Female expats aren’t all trailing spouses nowadays

Females are now an established part of the expat world, and they’re not all trailing spouses!

Back in the day, the only women spotted in expat communities worldwide were trailing spouses doing their best to dutifully maintain the home country way of life for their hopefully successful husbands and their somewhat confused offspring. Thankfully, the worm has now turned and female expats are seen furthering their international careers, innovating startups, working for major international corporations’ overseas headquarters and even travelling along with the rest of this season’s crop of digital nomads and earning as they go.

Leaving familiarity and embracing a new culture is daunting, no matter your gender, and the financial aspect of arriving in a new land is one of the most trying of the adjustments which need to be made. Having a plan is essential, even although deviating from it on occasion might be necessary. Unless you’ve just won the lottery, you’ll need to calculate whether your sources of income will cover your estimated cost of living, a tedious exercise which needs to be roughed out before you leave the home country.

Watching out for swings in currency rates of exchange is also important and annoyingly impossible to predict with any accuracy, but the possibility of a violent swing should be borne in mind, especially if you’re a Brit planning to leave before Brexit finally kicks in – if it does! If you’ve enough time on your hands and a decent internet connection, researching your new currency’s fluctuation online will at least give you a rough idea of its stability or otherwise. Again, if you’re a Brit, don’t just assume you’ll not need to pay UK taxes on your earnings as, dependent on your overseas salary, you may have liabilities. Of course, if you’re working in your country of choice, you’ll also be paying local taxes.

Anther important aspect of living and working overseas is the need for private healthcare insurance. If you’ve relocated via your home country employer or are working at an expat professional level, your employer will almost certainly be providing insurance, but if you’re freelancing it’s another matter entirely. Right now, more and more countries are including health insurance in their longer-stay visa requirements, claiming it’s a move to prevent those who’ve had treatment leaving the country without paying. However, long-term expats in such countries are convinced it’s just another way to fill the pockets of investors in private healthcare sectors. For example, a recent study revealed Thai private hospitals are gouging prices by up to 300 per cent for foreign and expatriate patients.