Things to Remember When Moving to a New Country: Expats
Moving to a new country can be a stressful time. Leaving your old colleagues and friends behind, together with the general stress of packing up your belongings and relocating them, can leave you feeling drained. Children and teenagers make friends easily, through schools or extra-curricular activities, but it’s tougher for adults.
Fortunately, there are a number of things you can do to ensure you feel settled in your new home.
Icebreaking
Firstly, you can hold a housewarming party and invite the neighbours over for a glass of wine or coffee. This is a great way of getting to know people, and hopefully they will introduce you to their friends too.
Making the Effort
It’s hard to make friends in a working environment, especially when everyone is so busy; so make sure when office events come up, you get involved. Don’t make excuses because you’re tired after a long day at the office. At the end of the night, you’ll probably always find that you’re glad you went along.
With everything else to consider, it’s easy to forget about your health insurance. International medical insurance covers you for a range of essential treatments and can help make consultation fees, surgery, emergency dental and optical care and even cancer treatment more affordable. Whether you’re moving to a country within the European Union or further afield, there are many options to suit your healthcare needs.
Health Essentials
With certain international health insurance plans, you can increase your coverage to suit your changing needs. From general healthcare, or even things like dentistry and chiropody, you can find a plan which suits you and your needs without paying for services you don’t require. Private health insurance can offer benefits such as a multilingual team, who are available 24 hours a day to meet your needs, advice on referral options and travel assistance. Plus, every single patient is entitled to a second opinion.
Most individual health insurance companies allow you to choose any hospital, provided the treatment you need is available there. When you move to a new country, it can be a good idea to research various hospitals and health facilities in the area in order to know where you would go in the event of an emergency. It’s also useful to meet with various GPs until you find someone who you would like to have as your regular physician.
So, while there is a lot to think about when you move to a new country, there’s no reason why the experience can’t get off to a great start. By being proactive about your social life and ensuring you have adequate health cover, you can start to feel truly settled in your new surroundings.
While the author produced this content on behalf of an individual health insurance provider, they do not represent them, and views are their own.
