Thinking About Living Abroad? 8 Questions to Ask Before You Make the Move

After more than 20 years of travel, Charles and I have spent a lot more time outside Canada than the average vacation allows.We spent about five months in Australia, months at a time in other countries, and long enough in places like Spain, Portugal and Costa Rica to settle into some pretty ordinary routines.We’ve rented apartments, bought groceries, worked from kitchen tables, figured out public transportation, hunted down laundromats, and occasionally spent far too long trying to find something completely mundane.We’ve never permanently moved abroad, though, and I think that distinction matters.What those longer stays have given us is a pretty good sense of the questions we’d want answered before we ever did.Because liking somewhere on vacation and wanting to build your everyday life there are two very different things.Once you start thinking seriously about living abroad, the questions change. Suddenly it’s less about beaches, restaurants and what you can see in a week, and more about rent, visas, healthcare, work, groceries, transportation and whether you’d actually enjoy an ordinary Tuesday there.If living abroad has been rattling around in the back of your mind, these are som...