When we first decided to move abroad, we did a quick run-through of all the things that needed to happen: give/throw stuff away, pack, and move out. No sweat.
It wasn’t until we sat down and thoroughly mapped out our plans that I realized, “Wait – we need to do that too?!” 😅 Here are some important things to deal with that might not be super obvious when moving abroad:
- Cell phones: We’re going to cancel our US cell service but we still want to keep our phone numbers for when we return. To do this, we can port our numbers to Google Voice (it’s $20 to port in and $3 to port out). This will also allow us to receive and make calls back home as long as we’re connected to the internet. While in Taiwan, we’ll have to sign up for a phone service to make calls within the country.
- Stop all services: Services like gas & electric, internet, garbage, etc. can be stopped by scheduling online. Remember to also cancel subscription services like food delivery, lifestyle, or entertainment.
- Use up gift cards and passes: We had to make sure to use all of our gift cards and passes (i.e., FasTrak, Clipper). Luckily, FasTrak allows you to turn in the device to redeem leftover funds so definitely check with each company.
- Mail forwarding: Enroll in paperless communications if you haven’t already, but you’ll still need to decide where your mail gets forwarded to. It’s easy to request a change of address on the USPS website for a small fee.
- Health exams: Taiwan has great healthcare, but it gives us a peace of mind to complete all our health exams before we move. In the past few months, we’ve done it all – annual physicals, blood work, eye exams, and dental cleanings.
- Immunization records: Get a copy of your immunization records – this is especially important for kids. Baba and I had to dig up and scan our yellow vaccination cards (who remembers these?! 😂). We downloaded our Covid vaccination records as well.
- School records: We’ve heard that public schools in Taiwan don’t care about transcripts from foreigners, but to be safe we made sure to get a hold of the boys’ final report cards.
- Scan documents: We’re bringing only the most critical documents with us, and scanned everything else into an external hard drive. This actually took weeks to do – locate the documents, scan, save and file accordingly. We also saved a second copy of the documents in a USB drive that we are leaving with a relative here as a precaution.
- Banking: Baba researched banks with no ATM fees and good exchange rates for when we’re traveling in Europe and before we officially set up a bank account in Taiwan. We found the debit card from Charles Schwab to be the best for our needs.
We probably missed something but hopefully it’s not too important. We like having our ducks in a row. You can blame it on our anal retentive personalities.
Hongs Abroad 