You’re planning to move to the UK. Nice one! I moved to London just under three years ago from the San Francisco Bay Area. While I love living in here, I found certain elements to be much more challenging than I would have anticipated (I’ll explain more on that later). I also had a lot of questions, about a lot of different things and the information online was very scattered. The purpose of this site is to help you navigate many of the same things I had to navigate in order to set my life up here, and hopefully by sharing my experiences it will help things at least a bit easier for you. So, if you’re reading this section, I’m speaking on the assumption that you are already making (or have made) real moves to come to the UK.

PLEASE READ: If you have questions about how to get an employer to sponsor you so you can live and work in the UK, I cannot offer any help or advice on that. The only thing I could possibly say, and will say, on this subject is: You need to find a company in the UK, as you would in your home country, to offer you a position then go through the necessary paperwork on their end to sponsor you, ultimately earning you a visa to stick in your passport. This is a complicated and difficult task even for people who already have a connection to UK-based companies. It can be done but I’m afraid I cannot offer any further advice on this.

Ok! Let’s get to it:

I was very fortunate during my planning phase to have a lot of the logistical details regarding paperwork, flights, visa application fees and appointments handled by my spouse’s employer. I go into more detail about this in Move > Applying for a Visa. One of the most important things to think about, however, is how long you plan to stay in the UK. This will affect whether you plan to sell most of your belongings or put them all in storage. If you opt for storage, will you rent a storage locker or will you look to a family member’s or friend’s basement? Will you sell your car, your house or sublet your apartment?

Before my move, I was living in Berkeley, California with my husband in a rented house. The owner wanted to sell and we put the wheels into motion to buy it. After a few weeks, the deal started to sour and an earlier conversation about a job opportunity for my husband resurfaced. The job was in the London office of the company he already worked for, and it was to cover the maternity leave of a woman who did the same job he did in the Bay Area. He initially refused it as we were quite excited about buying the house, but as soon as the house looked like it might be more of a financial burden than we were prepared for, we decided to have a little adventure and my husband accepted the London job offer.

Free of a mortgage (Step 1) we quickly moved out of the rented house and into a smaller fourplex apartment. We had about four months left in the states before we moved to the UK. We made it clear with our new landlord that we needed a month-to-month rental agreement and were planning to move at the end of the year.

We began to get rid of things (Step 2) over the course of those four months, going into overdrive during the last month. It was all standard spring cleaning: donations, giving things away, selling things on Craigslist and throwing things out. I decided to keep all of my nicer kitchen items, coats and shoes. There are some things that are too expensive to sell off at a loss, only to repurchase them later (presuming I really planned to use these things, which I did). Plus, we were only planning to stay for nine months which wasn’t enough reason to get rid of everything we owned. It also wasn’t reason enough to bring things with us, so we stored all of our things in a friend’s basement and garage (Step 3). My husband decided to sell his car (which he did via Craigslist). Since my car was paid for and a bit of an old girl, I parked it in my mother’s spare garage space.

It’s also important at this stage to get all of your documents in order so you can make copies and bring originals with you (Step 4), especially before you pack anything away. I travelled to London with my passport (the visa is a sticker on one of the pages), my marriage certificate (I had to supply this in my visa application; more details on this in Move > Applying for a Visa), a copy of my birth certificate and my California driver’s license. The only thing that has been necessary for me has been my passport with visa. I use this as my main form of identification here, though I don’t carry it around with me all the time. The other documents are just a precaution. For example, we may lose a passport or have to renew our visa while in the UK potentially meaning a visit to the American Embassy where such documents will be required. If you are concerned about travelling with originals or if you can’t find one, you can request official duplicates from your local county office (or the county where you were born/married). There is often a small fee (something like $15-30) but you can request multiple copies, leaving one official copy at home and bringing another official copy with you. My husband kept a copy of his job offer confirmation, as was recommended at the time by the Home Office . This was in case there was any question about his visa at UK customs (find out more about travelling in and out of the UK in Travel > In and Out of the UK). I packed up our travel and identity documents into a neat travel wallet for each of us and considered it done!

I should also mention that in order to move to London for my husband’s job, which offered him job security both in London and at home, I had to quit my own job. There wasn’t a London office for my own employer (unfortunately!). I handed in my notice well in advance of two weeks (more like three months) and was honest about my reasons for leaving. Also, since there was a very real possibility we would be back in nine short months, I wanted to keep the relationship strong with my employer in the event that I wanted to come back. Thinking ahead about potential outcomes is essential (Step 5) because anything can happen at any time. You don’t want to be caught out or stuck in a situation because you weren’t paying attention.

next: Move > Applying for a Visa