Moving Abroad: What to Know Before You Leap

Sandra Camacho moved from the U.S. to France twelve years ago on a company-sponsored work visa she didn't fully understand at the time, and she built a business, a second language, and eventually a French passport out of what she learned by getting parts of it wrong first. In this episode, Sandra and I go through what actually goes into moving abroad: the visa fine print, the tax mess, the loneliness, and the math nobody wants to do until they have to. Note: this post may have affiliate links and we donate 100% of those funds to non-profits and a children's group home🫶🏾

Most moving abroad checklists on the internet stop at passports and packing lists. Get your documents in order, book the flight, download a language app, done. That version is written for someone with a return ticket already booked. This one isn't. I've spent the last several months in the deep-research part of this decision myself, the part where you're not sure if you're coming back, and Sandra has been on the other side of the decision for over a decade. Between the two of us, the checklist gets longer. It also gets a lot less tidy.

The real moving abroad checklist starts with money

Sandra moved to France at 25, early in her career, without much saved. The financial question wasn't abstract for her. It decided which visa she could even apply for. She was moving with her employer, which felt like the safer route at the time, and it wasn't until years later, once she'd left the corporate world entirely and built her own business, that she understood what she'd given up by not negotiating harder as a woman of color relocating into a market that pays less. Twelve years of ripple effects, she said, from decisions made in her first few months abroad.

My version of the money question looks different. I'm thinking about retirement as someone who may not have a partner to build it alongside. I'm thinking about the fact that most of us are passive with our money by design, direct deposit into a 401k we barely look at, because the systems we work inside don't reward financial fluency. Moving abroad forces the opposite. You have to track conversion rates, understand your own runway, know exactly what you're working with. That shift, from passive to fluent, is one of the more useful side effects of a decision most people frame as purely emotional.

The visa maze nobody explains correctly

Sandra's advice here comes with scar tissue. She got locked into a French salaried-worker visa that renewed annually and tied her to her employer for two years, no ability to switch even out of a toxic environment. Her advice to anyone moving with a company: read the fine print, and push for a multi-year visa if one exists, because the difference between a one-year and a multi-year visa is the difference between having options and not having them.

"It's not about running away from something. It's about going towards something." — Sandra

For Mexico specifically, the system works differently. A temporary residency visa runs four years and renews annually, financial solvency is one path to qualify (proof of consistent income or savings, with the exact threshold varying by consulate), and after four years you can apply for permanent residency, which never expires. Neither of us is an attorney or an accountant, and visa rules change constantly enough that the honest answer to almost every specific question is: consult someone whose job this actually is, and expect the rules to have shifted again by the time you read this.

What's actually driving the decision

Sandra's reason for choosing France was a language she'd loved since she was fifteen and had studied for a decade before she ever moved. Mine is closer to a nervous system decision than a bucket-list one. I live with a kidney disease that stress attacks directly, I'm a Black American woman, and I've done the math on what four more years in this country could cost my body specifically. There was a moment in January that clarified it for me: I went to whitehouse.gov out of morbid curiosity and was met with a homepage built entirely around a fantasy of American dominance, and something in me went quiet in the way it does right before a decision gets made instead of just considered.

That's the part most checklists never touch, because it isn't logistical. But it's usually the actual engine underneath the logistics. Sandra put it plainly: this works better when you're moving toward a place you're drawn to, not only away from one you can't stay in. Both things can be true at once. For most of the people making this decision right now, they are.

Community will not build itself

This is where Sandra was most direct. Twelve years in, fluent, culturally integrated, a French passport in hand, and she still describes herself as a perpetual outsider. The friendships that have lasted are almost entirely with other transplants, people who understand what it costs to build a life inside a culture that doesn't fully claim you back. She's watched friends cycle through and leave. Being single and without kids in a country where most of her peers now orient their lives around family has made the isolation sharper, not softer, over time.

My own approach has been to start before the move instead of after it. I joined Black expat groups in the cities I was considering months before booking anything, started meeting people for coffee, got added to WhatsApp threads I didn't know existed. I used my phone's location settings to virtually drop myself into Mexico City, then Guadalajara, then Querétaro, just to see what the day-to-day rhythm of each place felt like before I ever bought a flight. Querétaro was the one that felt right. Community, like the visa, is something you have to build on purpose. It does not arrive because you showed up.

The checklist, the unglamorous version

Here's what's actually on it, past the passport and the plane ticket:

Mail and residency logistics. If you run a business, you need a plan for physical mail, which usually means a virtual mailbox. Americans get taxed on worldwide income no matter where they live, one of only two countries that does this, so some people establish residency in a no-income-tax state first. South Dakota only requires 24 hours of physical presence to qualify.

Storage math. If this isn't a short-term move, the monthly cost of a storage unit adds up fast against the cost of just selling what you own. Do the multiplication before you decide.

Healthcare continuity. Confirm your medications are available and legal in your destination country before you go, not after. Find a way to keep your specialists in the loop if you're managing something chronic.

Business structure, if you're self-employed. In some countries, running a U.S.-only business without a local legal structure is not a gray area, it's illegal. An attorney and an accountant who specifically work with small businesses abroad will save you thousands of dollars in mistakes. Americans living outside the country 300+ days a year can write off up to $120K in foreign-earned income, which is worth knowing and worth tracking carefully.

Pets. Cargo versus a ground transport company, the stress of either option on the animal, and the cost difference, all worth mapping out early if you're not traveling alone.

Documents, all in one place. Birth certificate, social security card, articles of incorporation if you have a business, updated addresses on everything. The boring stuff is the stuff that stalls you later.

Sandra's closing advice was the one I keep coming back to: slow down. Don't romanticize it, and don't only read the highlight-reel accounts either. Visit first, even for a week, before you commit to a country you've never set foot in. And be selective about who you tell while you're still deciding. The people who respond to your excitement with "well, there are problems everywhere" are telling you about their own fear, not about your plan.

At some point this stops being a feelings conversation and becomes a math one. Most people overestimate what they actually need to live well and underestimate what they're already spending to maintain a life that isn't working. Get specific about the number. It tends to be smaller than the golden handcuffs would have you believe.

Sandra also flagged something we didn't have time to get into properly on this one: the tax exposure of running a foreign-controlled business as a U.S. citizen, GILTI included, and how expensive the wrong business structure gets in a country like France. That's its own conversation, and we're going to have it.

If moving abroad is something you're circling right now and the obstacle isn't logistics but permission, From Stuck to Starting is the free five-part email course built for exactly that stage. 

Originally aired as Episode 17: Moving Abroad, What to Know Before You Leap (ft. Sandra Camacho) on the Choose Courage Inc. podcast.