
I got to pick the location for my last dinner so naturally I picked a Mediterranean place where I introduced many of my coworkers to the joys of Baklava and Babaganoush. If you look closely you can see that I got schmutz on my shirt. Like father like son. This week I also said goodbye to my mentor SP and many of my coworkers, some are in the picture below.
To celebrate a successful year abroad, Kate and I decided to treat ourselves to a Michelin star dining experience at Cloud Street which was easily the best meal I have ever had in my entire life. Plus we got to dress up really nice and pretend to be a couple for free desert.
To celebrate my last Saturday night out in Singapore, Kathryn and I went bar hopping with our friend Julianna from finance.
One person I am excited to say goodbye to is my PT Sunny. I had my last session with her on Thursday and I am so excited to not have to ever see her again. I will miss my surgeon Dr. Poh because he’s a cool dude. They both cleared me to begin Single leg exercises.
This is a major milestone as I have now entered the final phase of my recovery. As a celebration of this momentous occasion I now get to do one legged squats… yay. My thighs muscles have mostly grown back and my knee doesn’t fell broken when I walk anymore. I can even jog up and down stairs now as well. Not much longer until I am back to my good old self. If anyone is interested in running the Austin Marathon in February please slide into my DMs or just leave a comment.
Thank you all for reading and I appreciate your patience and understanding about my planned post not being ready. Excited to be releasing it to you all soon.
Yay! I loved reading about the logistics seems complicated but not surprised you are handling it all super well. It should be a crazy few weeks but excited to have you back - I’ll happily WATCH the marathon but spring marathons are a no no from me :)
Proud of you, and am really excited to have you back in the US.