Once we decided to move to the island of Nevis in the Federation of Saint Christopher and Nevis we had a long list of to-dos before we could go. Here are some of the more difficult steps.
- Buy a new home
- Prepare our home for sale
- Sell our home
- Decide what to take with us
- Find a moving company
- Sell the stuff we didn’t want to take
- Figure out how to pay for the move, purchasing a new car, buying the house
- Get house insurance on island
- Close accounts we no longer needed
- Find a way to send money from existing US income sources to Nevis.
- Convert as many bills and statements to paperless as possible
- Set up an in-US mail address
- Decide what to do about health insurance
- Get our cats ready to go
The first several deal with selling our home and possessions. We had a very nice home in Michigan that sold at a good time. We found an auctioneer/estate sale manager who took care of setting up and selling our unwanted things and we donated what was left. Interestingly it was not so easy finding places to take used household goods in good condition; so many people had moved that the donation centers were bursting at the seams.
We had our sale about 2 weeks before moving, then the moving company was about one week prior. We slept on an air mattress and lived out of our suitcases and used paper plates.
We used an international moving company that had a local agent which we had used for our prior move that had gone very well. I’m not sure this was necessarily the cheapest option but it worked out and we got our stuff delivered about 10 weeks after we arrived in Nevis. The moving company used a customs broker here for the final delivery and unloading and that person was quite helpful. St. Kitts and Nevis, like many countries, allows a one-time household move without duty, although they may apply duty to any new goods in the shipment. Duty here is a major source of government funds and can be 65% so the concession is valuable.
The next several steps involve finances. Housing in Nevis is expensive and it cost more to buy ours than we realized from selling our home in the US. It’s a location, location, location phenomenon, since our US home was larger and nicer. If you move here expect to pay 30-100% more for a similar house as in the US and don’t expect the amenities we take for granted. (I’ll talk about electrical outlets in a future post!)
That meant we needed to find funds to cover the difference. While everyone’s situation varies, you may be like us and have investments you could liquidate for a house purchase. I suggest you consult an accountant or financial advisor on this if you are concerned about tax implications. We had a special challenge because the people who purchased our house had to delay closing to the same day we left and that gave us no time to wire funds to Nevis. Luckily we found a solution but it meant a bit of jumping around.
That brings me to wiring funds. If you live in the US you are familiar with the Automated Clearing House that all banks use to transfer money. It’s seamless and usually free of charge to the customer. However banks in St. Kitts and Nevis are not part of this system. You must wire funds from your US bank to a specific account in a Nevis bank. In Nevis attorneys handle closing and title transfers not title companies, thus we had to wire money to our attorney here. (And yes, attorney and other fees are very costly, we paid about 2.5% of our house cost for the attorney and about the same amount for various government fees.)
Once you are on Nevis you will need to get a bank account, then to either have your income deposited here or have self-directed wire transfers. Many small and medium sized US banks do not have the systems to enable you to do an online wire transfer. We moved most of our finances to Chase which does. So far we’ve been pleased with their services.
Our realtor recommended an insurance company, Delisle Walwyn which is affiliated with Caribbean Alliance Ins. Co. Ltd., (CAIC), A rated by A. M. Best. Our insurance is about 5 times as much here as it was in Michigan. However, the total of insurance plus property tax is about the same as the total was in Michigan.
There are several companies that provide mail forwarding and mail scanning services. You would rent a virtual address from them, change your address with your senders and have mail sent to this new address. The company we use is PhysicalAddress.com. I like them because they scan all envelopes and at request will scan the inside contents too. That means we don’t need the physical mail forwarded from them which saves several weeks. They also will forward any checks you might receive to your bank.
Health insurance was and is a concern. Most US-based insurance policies will not cover you outside the US and this includes Medicare. You can buy international insurance privately which can be very expensive. Or you can maintain residency in the US and qualify to purchase a policy which will cover you as long as you are physically there. We aren’t thrilled with our solution but it appears the best we can do. There is health care on Nevis but it is limited.
Moving our cats was a huge concern and not an easy task nor was it inexpensive. (It cost more to get them here than to get ourselves.) I’ll cover this in more detail in a future post.
I made a rough list of things to do and crossed them off, but for the most part we just did what we needed to do. The big ones are listed above. If you decide to move here or anywhere I suggest you use my list as a starting point but you will almost certainly have more to add. There are many websites that offer relocation advice or to-do lists and books that may help. For the most part it’s common sense, although a few things might not be top of the mind, like the need to change banks.
We agreed to purchase a home here in Nevis the end of June, 2021 and had our house, vehicles and possessions sold, a new home bought and ourselves and three cats moved by late October 2021. The timing worked out great since it took as long to get the cats squared away as it did to sell and close on our US house.
Our next post will cover our three cats which were the single biggest headache getting here.
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