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[glenden]

Hello,

I am currently at a tenure track position in a state university in the U.S. I will be on fellowship a year next year overseas. I will be back to the current job after a year. I am single and I do not have any family members in the U.S. I do not own the house.

Will you tell me what I should do with my current apartment, car, and furniture? Would it be better to keep the U.S. address somewhere for my credit cards and mails? What should I do with my car? How much does it cost to use storage? Is it worth to store stuff in a storage? If you have some similar experiences in the past, please let me know!

Thank you so much

[ideagirl]

Hello,

I am currently at a tenure track position in a state university in the U.S. I will be on fellowship a year next year overseas. I will be back to the current job after a year. I am single and I do not have any family members in the U.S. I do not own the house.

Will you tell me what I should do with my current apartment, car, and furniture? Would it be better to keep the U.S. address somewhere for my credit cards and mails? What should I do with my car? How much does it cost to use storage? Is it worth to store stuff in a storage? If you have some similar experiences in the past, please let me know!

Thank you so much

Store the furniture and housewares that you want to keep (sell the rest), store or sell or lend the car (if you lend, MAKE SURE all the insurance is sorted out before you leave--keep your own liability policy on it at the very least), and switch your credit card addresses to the address of someone trustworthy, e.g. your mom, while also switching all your cards to online statements instead of paper. Keeping a US address is helpful--it keeps you eligible for promo APR rates and may also help ensure that you're still covered by every possible consumer protection law. If there's no one you trust to act as your US address for credit cards, then switch to the foreign address, but only then. However, do be sure to let your credit card companies know that you'll be doing a lot of traveling in (name of country), so that they don't put a fraud alert on your account when they start seeing all the foreign transactions. Also, check with your cards to see how they handle transactions in foreign currencies; some whack you with extra fees per each transaction--so figure out before you go which ones are the best ones to use in the foreign country.

Also, in case this doesn't go without saying, keep your US bank account so that you can pay your credit card bills in dollars.

[sciencephd]

I would try to do a fully furnished sublet to another visiting faculty member at your university.  Then you only have to put small/personal items in storage.  One year is a really short time.  If you make major changes it will take a huge amount of time and energy to put things back to functional at the end of the year.

[ideagirl]

I would try to do a fully furnished sublet to another visiting faculty member at your university.  Then you only have to put small/personal items in storage.  One year is a really short time.  If you make major changes it will take a huge amount of time and energy to put things back to functional at the end of the year.

That's a great idea, assuming the lease allows for subletting. But make sure the subletter gets renter's insurance that covers you as additional insured, and make him or her send you a certificate to that effect from his or her insurance company.

[malcha]

I'm in Canada -- not as big a deal as overseas for credit card companies and such -- but I've found that it is best for me to have one credit card that has my Canadian billing address and one that has my parents' US address, which I keep as my default US home base.  That's because it can be a hassle to make some purchases with US companies if you have a non-US billing address, but it can also be a hassle to have your billing address never be your shipping address if you do any online shopping.  Offered FWIW -- if I were overseas I doubt I'd be buying the JJill sweater, so it may not apply to your case.

[glenden]

Thank you for your suggestions. I didn't know about the importance of keeping the credit card address in the US, and I will make sure to do this. While the idea of subleasing might be great if you wish to live in the same place after you come back, I don't want to live in a current apartment. I wonder if I can store things somewhere, and find somebody who let me use his/her parking space and address. Or how about finding some cheep apartment to keep the local address and car?

[notaprof]

A storage unit must be cheaper than an apartment.  You could get a PO Box just for the credit card address.  If you are paying it on line anyway, you won't miss a bill.  A car should not sit unused for a year.  Someone should be starting it up from time to time. I once watched a car for a grad student friend for a semester and went he obtained his parking sticker and then parked the car on campus and I started it up and moved it about every week or two.  People who can't find parking will hate me for that suggestion but I always parked it in the farthest lot that was never quite full.

[glenden]

You may be right. Do you know how much storage use cost per year? I forgot about that the car needs to be started occasionally when I am gone. I thought there are some places that do not allow PO box usage and require resident address. Do you know any?

[wet_blanket]

A student in your department might by grateful for the use of your car for a year.  They pay for gas obviously, maybe you split the cost of the regular service, and come to an arrangement in advance for what will happen in the event a major repair is necessary.  Again, you'd need to arrange the details with the student, but I would say you pay the "regular" amount, or perhaps ~75% of the regular amount, and the student pays the extra charges for being young/not the owner.

A student from your department is good becuase you  can expect they will be responsible, e.g. paying parking fines etc that will be associated with your vehicle.  Probably better to get a grad student, as they are likely to be older and thus less threatening to your insurance. 

[expatinuk]

I'd hesitate in letting anyone use your car for a year. You'd get a year of excess use. Asking someone to start it and drive it every couple of weeks is one thing, but letting someone use it as his/her own car is just asking to return and finding your car needs major repairs.

Storage costs are usually pretty steep. If possible, I'd go with subletting the apt.

[mingus]

"How much does it cost to use storage?"   Well, you could take out the Yellow Pages and call the storage companies in your area.  (How would we know?) 

If you really need help with such things as you have listed, then you are not yet ready to leave your village, much less the country.

[wet_blanket]

I'd hesitate in letting anyone use your car for a year. You'd get a year of excess use. Asking someone to start it and drive it every couple of weeks is one thing, but letting someone use it as his/her own car is just asking to return and finding your car needs major repairs.

I've been on both ends of this (borrowing and lending the car), albeit for less than a full year, and this has never been a problem.  In both cases the other party was someone I knew well - one personally and one professionally.  It possibly depends on your car - neither of the two I have borrowed/lent were late model or otherwise expensive.  When I was the borrower, I was also far more careful in my driving and general care than I have been for any of my own cars.

Expatinuk is of course correct that a year of driving is a year of extra wear and tear, and you place a large deal of trust in the person.  If you can find soemone trustworthy enough (I know, you can never tell) you'll likely be doing them a HUGE favor.

By the way, in my post above where I suggest you pay all or the majority of the payment, I was talking about insurance.  If you're still paying for the car this is more complicated.

[monsterx]

If you are going to be getting paid outside the US, you might want to make sure your bank is up to international standards for money transfer (SWIFT/IBAN), or every time you transfer money to the US, you'll get hit with an extra transfer fee (in addition to the usual fee).  If you don't do much transfering though, this won't be significant.

I rented a storage unit for about 60dollars per month back in 1998.  I put my car in it, and everything from my one bedroom apartment.  Since the car had a blue book of about 200$ it wouldn't have bothered me much if it hadn't worked with I got back.  There are some recommended things you should do when you store your car - I don't remeber what those were but you can look them up.  I had to get  a jump start when I got back, so bring cables and a friend's car when you go get yours from storage.

If you will be outside the US for more than 11 months, be sure to look up the tax implications.  If you are being paid from a US institution, you may be able to avoid paying withholding tax (though not social security).  There are some IRS forms to tell you how this will work; look for the "physical presence test".   Sometimes, it is actually worth while making sure you stay away long enough to qualify.

[dellaroux]

Depending on what university you are currently at, they may have a listings service for home sublets and short-term rentals for visiting faculty.

A few schools I know of have a separate office for this, to which only those with university standing have access (thus serving to 'gate' the community and giving you some leverage/accountability in re: with whom you'd be dealing.

You should also check with the institution and the town where you're going; they might have your opposite number going stateside in search of the same sort of thing.

People do swaps, make short-term and other types of rental arrangements in these settings, and you can also just get a sense of what's available, etc.

The one time I had a long-term (four months) grant for a foreign place, I found a small, centrally located hotel that was willing to give me a very good rate on a room for the duration--better than if I'd rented an apartment for that period of time. 

Friends kept my cat, I had my mail forwarded, and a couple of folks looked in on my apartment for me while I was gone. (it was too short a period to have set up a sub-let that would have been worth the time and trouble, in my estimation)

But I didn't own a car, had no nearby family or kids, so that part was fairly simple.

The hardest part for me was, since I'd be doing research on stuff I needed to be able to work with for a long time (and am in fact, over a decade later, still working with) I needed a lot of backup stuff (musicology texts, medieval Latin grammars, computer, portable printer, etc.)  and had to pay for an extra suitcase outbound (I send packets of stuff I was finished with home to myself--marked "do not forward"--every couple weeks so that wasn't a problem on the return).

And I was on a grant for which I had to do the accounting to be reimbursed, so I kept a pocket portfolio for receipts and taped them up and entered them in a (very rudimentary) Excel file every couple of weeks as well, so I didn't have all that much to do when I got back. (The school secretary still messed up the reimbursement filing and it took forever to arrive...not so much fun, that, on my return.)

I just paid my rent by mail from wherever I was, and that was that.

Bon voyage!

[ideagirl]

If you are going to be getting paid outside the US, you might want to make sure your bank is up to international standards for money transfer (SWIFT/IBAN), or every time you transfer money to the US, you'll get hit with an extra transfer fee (in addition to the usual fee).  If you don't do much transfering though, this won't be significant.

It would be a good idea, if at all possible, to leave a decent chunk of money in the US bank account to use for paying bills that are in dollars. You do NOT want to be paying to turn francs or Euros or whatever into dollars EVERY MONTH to pay your credit cards, student loans, whatever. At least leave as much as possible in dollars here, and if it's not enough to cover monthly bills for a year, then after you've been paid a few times in the foreign country, change a big chunk of local money into dollars to transfer it to your US account. That will come out cheaper than changing a small chunk of local money every single month.

If you will be outside the US for more than 11 months, be sure to look up the tax implications.  If you are being paid from a US institution, you may be able to avoid paying withholding tax (though not social security).  There are some IRS forms to tell you how this will work; look for the "physical presence test".   Sometimes, it is actually worth while making sure you stay away long enough to qualify.

Also, you'll have to file US taxes, but not actually pay US income tax (at least not on the first $80,000-odd of income--the IRS exempts that amount of foreign-earned income from taxes--but I'm assuming the salary will be lower than that). And not being resident in any US state, you won't pay or file state income tax. But you almost certainly will be subject to local income tax in the foreign country, so you may need a bit of help with that; perhaps the university has a service for that, or perhaps you're in the 99% of countries whose tax filing is less complicated than US tax filing, so it's nothing to worry about...