How this site came into being
Although I thought I was prepared for life overseas in a European Union country, I soon discovered it was more of a challenge than I expected. But, I’ve also found expatriates have been amazingly willing to rally round at times of crisis and share their knowledge and experience of life in the sun.
I certainly don’t mean the locals haven’t been helpful or that it’s only Brits helping Brits. The international community on the island face slightly different problems from the indigenous people who have grown up and grown used to a slightly different way of doing things.
With your help adeskinthesun.com will enable people to share experiences and help each other by contributing to the lists of useful links, the news blogs and discussion forums that make up this website.
Some information about living and working abroad differs from country to country. So you’ll find sections of the website dealing with the most popular destinations for British expatriates. These are: Australia, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, USA, France, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Germany, Cyprus, Ireland, South Africa, Austria, China and the Middle East. (Although the last two aren’t strictly top of the list of countries Brits want to emigrate to, both areas have their attractions.)
Other information about living and working abroad is more general and applies to many countries. Much of this involves financial services including: overseas health insurance; offshore investment and pensions; international banking; overseas money transfer services; international car insurance; mortgages for overseas properties; international property purchase and sales; credit cards; shipping and international removal companies exchange rates and so on.
For individual countries I am interested in hearing about your experiences of: dealing with tax; buying property; banking; flight deals; finding employment abroad; skills shortages; setting up a business; education and international schools; social organisations for expatriates and other useful websites for people from the UK who are living and working abroad.
I am not being paid to develop this website, apart from the small amount I receive from advertisers. So, if any company is interested in sponsoring me to develop all or part of it I’d be delighted to hear from them.
What I will be paid for is to write a book under the working title of: “The Guardian Essential Guide to Living and Working Abroad.” Some of the information on this site will also appear in a different form in the book as will case studies of people who’ve left the UK to set up a new home in the sun – or the rain and snow, not everybody want to move to the Mediterranean.