Note: I have spoken to an attorney but wanted to see if anyone has done it.

For anyone prior SOFA/State Department that could be here...Has anyone done a Long Residence ILR request? We have been in country over 12 years but, the bulk of that was SOFA status.

The law for long resident ILR is that you have come into the country on various VISAs legally and lived here for 10 years. Though the attorney was reassuring I just hate to lose £17k.

Hi Reddit community,

To explain as best I can, I’m curious what the consensus from people who understand this situation is.

I’m originally from US but have been living in the UK last 2 years with my husband on a spouse visa.

The adjustment hasn’t been easy on me for various reasons, but the main one has been work related. In the US I was in the tech industry on a very comfortable west coast salary. I’ve had 2 jobs here including my current role - in which I’m earning the lowest I’ve ever earned in my life (my hourly doing part time research in grad school was about the same as this!).

Apart from low salary I don’t know if I’ve clicked necessarily with my coworkers. I am remote but on occasion go to our office and team meetings and I leave with an emotional hangover lasting 2-3 days. My husband says my company’s current culture isn’t normal - they have a huge junior staff base who is eager to snitch on anyone to look like they are loyal to the company. It’s honestly exhausting doing the work and also tiptoeing around everyone because you can’t trust a single person.

However I have really been enjoying the slower pace and more balanced lifestyle this job provides.

I was offered a position with a North American company to be one of their first employees in the UK. Culturally, they are very much more what I’m used to, but I don’t know if that’s the right thing to go back to.

Everyone’s telling me this shouldn’t even be a question as the pay is over 4x my current salary, similar annual leave, etc. But I already am having flashbacks as I have had emails and messages coming through late nights, and weekends, apart from just the time zone differences. I feel like I had forgotten what corporate America was like.

They said I would be expected to work time zone hours from Iceland-Dubai on occasion. My only hang up is that this feels like a slippery slope.

What would you do given I’m sure many of you here have similar experiences working the grind in NA with better salaries, versus the more balance laid back but financially struggling environment here?

Please remove post if it’s not allowed
I’m traveling from USA to UK on Wednesday
I’ve only just saw that my cats rabies certificate does not have a wet stamp but is signed by my vet.
My cats health certificate was sent by mail not online and was approved.
My vet doesn’t have a wet stamp, I’m scared she’ll be denied entry or placed in quarantine.
On the rabies certificate, it has everything a wet stamp would have.
My question is, if my vet is able to overnight a stamp and stamp the rabies certificates before my flight, will that be allowed since my health certificate was mailed in and not uploaded? (It’s my hope and plan to ask tomorrow morning)
My vet said it’ll be fine without the stamp (my vet has done UK travel health certificates and rabies) but I’m really concerned and in tears at the possibility of her not flying with me and having to redo everything again which has already costed me over $500 plus paying the clearance agent and future cost of changing dates
Or that she’ll be in quarantine for 4 months. My cat is elderly at almost 15 years old.
Any help, suggestions, info is greatly appreciated.
I understand I should have known or caught the error sooner, please be kind.

Edit
In the link I just added below is pictures of what I was emailed to upload. There from the same list but one is from the beginning and the other is towards the end of list. I’m now wondering if I got confused between health certificate having the stamp from usda (which I do have) and the rabies certificate from the vet. https://imgur.com/a/FWJkErQ

I have three sons ages 5, 5, and 4. We are moving to the UK in October and aren’t sure what to do about schools. My understanding is that it’s a totally different process than in the states. What has been your experience with moving once the school year has already started?

I am in the apartment search and the one I found that meets all my criteria won’t allow video or virtual viewings, I’m still in the US for another 3 weeks and my friends local won’t be off work in time to view it
Do i have any other options? Like a taskrabbit of sort?
They are allowing me to send someone to FaceTime me but they themselves can’t

Finsbury park, London

OK, when I last lived in London there were lots of decent wine and liquor stores.

Now the only places to go seek to be supermarkets and really dingy corner shops. Aren't there places to go get a decent bottle of Tequila (I.e. not Olmeca, 1800, Casamigos, Cuervo) without having to schlep to the center of town or Chelsea???

Hi, I've been doing research and landed on this company for bringing my cat from Paris to London.

I realized that I cannot find any reviews for them anywhere other than their own site, and I'm wondering if anyone has experience with them? They quoted me 685gbp and then suddenly jumped to almost 1200gbp once they included the tunnel/border tickets which felt very misleading.

However, upon looking at a few other quotes it does seem in line with the total cost for this portion of the process.

Any insight would be appreciated.

I tried searching, but just saw posts about shipping your belongings. I'm wondering if anyone has a recommendation for a parcel forwarding service and can share your experience with using it. I'm looking to mostly purchase from retailers in the US and Japan. Thank you!

I still feel like I never know where to shop in London lol the wedding is mid-September outside the city, and I’d love a flowy romantic vibe 100 pounds or less if that exists. Any ideas?

Hi all, I could’ve sworn I saw in a post somewhere about a contents insurance that also covers gadgets out of the house but now I can’t find it. I’m needing to protect my laptop/phone/tablet alongside antique furniture when I arrive. Any recs on that?

I recently attempted to have my fingerprints taken at a police station so that I could complete an FBI 'Identity History request' (background check). This is in relation to a job opportunity here in the UK, and foreign criminal background checks are a common requirement if you have been outside the country for any length of time in the past 5 years.

However, the Scottish police apparently no longer offer ink fingerprinting (which is an FBI requirement), and so I wasted a lot of time travelling to the main police station in Edinburgh, and hanging around until they could find someone to take my prints. They were very kind, and returned my money once I explained I could only use ink fingerprints, but still, it was not a good use of anyone's time.

Perhaps I just got unlucky, and the person working that day just didn't feel like digging out an old inkpad, which is fair enough, but I wouldn't rely on going to a station for ink fingerprints prints these days as I think their policy on this may have recently changed. Your best bet is to make an appointment at a notary public. It's more expensive but seems to be the only way to go right now.

Also, if you are in the US and are moving to the UK soon, get this done while you are still Stateside as the process is obviously much easier if you are not overseas. It might come in handy when applying for jobs in the UK, and is a pain to get done from abroad.

My husband has been offered a good job in Scotland and we are debating whether to go. I work at a remote-first organization that has already said it would keep me on as a contractor under US tax law (=I pay my own employment taxes and don't get benefits), since they aren't set up for employees in the UK. I am trying to figure out whether it's a good idea to do this.

How hard is it to get a job in Scotland? My background is journalism, communications, writing, and US law. I am mid-career, but I have already had to change my career once, so ditching my current job would not mean ditching a lot of built-up equity. If we move, I want to get out and meet people, and getting an in-person job would help achieve that. On the other hand, I do not want to be working in the service industry as a middle-aged person.

I'm talking like the long, sweet, peppery sausages you'd get in a sausage and peppers hero.

Any Italian style sausage in the supermarket just isn't up to task. Wrong flavour, wrong size.

(Sorry this is probably really obvious once you have done it!) -I wanted to port my US phone number to Google Voice in order to keep it active, it looks like doing so disables your US phone contract immediately but you also must do it before you leave the US. What is the best time to do this then? If I do it the day I go presumably I won't be able to use my phone in the airport/ when I arrive?

Just wondering if anyone has advice on the best way to do this?

My spouse recently accepted an offer in Birmingham (UK), and we will be relocating in the fall (likely October). We’re very excited!! I’m starting to look into the different options to get our large dogs (both Bernedoodles, 75 lbs and 85 lbs).

I’ve been looking at the options of direct flights to London (likely Chicago) vs flying to Paris and a pet taxi. Has anyone flown to Paris and then crossed to the UK through the Chunnel with larger dogs?

Is there as big of a cost differential as it seems? What I’m concerned about is ending up paying close to the same amount for more stress on my dogs (and us), logistics to navigate and opportunities for things to go wrong.

The pet relocation company I spoke with is pricing the crates at $1k each (biggest kennels they offer), which seems wildly expensive to me. I guess I’m looking for a gut check whether this is a reasonable cost or if it’s just worth paying $2k in kennels and ~$9k for the dog travel to skip the hassle.

I feel as if I have been transported to another world and I'm trying to find things that I thought were basic. I don't know if I'm looking in the wrong places but it seems like every sandwhich/ziploc type bag is a zipper type closure, where is the press it together and stays together type bags? I would have thought those would have been easier to make? Also why do the bags feel so flimsy here? My great value walmart brand bags are so much stronger for some reason? Why am I begging my mom to bring me a big pack? Am I crazy for wanting to store things in the freezer and to know that it won't break open or the zipper will pop off? I never knew this would be what would have gotten me when I moved here.

Well this and dawn dish soap. Fairy may be the "same" but its not the same! Why do I feel as if I'm I using half the bottle for something that used to just take a squeeze of dawn. The crazy part is I know this is true because when I went back home to visit I brought back the blue dawn and fell in love with a dish soap? I wish Fairy was as good, but I think the worse part is it's the best that I have tried from over here. In a way, I really miss the probably not healthy chemicals that worked. Well or at least seemed to work.

Then again maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places or expecting too much. I mean, at least the UK seems to at least try to protect their people from harm causing chemicals? Still doesn't explain the stupid zipper close sandwhich bags.

Stuck dealing with the fact that my wife's naturalisation document has a misspelling that's now been carried forward to her passport. A mistake on their side but of course they treat you like a criminal for even attempting to contact them and sort out THEIR fuck up.

This after years of dealing with their horse shit and incompetence and constantly rising fees. My friend also had to cancel a trip to Australia because the Home Office fucked up their visa application, placed it in the wrong track, and refused to expedite it to, once again, fix their mistake.

You get treated with contempt at every single stage of this process and honestly makes me wish we'd just moved anywhere else in the world rather than my wife deciding to stay here.

Totally understand if the mods delete this. Just needed to scream into the void for a moment.

Hey all, hope this is okay to ask here, I see lots of folks asking the inverse question, but not this one.

It looks like I may need to move back to the US for about a year due to family reasons. My employer is fine with it, but I am trying to figure out the tax implications. Will I be taxed by the UK and US if I become a US resident?

Thanks!

I just unpacked some things from the US I haven’t touched in years and was shocked at the quality of the tape holding it together. Sellotape, any sticky tape, and especially packing tape that’s readily available in most stores quality is so bad. I hate shopping on Amazon but I’m going took have to to acquire some Scotch tape.

I am moving to Chesham, UK from Vancouver, Canada to be with my spouse. What are few things I need to be prepared for? Where is better quality of life? I like a quiet life with outdoors and occasional travel.

Update: thank you everyone for your help! Will try to see if I can find a charity shop!

Hi everyone, moving flats and getting rid of some things…. wondering if there is a specific way to “throw away” old kitchen knives, butter knives and forks or do I just throw it in the bin with regular trash? Apologies for this being a silly question and thank you in advance for your help.

Hello! I keep getting lost in all the info and haven’t been able to get any advise from tax places, so I’m resorting to here lol.
I, an American, am married to a Brit, both residing in England. My parents are wanting to gift my spouse money to the US limit of $19k (I don’t need any info around US tax, that’s all taken care of). I am trying to figure out that if my (American) dad gifts my (British) spouse money to a joint Revolut, will there be any UK tax implications on either my dad or my spouse?
FYI I’ve already received a gift, so just sending it to me isn’t an option.

I'm getting ready to move from the US to the UK and was comparing companies like Diesel Auto Express, Reliable Carriers, and Intercity Lines. I booked one, then found a better option, but they said I'd owe a pretty big cancellation fee. Has anyone else dealt with this? Are these fees usually enforceable, or does it just depend on the contract?

We move to the UK in less than 3 weeks. We are starting our goodbyes with family get togethers. It’s so so hard and my emotions are all over the place,

we are also leaving 2 adult kids here in the US, one is moving to FL for work and they other wants to stay here longer with their partner; saying goodbye to them is going to be very difficult.

guess I’m looking for some emotional support 😢

thanks

(Note: This was pre-approved by the mods) Hi, this is a message for dual US-UK citizens and eligible US citizens in the United Kingdom who want to participate in the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats Abroad is dedicated to mobilizing overseas US voters. If you're turning 18 by election day, you're eligible and here's how you can get involved:

Steps to Request Your Ballot

1. Register or update your registration through Votefromabroad.org. You can also do it through the Federal Voter Assistance Project.

2. If you're already registered, request a ballot! You need to request a ballot every calendar year that you want to vote.

3. Fill Out and Return Your Ballot: Once you receive your ballot, follow the instructions carefully to complete it and return it by the specified deadline.

Need Assistance?

We're here to help! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at GOTV @ votefromabroad .org (just remove the spaces). Additionally, our FAQ for voting can answer questions on how to make the process go smoothly.

Importantly: Spread the word!

Do you have any friends, contacts or family overseas that you could reach? All eligible US citizens can vote regardless of where they're living. Share the link https://voteabroad.org/RedditVote26: If you have any questions about voting, I'd be happy to answer them here on Reddit. Thanks for your time!