Lifestyle Design: Moving to Norway
‘Hey, Honey! Let’s pack up the kids, sell the house, and move overseas with no income!’
‘Sounds good, Babe. I’m in!’
The end
Even though that is way, way over-simplified, that is more or less the conversation my husband and I had in 2016. We had played around with the idea of moving overseas for a while, and both of us wanted the kids to have another experience of ‘normal.’ After the 2016 Presidential election, we realized that our vision of the world was more and more out of sync with what was happening in the US.
It took years of research, planning, and focus, as well as a couple of heartbreaks, but in July 2019 we started our new life in Stavanger, Norway.
Let me start by saying that I realize we had a lot of advantages that allowed us to make this goal a reality: steady, well-paid jobs, no debt outside of mortgages, and a generally frugal lifestyle. But that is part of the reason that I write this: to help others understand what lifestyle design – especially a MAJOR readjustment – takes and how to use the knowledge and skills you have to put yourself where you really want to be.
Step 1: Reflection
This step is such a part of who I am and what I do that I almost forgot to include it. But I realized that this is the keystone that holds all of the other steps together and gives you the best chance for happiness in whatever life you choose.
And by reflect, I don’t mean reflect on what you want, I mean reflect on WHO YOU ARE. Both Robb (my husband) and I have a really strong sense of self. Even before we started talking about a move, we knew that our deepest moral convictions didn’t match what we saw happening around us.
We weren’t OK with the number of people (especially children) living in poverty, the divide between Black and White and Asian and Latinos and Native Americans, the increased polarization of politics, or the growing culture of violence. Both of us had spent the majority of our professional lives trying to solve these problems in some capacity: him as a consumer advocate and me as a teacher in low income schools. We had protested before protesting was cool. We had contacted our legislators. We felt like we had to resign ourselves to living in a grossly unjust society, which we could not do. So we went for option B: leave.
Now this is a whole blog post on its own. Things aren’t perfect in Norway and I’m not going to say they are. But we both feel more comfortable here. However, in order to realize this, we had to name what was bothering us and admit how much it was bothering us. Because we knew ourselves, we knew when it was time to seriously try something new. And we were also able to stay the course when things got really tough.
Step 2: Reconnaissance
We were hoping to move in the summer of 2018, and we knew this would be a huge undertaking with three kids, especially one who had some issues with anxiety. We didn’t want them to freak out any more than necessary, so we decided to do a family trip. During the summer of 2017, we travelled to Norway as a family and spent 3 weeks in Oslo and visiting with distant relatives.
Besides demonstrating to the kids that Norway is the land of 10,000 playgrounds and giving them a positive feeling about the country, it allowed me to actually experience how expensive things were. (REALLY expensive!). Without that, I don’t think I could have made budgets that were realistic, because honestly, who would believe chicken breasts could possibly be almost 5 dollars a pound – on SALE!
There were a hundred little things we gained from our reconnaissance vacation, but the big one was a feeling: ‘Yes. We could live here. We could be happy here.’
Steps 3 – 5: Research, realistic projections, readjustment
I put three steps in one here, because it is kind of a continuous loop. I researched, created projections (translation:budget) and then readjusted as I got more info. We didn’t know where we could be living until about 3 months before we actually left, so I was researching four different cities: Oslo, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Tromsø. We over-estimated costs and under-estimated income. How much money would we need to live with absolutely no income for a year? How long could we make it on 50K? (Not long!) 80K? 100K?
Even though it is impossible to think of everything (as evidenced by the global pandemic that hit about 9 months after our move), I did my best to leave no stone unturned. Some of the things that I checked on were costs for housing, transportation, food, utilities. And whenever possible, I would recommend checking ACTUAL sources. For me, that was finn.no, the go-to site for all things second-hand in Norway. I also checked sites that give comparison costs for groceries in different countries.
But it wasn’t just the costs. We also had to research ways to live in Norway legally. Even though Robb has Norwegian heritage, immigrating to Norway is extremely difficult.
One of the places we used to do research on this (and a lot of other weird stuff, actually) was Facebook. There are a ton of ‘expat’ Facebook groups where you can search to see if your question has already been asked. If not, you have hundreds of people with real world experience who are usually very willing to help. (Assuming you already checked the previous threads and didn’t ask a question that is posted approximately once a week. Then, they can get a bit testy.)
After gaining some basic info – including that education is free in Norway, and most Masters degree programs use English as the language of instruction – SCORE!!!! – we checked out the Norwegian government sites. We finally decided that my husband would apply for two programs in his field, and I would apply for one.
Step 6: Regroup
After applying, we were in limbo from about December to April. That’s a long time to wait when you may be moving your family to a different country. I kept researching like a mad woman, tried to declutter whatever possible, and kept socking away my pay check. (For more info on how we planned financially, check out this blog post.)
We got the first response in March. It was a ‘no’, but it wasn’t our first choice anyway. Then the next one. Again a no, but not one we were hoping for. Then I came through the door one day, and Robb said, ‘We heard from Oslo. I didn’t get in.’
Wow! Didn’t even know what emotions I was feeling. On the one hand, I was thrilled that we would have another year to save (and that turned out to be a HUGE bit of luck) and that I would have another year in my dream job teaching English to non-English speakers. BUT, we were also really disappointed. We had worked so hard, and of course, there was no guarantee it would work out for the following year, either.
I will say this, though. I don’t think that either one of us really considered NOT trying again the next year. Pretty much the first thing we did, was return to the ‘Study in Norway’ web site and find Every. Single. Program. that we qualified for.
In 2019, we applied for every possible program. We were determined to get to Norway. Again with the waiting. Again with the suspense. But this time, I got an acceptance from the university of Tromsø in March. We were 100% for sure going to Norway. But Robb still hadn’t received his responses, so we didn’t know for sure whether we could accept my position or whether his would be a better fit. So we waited. He got a no.
Then a ‘Yes’! We were only waiting for Oslo, his first choice program, the one that was an almost perfect match for his experience.
And then the answer came. No. But we were going. We were moving to Norway after almost 2 years of trying. Stavanger, Norway would be our new home.
Step 7: PANIC! And become best friends with good enough
You may have noticed this step doesn’t continue my lovely ‘r’ theme. As an English teacher, I can tell you there is some symbolism to that: everything went to heck. Sometimes there is just more to do than you have time for. We had approximately 3 months to prepare our house to sell, pack everything we were keeping into a shipping crate, and get rid of everything else, all while caring for 3 kids and working.
This is actually one of the more sensitive topics of our move for me because I felt completely out of control and pretty much like a failure through most of it. When we came to the last 2 days, we still had things in our house – LOTS of things. And we were flying out whether we got them out of the house or not. We accepted that we would have to hire a clean-out service and shifted tactics from getting everything out to making sure we didn’t leave anything precious behind.
We also had to sell our car. It was one of those things that just didn’t get done in the mad rush because we both needed transportation. So we were sitting in a used car chain on the Saturday night before we left on Monday waiting for a quote that turned out to be about half of what we would have gotten if we had the time to sell it on our own.
But like I said, we became best friends with good enough. Our priority was getting to Norway, and we had built enough cushion into our finances that the money we lost on the car was an inconvenience, not an emergency.
As we left, I had tremendous guilt about not leaving things the way I wanted to. Flying to Norway, and even for a few months after we arrived, it hurt me to remember those last weeks. But now, those feelings are receding into the background as I realize that we did what we had to do to get our family to Norway and to our new life. I’m thankful that we are here and I just have to accept that we did the best we could in a really hard situation.
In other words, there is a happy ending. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say there is a happy beginning. If you want to check out our adventures in Norway, head over to World of Wonders, where my husband and I write about our life in Norway.
And if you are dreaming of a major lifestyle change, remember, You’ve got this!