Repatriation is a Good Time To Financially Edit

Tags

bank fees, banking, BMO, cell phone carriers, Financial Post, Globe and Mail, newspapers, Rogers

As I have written before, repatriation can have certain banking challenges. In addition, while you were out of the country a bank or credit card may change it’s terms, the rewards program associated with it can shift, and new competition may offer incentives.

For me: I am breaking up with BMO. We’ve been together a long time, since my first student line of credit. Overseas, although they did annoying things from time to time, BMO provided a secure accessible account that summarized my financial situation and loaded even with dodgy internet connections. The cards they gave me worked everywhere, albeit with a bad exchange rate and weighty fees.

Unfortunately, times changed, and for my needs there is not one thing the bank offers that I view as competitive. I also live in a city without a lot of BMO ATMs, making banking a pain, and I found I couldn’t automatically pay key bills like hydro from my account. Because I’ve been overseas, my banking is now very portable – aside from the CRA, no one currently directly debits or deposits from my longstanding account or credit cards.

I’m switching to a bank that provides easier no-fee service, has a wide accessible ATM network, and allows me to set up joint banking with my partner however we may need online. It also has a nearby brick location which has Saturday hours – restricted bank hours just don’t work.

I already held a minor account with them, linked to my BMO account, so it should be relatively easy to wire everything prior to telling BMO we’re over – sort of like cleaning your stuff out of the apartment before delivering the bad news.

The second thing I did today was to cancel my BMO Airmiles credit card – the one they kept increasing my credit limit on. Airmiles used to be a decent reward program but there’s now less variety and ever complicated changes. Also, BMO kept sending me an ugly SPC credit card even though I’ve been out of school for years, a superficial concern, but still.

I have repeatedly considered shifting away from Rogers, to one of the phone services that uses the Rogers network (it works with my unlocked smartphone). To be honest, the prepaid service has decent reception and my plan more or less meets my needs at a competitive price, it’s just that the actual service is so bad that even topping up my account is THE WORLDS BIGGEST HASSLE. I refuse to give them my credit card auto debit permission purely for this reason and am actively shopping around.

To be honest, my understanding of cell phone tech is so lagging that it took me awhile to understand what might work with my unlocked phone (which works way too well for me to dump), what carriers were available, and what plans made sense. Impartial cell phone consultants come at me.

And while I round out my pre-Christmas hit list, we recently gave the National Post the cut. I was a die hard G&M reader even as a teenager but in recent years the quality of the journalism has dropped and many of the columnists I used to love no longer appear. The financial coverage, including personal finance, is trite and unsatisfying. I was biased against the National Post but on reading it recently, getting past the bourgie Conrad Black columns (which are, at least, entertaining), I began to really enjoy the paper. Enough to subscribe, in paper, daily.

Unfortunately, the paper carrier with keys to our building insisted on leaving it outside the building in the rain, forcing us to rescue it in pjs for an early morning read, and finding it sometimes stolen. Thus, I cancelled the paper.

Although you can really do all of the above at any time, repatriation provided a clean slate that has made it easy to pick and choose. Admittedly, it’s taken me three months to be really ready to do the above housecleaning – it hasn’t been the biggest priority – but now it’s working out as we’ve finally settled into something like a routine.

Hope for and Memories of My South African Friends

Tags

democracy, expatriate, lindiwe, south africa

Sometimes, something comes out that makes my heart swell with hope. 

I get the same feeling when I think about how the ladies working at the grocery store were dressed up on election day in bright lipstick and pressed clothes and would ask, with excited smiles, whether we had voted yet.  It’s seeing fathers in line with their children, waiting sometimes for hours, to vote. 

I get this feeling when I think about conversations with another foreign friend of mine about a community we’ve returned to over the years (I am, more rapidly than I care to admit, approaching a decade of time spent bouncing back and forth to Africa). 

There are visible signs that disenfranchised families there have more money, kids have things like swimsuits now instead of having to swim in their undergarments, access to housing has improved, the new public-private hospital provides such excellent service we will actually go there when we are ill instead of driving to a private one further away.  We talk about the fact that our friends in their twenties or thirties from previously disadvantaged communities are active, public supportive fathers even though some of them had absent dads.  We see more young black dads out with their kids than we used to.  I get this feeling when I see another performance of the local Xhosa dance team, kids I’ve watched grow up, who have the opportunity to be part of an extracurricular that gives them something to do after school.  I get this feeling when I’m in the water and (although I groan because I know they are going to take all of my waves as little grommets are keen to do), eight black kids paddle out after they finish school to go surf everyday without fail.  I get this feeling because they were introduced to surfing by a close friend of mine who is Afrikaans.

I get this feeling when I hear born frees from privileged backgrounds speak fluent African languages, joking in Xhosa or Zulu to little kids who approach them.

I get this feeling when I go out for breakfast with my girlfriends, from radically different backgrounds, and we joke about the ways each of us have defied the boundaries set on us by our cultures (“ooooh,” M says, “you should have seen my Indian mother when I cut off my hair and got bright blue contacts!”) and the funny things our partners from radically different backgrounds do.  We talk about my girlfriend’s small business with her partner in the location, how they are growing it.  I get this feeling when I see different faces at my favorite langarm joint where years ago I could never bring my non-white friends without fear for our safety.  

Lindiwe Mazibuko makes me smile because that lady is on her way.  She’s so young and intelligent, she has that little bit of magic to her that makes it hard to look away.  I think she could be the Lula of South Africa — the face and voice that leads the country back into the prominence it held on the world stage under Mandela.

I know this is a difficult time for my South African friends of all backgrounds, for a variety of reasons.  The news always feels like bad news.  We wait to see what will happen.  The truth is, virtually everyone outside the cadre agrees that it is time for a government with a plan for action, there is just mass disagreement about who and how.

I am aware bad things happen.  I still think about friends of mine who died from HIV complications before 35.  I have had my stuff stolen more than once, and have had someone try to break into where I was staying.  I have had people behave in crappy ways towards me because of my skin color or my choice of partner.  I have seen my friends go through tough times because wages are low and things like the rand devaluation or costs of security drive the prices of products up.  I am not a naive foreigner.

But I am a hopeful one.

Get the Money: Finding a Job

Tags

craigslist, recruiters, repatriation, temping

The scariest part of repatriation was not really knowing how the job market was.  You can ask people, read papers, look for evidence forever, and still not really know.  HR rules of thumb like “one month for every ten thousand dollars” float around.  The bank balance swirls around the drain.

It was not as bad as I thought it would be, my search ran less than two months.  Even though it was a big, fat, stressful part of repatriation worthy of documentation — I didn’t want to get into it until the dust had cleared.  Here’s what I found.

I didn’t temp, but at a certain point I was going to find some random temp job to take up time and bring in some extra cash.  In Vancouver, I know under-thirty-five people working with Pristine Labour who have used it to pay the bills and have heard fairly good things.  If you’re going to work as an office temp, you may want to brush up on your Microsoft Office before the “interview” which from the couple I’ve dealt with was more like a screening to ensure you’re passable followed by typing and other quaint administrative testing. They will do this testing even if you’re not applying to be an administrative temp, and in many cases whether you pass or fail will be a mystery.

I dealt with a selection of recruiters, they seemed like nice enthusiastic people but few had the awareness to follow up with me following their request to put my details forward for some job or another — to be blunt, if I know you only put three people forward for a job and you’ve asked me if I would consider the job, your failure to let me know what has happened even if the result is negative is a little tactless.  Additionally, it causes me to question whether your networking skills are actually as good as you say they are and whether you are representing yourself honestly, and I’ll probably never refer anyone to you ever.  It’s useful to know what a recruiter will make off placing you — in my case it was a pretty significant amount of money and that changed how I viewed things and made me less interested in dealing with that part of the industry when I could just use my own networks and sales skills.  I thought the right recruiter would be able to serve as my calling card, smoothing my expatriate absence, making introductions.  In fact, I got myself several interviews on my own… recruiters sought several for me but no one could come through.

Job posting in my industry seemed wildly disorganized.  The good old days of an ad in the local paper are gone, replaced by search engines that feed on other search engines. Craigslist is now a place you can find a legit $80K job. Who knew?!

Networking.  Networking is like… going to a make-out party when you’re twelve.*  Everyone knows what’s going on, it could get embarrassing.  There’s potential to walk away feeling a little scarred or dismissed, and even the small victories don’t mean you’re in a relationship.  But there is a best case scenario where it ushers along something that would have been in the works naturally and that’s why you show up.

I feel like I was able to translate some of my MacGuyver overseas optimism and skills into my job search.  It also helped that I came reasonably financially prepared, expecting the worst, and open to the idea of doing whatever necessary to make this move work.  Some days sucked, and there is no guarantee my new job will be amazing, but by three months in I have something like a life coming together.

*You know, the kind where someone has planned in advance to play spin the bottle or seven minutes in heaven.  I’m not even sure this happens anymore.  They happened in the nineties, I’ll tell you that kids.

I really loved… St. Francis, South Africa

Tags

africa, south africa, st. francis, travel guide

In light of the recent fires on the canals in St. Francis Bay, and the local businesses that will suffer a hit during the holiday season, here’s why you should be in St. Francis this southern hemisphere summer (or winter, you brave soul).

(1) You NEED to eat a pie from the Viking Bakery (SFB).  Well, probably more than a pie, but certainly a pie. I have eaten pies throughout South Africa, commercial to farm stall, straight steak to gourmet, and I am calling it: this is the best.  Tip: get there before mid-afternoon, and before noon in high season to ensure pie access. I once saw a woman buy the entire case at 11:30 am – they’re that good.

(2) Spend a day hiking the Cape St. Francis reserves, complete with a turn at the penguin rehab clinic, then head to Stix for a Black Label (CSF).  Snorkle the rock pools, hunt for whale bones on the beaches, sundown on the rocks.  Cape St. Francis is one of the most underrated N2 detours there is, and Stix is a delightfully old-school pub where the best nights are local jam sessions and watching sport around the warm fire while the local ocean farers wander in and out.

(3)  Eat at Five Elements (SFB near the airfields).  Although it appears the menu has changed to more standard fare at this future vineyard, the chef has stayed the same and I’m sure the food and service remain.  (The tender, marinated olives, when available, are my gold standard that no high-end tapas restaurant has yet to match.)  Even if you’re backpacking on a budget, this is one of those times you should just splurge (and trust – even with a bottle of wine and more than one course, it won’t be that much of a splurge).

(4) Watch the surf(ers) roll by.  The surf culture in CSF and SFB most of the year is remarkably non-commercial and non-bro, despite a challenging selection of waves.  See up-and-comers who are cracking their first magazine shots alongside ex-pros catching a hypnotic number of waves (CSF and SFB, depending on the conditions).  Or, you know, watch the whales – they’re fun too.

Honorable mention goes to: the ridiculously white beaches and dunes (everywhere!), the Blue Earth Art Gallery (SFB) for legitimately unique art meets craft decor that exemplifies casual Eastern Cape beach style and Nomvula’s Knitters (SFB) in the industrial district for local handmade sweaters and baby clothes.  

The best of St. Francis is as unobtrusive and tucked away as the town itself, the sort of place that gets in you and makes you think that just maybe you could stay a little longer and live out that seaside town dream.

SFB means it’s in St. Francis Bay whereas CSF means Cape St. Francis.

Being a Member of the Bank Card Souvenir Club

Tags

banking, credit, Global Alliance, Westpac

Coming home, liquid financial assets were split in three countries and currencies.  Aside from the involuntary stock-market type experience that daily currency monitoring creates, some practical things that have gone well and less well:

1) Banks with international networks.  I have an account with A Global Alliance partner that has saved me a lot of fees over the last year.  It’s actually such a decent travel account that I’m keeping it open and thinking about ways I can use it even though it’s in a currency I’m not likely to earn in for awhile. Consider:

• A good bank (ahem, not my Blue Logo Canadian bank) is open about what rates it uses and the percent commission made on exchange.
• The usefulness of a given network depends a lot on your plans.  Mine was useless in Asia – on every trip I wished I’d just bit the bullet and brought more cash – but very useful in places that I tend to visit long term or spend more money in.

2) Multiple accounts.  The obvious downside is that more accounts means potentially more monthly fees.  It is also difficult to easily open accounts in certain countries.  However, I think multiple accounts have ended up being useful for my purposes so far.

• Money in different places can serve as a hedge against currency fluctuations.  One currency has currently devalued 25-30% since returning to Canada, it’s possible to leave that money alone.  Another has increased in value by 6% and is getting better, it makes sense to live off this account in the interim.  (This is not financial advice, just a personal choice. Your comfort with currency flux may be different from my own.)
• The hassle of various international transactions is greatly decreased.  Things like health insurance pay outs and tax refunds can often be managed by direct deposit.  Similarly, restarting a life in Canada was easier with some funds remaining in my account here and a Canadian credit card.
• Interest rates on savings vary all over the world. My non-term savings rate in Australia is better than any term deposit currently on offer in Canada.  (In fact, in comparison with Australia I found personal banking in Canada woefully inadequate. Just saying.)
• Diverse accounts mean more options in case of emergency – when one account gets shut down due to a security breach, some card isn’t accepted, your everyday wallet goes missing, you discover your bank has a different policy or customer service availability than you had thought. Sh*t happens.

3) I didn’t do it on purpose but keeping my credit history (and cards) alive in Canada was probably a good idea.  I didn’t come back with a large amount of immediately liquid Canadian funds, so I was able to use my existing credit to finance whatever was necessary while I sorted stuff out.  Although it’s probably easier to blow the budget repatriating with a credit card, my life would have been more of a hassle and more expensive the last couple of months without my plastic cards.

My next international financial challenge is figuring out where I can find someone to do my relatively simple yet odd international tax return that won’t cause instant auditing by my friends at the CRA.

Spending Years Away From Home Means Your Five Year Plan Gets Skewed

Tags

gastown, missing friends, repatriation

“Let’s move to Mozambique,” I say over coffee at Nelson the Seagull, “they are building all over Africa.”

The first three months in any place I have lived have generally been adrift.  It takes awhile for me to find my regulars, regular places I go, regular people I see.  Tomorrow marks two months here and I think about this when I miss life overseas, reassuring myself that it will get better.  This city will be magical. The internet is a partial panacea, connections where they would lapse, the ability to see my friends out together taking random pictures or to get news quickly from our former towns.  I often feel like I’m actually not as good at this as I should be, that new lives should be easier to assume; this is not my first rodeo.

Still, instead of a three year plan to buy property, we watch the world and think: where next?  And even though it will not be for a period of years, it is delicious on a rainy winter afternoon to imagine the options. 

Repatriation and the Disconnect: I Used to Be Sort of Radical

Tags

canadianswholoveobama, election, expatriate, obama

My social network is flooded with comments about the election.  You know, THE election.  Four years ago, heart surging, I remember being part of the fervent debate and election spectacle. Feeling like a part of living history. 

This time around, I found myself glossing over coverage like any other news.  Relevant, of interest, done. I watched two minutes of election coverage and checked the papers for results this morning over breakfast.  I have mixed feelings on Obama’s election, but not passionate ones. 

[Yes:  he's a smart guy (the books, wow), it's a big job, the other guy didn't seem overly capable.  Change: maybe.  It would have been a much better election had the Republicans been better opponents, and that it was so close under the circumstances is less of a clear victory for the United States and more a sign that the political system there is still pretty imbalanced and unproductive.]  

I used to be sort of radical, certainly political.  It was visceral.  I never missed the chance to vote, ever, be it by-election or governing body.  Policy papers were my jam, I was a democracy nerd. 

For my American friends, the buzz makes a lot more sense.  Things like healthcare and, um, legalizing pot, those affect your daily life.  For my Canadian friends responding with more interest than they do for our own election, I can’t help but wonder… why.  Is it because our own political views are the sort of things we often don’t talk about in public, so we let America provide the “sport” for us? Is it because they still view America’s decisions as the most internationally decisive?  Are they right?

[The devil's advocate says no.  The United States as an international political actor is as flaccid as the UN they defied.  First, there are too many internal problems for them to be effective as leaders.  Second, the last decade has turned out to be a story of military mishap and half started wars that exposed more weakness than might.  Third, while the US has been trying to sort out a variety of problems caused by bad governance over a period of relative wealth, the rest of the world has been busy making trade agreements.  Sorry, ladies, BRICs looks a lot like the new NAFTA.]

Maybe more interestingly, I feel more politically disconnected than I have my entire life.  Sometimes I worry that living in Expatria made me an island.  Maybe it just gave me some perspective about how many things go on in the world, diffusing the passion for some of them into awareness of more of them.  Maybe I started to understand, really, for the first time, that facts and issues are more fluid than we would like.  Maybe I lost a little faith along the way in democracy as I had known it.  Maybe I would have turned out the same way had I stayed home plugging away at my decent career, stacking my bank account and waiting.

Maybe in four years I will be radical again. 

I Really Loved… Perth: A Travel Guide

Tags

perth, western australia

A weekly travel guide series for dilletantes and the overindulged.

Three things about Perth: it really is expensive, most nightlife ends early, and the budget accommodation goes faster than a WA handle on Australia Day (and ranks as some of the worst I’ve stayed in).

If you’re FOP (fresh off the plane) and trying to set up a life in Western Australia, hop transit to Northbridge and decamp to the Cultural Center for free wifi and art.  Transit in Perth is ridiculously expensive and fairly inconvenient so basing yourself where you can mostly cut out that expense (including cabs home should you drown your sorrows in Passion Pop and be persuaded by your English-Irish roommates to head forth to the sprawling, generally trashy, clubs) is a very good idea.  The downtown Woolies and Kakula’s Brothers will keep you fed.

If you’re not.

1) Cottesloe.  Remember your ID and hit the OBH or the Cott for at least one Sunday Session, starting early afternoon.  Cott is one of those places where I can have my version of the perfect WA day: flat white at a little cafe, get some exercise on a blue water beach, work a little at the architecturally inspiring public library, grab a cold beer while the sun sets with live music and some friends, and walk back to my bed breathing in the neighborhood gardens at night.

2) Round up a crew and sleep on Rotto.  Drink beer, bike around, watch quokkas, bike around, snorkle, bike around. It has the charm of a 1950′s Catskills summer camp, without structured activities, and gave me the feeling that staff members must be dirty dancing somewhere during long summer nights. I wish I’d brought my own supplies, food services were a little limited, but I’m glad I did an overnight — the late afternoon and sundown after the last boat leaves are glorious.

3)  Fast-food crawl through Leederville.  The sort of place where wasabi mayo meets wagyu beef burgers, hotdogs go venison and brie, pine nuts and proscuitto christen pizza, and people line up twenty minutes for a Chipotle-esque burrito at night.

Other things are decent. The aquarium at Hillary’s has an impressively initimdating assortment of venomous sea life, the Freo markets are vibey and best followed by beer samplers and/or a Dockers game, but for me the essential Perth is the three experiences above.

How to Furnish Your Post-Arrival House

(1) Find a long-suffering friend who lives in a massive apartment complex who will let you commandeer his Netflix and sleep on his pull out.

(2) Discriminately collect items from the area that says DO NOT LEAVE HOUSEWARES HERE in the apartment parking garage, feel as though you are doing a good deed because should the items be traced the tenant would be severely fined.  These collected items should include a lampshade sans lamp, some granny style dishes, a large mirror and a rather stylish modernist wooden tray you will use in your bedroom for morning tea and feel classy about.

(3) Spend far too long examining Ikea website pictures in an attempt to discern what is stylish and worthwhile and what going to result in ill-fitted pressboard sadness.  Email virtual shopping lists to yourself, feel Martha Stewart circa 2001 levels of productivity.

(4) Laugh uproariously at what people believe their used furniture “with just a tiny rip” is worth on Craigslist and Kijiji.  Caution self at using ‘great resale value’ as a reason to blow furniture budget.  Wonder at how it is possible that everyone has used whatever item for only “six/nine/two” months before listing it or whether they are toying with you.

(4)(a) Realize the people with the best stuff are sometimes giving it away free on the internet.  Get high end kitchen table with an unnoticeable chip for free from expensive suburb.

(4)(b) Obsessively stalk free listings until you are sucked in to picking up something, perhaps an analog television set, that inevitably seems like it was a poor choice.

(5) Rediscover the Dollar Store varieties, abandon previous principles regarding not supporting certain international trade forms with glee, gradually become snobby about which Dollar Store is superior due to selection and good value.  Similarly, begin to rank various Winners outlets in your head.  Compare things such as Winners pricing on bamboo cutting boards with dollar store pricing on bamboo cutting boards.  Feel victorious while purchasing a $1 cheese grater from Wal-mart, dismayed on discovering they were selling three forks for one dollar instead of $1.25.

(5)(a) Refuse to let your significant other purchase small teaspoons because normal teaspoons suffice.  Relent.

(6) Have your long-suffering friend over for drinks, preferably from your over sized duty free supply, offer a folding chair as finding a couch has proven incredibly annoying, allow long-suffering friend to have a couple of drinks and lay on the floor.  Feel moderate discomfort/sofa envy.

(6)(a)  Finally locate the perfect sofa, way outside initial couch budgets yet massively on sale, determine it will be available only in a month to six weeks.  Lay on the floor, less discomfort.

(7) Slowly put all of your things in the ample apartment storage space, so much space that you do not need a dresser or wardrobe and can put your California Closet fantasies to rest.  Lay on your low range mattress, resting on it’s prefab bed frame, and feel peaceful. You have nested, this is home.

Merchandising My Closet and Overthinking Rain Gear

Tags

consumption, north america, shopping

This weekend we rode escalators through seven floors of department store.  The glut of products in a single store is amazing and oddly tempting.  We went in for some free skincare samples and wound up pricing out everything from couches and steam irons to trench coats.  The experience is so overwhelming it feels hard to be selective.  There is always an unbeatable sale, a bonus, a niggling temptation to get more right now.  Retail here at home feels like ordering fast food: going overboard is so easy even when it’s not good for you and you don’t need it.

Overseas, partly due to limited baggage space, what I owned was fairly specific and most of my shopping trips were purpose-focused.  It also seemed like clothes were more expensive, and concepts like BOGO or regular sales were infrequent, so temptation was limited.  I often visited a store more than once before buying a replacement item, be it a pair of ballet flats or even underwear.  The experience of being in stores, even my favorite department stores, was far less intense, peaceful instead of claustrophobic.  Also, many smaller stores tended towards curated rather than overstuffed.  Basically, what was available had been thought out and the actual purchase was thought out, and the result was a collection of nice things that match and are used frequently, worth repairing or tailoring.  This adopted mode of shopping makes sense in countries where housing tends to be smaller, disposable incomes are less or retail costs more.

The end result, right now, is over-thinking rain gear.  My beloved ballet flats are going to come apart if I keep puddle jumping in them and my only jacket is five years old and a little student casual for things like job interviews.  I think I want a trench coat, and in perfect world would be able to deftly select one within my price range, but I find myself sifting through liner descriptions and closure options.  I can’t decide if I should get cheap plastic flats or try for nice-looking rubber boots or some sort of water repellent other boot.  As a lady who when faced with a hundred variations of the coffee maker goes unquestioningly two-cup french press, shopping in a North American city sort of does my head in.

One of the ways I think I deal with being overwhelmed is to set up my very ample bedroom closet to display all the things I do have.  Instead of trying to haul myself through the mall, I peruse my own small collection of nice things.  Sometimes I even try on stuff I already own that I know I really like but don’t have anywhere to wear right now.  Weird, right.  It’s like my own private rain dance, hoping the outerwear will effortlessly appear.