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Preparation For Change
May. 23rd, 2021 01:58 pmSeven and a half years ago, Joel and I moved to Russia. It was absolutely the right decision for us, but it was surprising how many people made nonsensical assumptions about why we moved to the place we did. I've decided that it would be both interesting and informative to write about the process of deciding where we may go next. I don't believe this will actually keep people from making nonsensical assumptions about why we choose to move wherever it is, but maybe one or two people will read it.
Of course, that brings up the next issue: moving. I am more or less happy living in Russia. The "more" part is because it is interesting, we have access to nature, we really like our friends, the cost of living is very reasonable, we have access to good public transportation, the medical system is good and inexpensive, and there are elements of the culture that we like. The "less" part, unfortunately, has been getting worse: a more authoritarian government, decreased freedom, etc. This is true for many places in the world, though. However, it _seems_ that things are getting worse in Russia more quickly and moving to a more unpleasant state than in some other countries. When faced with an unstable situation, it is best to have a plan.
Our plan has several parts:
Part 1 - Deciding where to go
Part 2 - Deciding when to go
Part 3 - Deciding what to take and how to get it there
Part 1 - Deciding where to go
Deciding where to live is kind of a fun problem, although it is _much_ more limited than people assume. Not every country wants to take a disabled American living on a fixed, smallish income. I was looking today at a website that talked about retiring to Vietnam, but what they didn't say is that you can't get a visa for longer than three months, so you would need to constantly either leave and return with a new visa or always be extending your visa. That does not give a feeling of security, although that doesn't mean that it isn't a nice place. Likewise, many places require that you work, have a high yearly income without work, or invest something like half a million euros in the country. So, my goal for this part is to put together a list that takes into consideration issues like visas and residency, along with other important factors, like pollution, rule of law, cost of living, and access to public transit. Then, I'll use a database to pull out the countries that will work best for us. Assuming that Russia doesn't deteriorate to the point where we need to leave any time soon, we will then go see those countries after the pandemic is over.
Part 2 - Deciding when to go
This is by far the most challenging part. How do you decide when it is time to leave? We don't want to leave behind our friends and the comfortable situation we have here until it is necessary. However, how do you decide? In some ways, you can rely on the US government for this. They put out security warnings and that kind of thing. However, there are two problems with this. The first is that these warnings seem to be inaccurate. There have been warnings for years about Russia off and on, but we have lived here and not had trouble. Either they are misinformed, our experiences are not typical, or their warnings are meant to discourage people from visiting Russia to punish Russia (or something else). Second, if you aren't the one making the decision about how dangerous a situation is, you won't necessarily have a lot of advanced warning, and also the reality of how dangerous it is may not be entirely clear. I do not want to be one of those people who is trying to get out at the last minute before the borders close. So, instead, I have found this "Emergency Planning Guidelines for American Businesses Abroad", which has a section on evacuation planning that looks pretty good. It pointed us to this Risk Matrix document, which is supposed to help with risk assessment. So, that's what I need to work on next for this step. It is the least straightforward (since I'm trying to predict the future), but it needs to be done. It is still our hope that we will never _have_ to leave. However, this is definitely a "better safe than sorry" situation.
Part 3 - Dealing with our stuff
If you have a bunch of hobbies, you often end up with a bunch of tools and materials to do those hobbies. I think the second thing we bought when we moved here was a sewing machine. And, of course, in the years that we've lived here, we've acquired and brought from the US a lot of stuff. Some of that stuff we use every day, but it is replaceable. Some of that stuff is keepsakes that make us feel happy to have around. Some of that stuff is useful things that would be hard to replace. Plus, there is all the tech. Honestly, we need to clean out our apartment anyway, since we keep losing things despite the apartment not being terribly big.
To that end, we've started in the kitchen going through one cabinet/drawer a day to clean out stuff we don't need, put keepsakes that we don't need to have out into a box that will go to the US next time we visit, and generally get things sorted. I'm not going to stop buying things we need, because we may be here for years (also, I really needed that jig saw). However, I'm going to try to wait until I need something before buying it (like fabric). I'm also going to make more of an effort to throw out clothes that are falling apart, send back to the US clothes that don't fit me and can be used for dress-up by my niece, and give away anything else that I don't need. I'll be replacing these clothes (hopefully) with clothes that fit better and don't have holes. I also am planning on not getting a new computer until we move (or, you know, it stops working), as mine is a little old but not terribly old, so it gets the job done but isn't worth the expense of transporting across continents.
As you can see, this is something that I'm much more comfortable planning and already have lots of ideas about what exactly needs to be done. Having moved a number of times, I would really prefer to be able to do it with as few boxes as possible. At the moment, my plan is to take keepsakes to the US to leave with my family. As things get worse here, we can take other things that we rarely use. When it is time to finally leave (assuming that we have enough time to do this and everything doesn't go to hell next week and assuming that it will ever get bad enough that we will have to leave), we will hopefully be able to put everything into a few suitcases and give the rest away. Previous experience indicates that I am less good at this than I think I will be and that we will have way more crap than I expect. So, I'm also looking at international moving companies, although I seriously doubt we will take that route.
So, there you go. I plan on writing frequently about how the process is going and the steps I'm taking to get everything in order. Probably, tomorrow, I'll write about the criteria for choosing a place to live.
Of course, that brings up the next issue: moving. I am more or less happy living in Russia. The "more" part is because it is interesting, we have access to nature, we really like our friends, the cost of living is very reasonable, we have access to good public transportation, the medical system is good and inexpensive, and there are elements of the culture that we like. The "less" part, unfortunately, has been getting worse: a more authoritarian government, decreased freedom, etc. This is true for many places in the world, though. However, it _seems_ that things are getting worse in Russia more quickly and moving to a more unpleasant state than in some other countries. When faced with an unstable situation, it is best to have a plan.
Our plan has several parts:
Part 1 - Deciding where to go
Part 2 - Deciding when to go
Part 3 - Deciding what to take and how to get it there
Part 1 - Deciding where to go
Deciding where to live is kind of a fun problem, although it is _much_ more limited than people assume. Not every country wants to take a disabled American living on a fixed, smallish income. I was looking today at a website that talked about retiring to Vietnam, but what they didn't say is that you can't get a visa for longer than three months, so you would need to constantly either leave and return with a new visa or always be extending your visa. That does not give a feeling of security, although that doesn't mean that it isn't a nice place. Likewise, many places require that you work, have a high yearly income without work, or invest something like half a million euros in the country. So, my goal for this part is to put together a list that takes into consideration issues like visas and residency, along with other important factors, like pollution, rule of law, cost of living, and access to public transit. Then, I'll use a database to pull out the countries that will work best for us. Assuming that Russia doesn't deteriorate to the point where we need to leave any time soon, we will then go see those countries after the pandemic is over.
Part 2 - Deciding when to go
This is by far the most challenging part. How do you decide when it is time to leave? We don't want to leave behind our friends and the comfortable situation we have here until it is necessary. However, how do you decide? In some ways, you can rely on the US government for this. They put out security warnings and that kind of thing. However, there are two problems with this. The first is that these warnings seem to be inaccurate. There have been warnings for years about Russia off and on, but we have lived here and not had trouble. Either they are misinformed, our experiences are not typical, or their warnings are meant to discourage people from visiting Russia to punish Russia (or something else). Second, if you aren't the one making the decision about how dangerous a situation is, you won't necessarily have a lot of advanced warning, and also the reality of how dangerous it is may not be entirely clear. I do not want to be one of those people who is trying to get out at the last minute before the borders close. So, instead, I have found this "Emergency Planning Guidelines for American Businesses Abroad", which has a section on evacuation planning that looks pretty good. It pointed us to this Risk Matrix document, which is supposed to help with risk assessment. So, that's what I need to work on next for this step. It is the least straightforward (since I'm trying to predict the future), but it needs to be done. It is still our hope that we will never _have_ to leave. However, this is definitely a "better safe than sorry" situation.
Part 3 - Dealing with our stuff
If you have a bunch of hobbies, you often end up with a bunch of tools and materials to do those hobbies. I think the second thing we bought when we moved here was a sewing machine. And, of course, in the years that we've lived here, we've acquired and brought from the US a lot of stuff. Some of that stuff we use every day, but it is replaceable. Some of that stuff is keepsakes that make us feel happy to have around. Some of that stuff is useful things that would be hard to replace. Plus, there is all the tech. Honestly, we need to clean out our apartment anyway, since we keep losing things despite the apartment not being terribly big.
To that end, we've started in the kitchen going through one cabinet/drawer a day to clean out stuff we don't need, put keepsakes that we don't need to have out into a box that will go to the US next time we visit, and generally get things sorted. I'm not going to stop buying things we need, because we may be here for years (also, I really needed that jig saw). However, I'm going to try to wait until I need something before buying it (like fabric). I'm also going to make more of an effort to throw out clothes that are falling apart, send back to the US clothes that don't fit me and can be used for dress-up by my niece, and give away anything else that I don't need. I'll be replacing these clothes (hopefully) with clothes that fit better and don't have holes. I also am planning on not getting a new computer until we move (or, you know, it stops working), as mine is a little old but not terribly old, so it gets the job done but isn't worth the expense of transporting across continents.
As you can see, this is something that I'm much more comfortable planning and already have lots of ideas about what exactly needs to be done. Having moved a number of times, I would really prefer to be able to do it with as few boxes as possible. At the moment, my plan is to take keepsakes to the US to leave with my family. As things get worse here, we can take other things that we rarely use. When it is time to finally leave (assuming that we have enough time to do this and everything doesn't go to hell next week and assuming that it will ever get bad enough that we will have to leave), we will hopefully be able to put everything into a few suitcases and give the rest away. Previous experience indicates that I am less good at this than I think I will be and that we will have way more crap than I expect. So, I'm also looking at international moving companies, although I seriously doubt we will take that route.
So, there you go. I plan on writing frequently about how the process is going and the steps I'm taking to get everything in order. Probably, tomorrow, I'll write about the criteria for choosing a place to live.
Next: Part 2 - Data Collection
