Any Americans or Expats living in the US?

That's a relief.

Thanks for letting us know, anyway, and all the best for your future endeavours!

We’re not going ahead with the move now. The job thing for me and schools became too much of a hurdle.

Thanks very much to everyone for their input though it was really useful and informative.

Hi Riddler,

You're welcome, glad I could provide some useful input to the topic. My own experience, which I perhaps didn't mention clearly enough in my previous post, was that I seldom found people I felt I had much in common with. Most places looked and felt the same to me, having mostly the same old (or rather, new, stuff!) pretty much wherever you went. Not easy to do, but if I had to describe my experience in a single word, it would probably be "soulless".

But as we said, Cali might well be a more inspiring prospect. You should do some research into the climate, but my understanding is it remains pleasantly warm the great majority of the year. It's a dry climate, though. Keep in mind there is some dangerous wildlife in the US if you're letting your pet outside – we don't know for sure, but our belief is my father's cat was taken by big cat or similar from the mountains bordering on his house. 

Regarding work, I was only ever able to get agency work - there seems plenty of that, at least where I was. My UK quals didn't seem to translate into so much over there, but then they are rather niche! But who knows, you may do better in CA, should you decide to take on the adventure! 

Whatever you decide, hope things go well for you – keep us posted! :)

Thanks Catlover for taking the time to share your experience in such a comprehensive reply. The whole thing is very confusing. As you say I think California is more diverse and therefore possibly more open minded than some other states. Where we would be is as close to the Mexican border as it is LA, so has a big Hispanic influence. My biggest concern remains work. We plan to go for at least 3 years, and although my wife has a good job, I don’t want to sit around the whole time, I think I would get really depressed. I am also very particular about where I work and fall apart at interviews, which is why I’m self employed here. It’s a real dilemma. It’s really either go for 3 years and see what happens (not good at not planning every detail first!) or don’t go.

Thanks again.

Oh, and if it would be too hot for our Bengal!

I like America - there are some lovely places and I'd love to live there - but I can't afford to.     I totally understand why most Americans never leave the US - apart from visiting places for another culture, they have everything else on hand - they've got mountains, forests, the open plains, the towns & cities, beaches, lakes - anything that 'we' would have to visit another country for.      I'm fascinated by their culture - and as Catlover says, it's very shallow & fragile but very 'family' biased - you see it a lot in the custom car tv shows-  "I'm fixing this car up for my pappy" with tears in their eyes.

Gun crime, oddly enough, is almost completely confined (over 95%) to long-term Democrat-run 'gun-free' cities and a certain group gunning themselves down.          I totally agree about most of the US's social problems are caused by dependency on the government welfare and those rules that force fathers out of the home.

Spot on.

I would consider myself on the Conservative side of US Politics. However, Americans are too fond of convenience. They do have Socialist tendencies, too. Most ethnic stereotypes in America can be tied to dependency on the Government for support, rather than bonafide racism.

The issue of gun crime is more a mental health issue. As well as a lack of positive male role models in young boys' lives. Some people take trauma-related matters too far. There's a lack of stability.

I lived for 6 years in Missouri and for a further year either in Michigan or North Carolina. I'm not deliberately trying to put you off but I'm going to be *brutally honest* – the Missouri period, anyway, was probably the worst time of my life. Cali may well be better – my sister and father lived not too far from LA and they found it quite OK. As for me, well I wish I'd come back to Blighty sooner. Cali is more liberal and health-conscious than many other states. Plus the weather is pleasant and pretty predictable. In Missouri, you have roasting summers and perishing winters. I'm not going to lie, I found the American culture I experienced to be relatively shallow and insubstantial. OK it didn't help that I mainly lived in a semi-rural relative backwater, and my experience of the big cities is a little better. Still, as a European you will, I'd wager, find their culture and history rather limited. I reckon I could boil their dominant culture down to probably less than a dozen primary elements which include things like food, cars, money, sex, "movies" and their superheroes, sports, firearms, their bloody military, religion/church – well those are the key ones that immediately come to mind. My advice is get used to their beloved sports, because you're going to be hearing about them a hell of a lot (personally I found nearly all of them as dull as ditchwater, with baseball being the worst offender of all) and as a nation, they are virtually obsessed with them. This being said, I'm not much into physical sports myself so I may be biased there. The military is another obsession, and you get to hear about it a lot. So is religion (i.e. Christianity) and my advice is to stay away from discussions on religion (or politics) if you want to be sure of staying safe and having an easy life. I met a lot of people who had barely left their home towns, let alone had travelled abroad and seen the world. Many Americans are quick to state how they are the greatest nation on earth, yet these are often the same people who have never left their home states. The level of ignorance re. the rest of the world among some (many?) can be depressing. The national flag-waving/jingoism is another prominent element and it can sometimes be too much. For God's sake, never say anything they take to be in any way anti-American, or you'll be in a real mess. I once made the mistake of questioning why they weren't backing us up on recent disputes with Argentina over the Falklands, as we always are the first to support them in almost everything they do. This went down incredibly badly. There are major levels of inequality for a wealthy nation and in my view a healthcare system which practically punishes the less well off is wrong at a fundamental level. As a European, many people asked me if I had a "socialist" government, as apparently that's what they typically associate with folks over here. What I will say is that overall they have a higher standard of living, and what that translates to a large extent into is more space, with things like houses and cars being larger and rather cheaper. There were some positives about living there, but I find they are more minor. The landscape when you get out into it can be breathtaking. For shopping and buying goods, you are in many - but not all respects - well covered. If food is your thing, then you are well catered for and the quality is generally very high. I'm an avid pool player and there is a strong scene for that there (they still can't accept that snooker is a more skilful game, though!). There is in my experience also a very good system of adult education, evening classes, and similar – they are much better catered for in that respect than we are, I think. I found making friends not easy, and many locals already had friends from uni, work, or their local church, or from their kids’ schools or sports teams. As a Brit, I was regarded as something of a novelty by some locals, and on a number of occasions people just wanted to hear me talk, almost as if they were unaware of there being around 60 million people who speak to a greater or lesser extent as I do! One bonus may be that many people will like your "accent" and this could at times get you noticed, assuming you welcome such attention. I'm speaking about Missouri here; in Cali I believe they are generally more diverse, with more people having come in from other parts of the world. I hope you don't mind me being so frank. I've also lived for some years in several northern European countries and my experiences there were completely different. I never felt at home in the States and it turned out not to be something for me, but your experience - should you go down that route - might be different. At the end of the day, I guess I'm just an Old World European :)

not sure there are pluses and minuses.  I lived in Chicago for a year and been there for periods of months before,,,,,,, but my accommodation was totally taken care of by my company as was my car so it was not the full experience. At night in Chicago you could hear gun fire at the weekends sometimes which  was alarming but thats Chicago. The USA is massive, each state has its own laws and medical stufff and Taxes. The USA is incredibly beautiful.

If I won a million quid I would buy a motorcycle and ride across it. Followed by Canada 

Go to Calfornia if you can,,, you can always come back if you dont like it.  I dont know if u have kids, wife, dog, parents, anything. Leaving your family behind is really hard.  

Would you live there adie? Or did you?

depends where u are, but in chicago the supermarkest had loads of really fresh fruit and not expensive.  I found their bread a bit dull, their milk not nice, their crisps boring, as a rule dont drink the tap water. 

the oddest thing was how well I got on with americans compared to people here. I really clicked with Texans !

The Mexicans won't know the difference..... 

I thought about teaching English. The only thing I thought is do they want learn actual English, or that freak show that Americans call English. Ha ha ha!

That's a bummer - their electrics and installations are so different to ours.   I did 16th Edition many years ago but I look at dodgy US electrics with amazement.    Ca has loads of OTT permitting regulations and it's very union-driven - probably more than any other state - so as an outsider, it's difficult to break into it - and also, it's freaking hot!   Could you work on site in that heat?.  

You could probably find work teaching English to the Mexican population there.

Sorry I've no idea what to advise as I don't know anything about stuff like that. Maybe try asking on Reddit, it has a lot of users and posts, there will be more replies on there, there might be people who know specifics about the kind of work you could do.

I will NEVER set foot there.

We don't know how lucky we have it, here!

That’s the problem Roswell, I don’t have a job! It’s my wife’s company that want to relocate her. The concern I have is that have had just re-qualified as an electrician here as I could no longer work for big corporates. Now I have such specific employment needs I’m not sure I’d ever find a job over there, let alone be able to attend an interview. This why I became self employed.

I looked into doing electrical work over there, but the training they expect is at least 5 years, not to mention you have to join a union, pass some industry exam board, and I’m already 45.

I thought about just doing handyman work, but that is massively restricted. If you want to do a job that is more than $500 you have to register as a construction worker. Then quests what? Pass exams, join a union etc etc. It’s mad.

I feel if I go I could be unemployed and miserable, If I say I don’t want to go my wife looses out on a great job and she’ll be pissed off and won’t let me forget it forever more, like women do!

I’m screwed.

Well I have to admit the eating out there is amazing. I've seen documentaries and no doubt their restaurants are more exciting than ours.

If I went I'd miss the British sense of humour. I have American acquaintances online and they're nice people but I don't find their humour very funny and they often irritate me. I think it's a bigger culture shock than many would guess.

But if The Riddler has a job lined up in some big IT company like Google it could be worth it. It's definitely a more dynamic scene economically at the top end of things.

Not really - you can't really think of the US as one country - it's like a bunch of similar but very different countries sharing a common language & currency.  Some states are much cheaper to live in than others.

You can eat perfectly healthily if you want to - but huge steaks, pizzas and burgers are so cheap that lots of people lack any kind of self control.       We go there a lot - and the Golden Corral breakfasts are awesome in every way.     

It's a very young country - the old 50s/60s cowboy films are almost documentaries - that whole cowboy period only really fizzled out in the 1920s.       That's why it just doesn't have the history and infrastructure to have all the nice things we have here like the NHS - people just don't understand the size of the country and the population density variation make some things crazy expensive but other things really cheap.    It's why their cars are the way they are - a trip to the shops might be 100 miles so you need a comfy car with a huge boot to minimise the number of journeys - and a massive fridge at home for all the shopping.

California is very different - millions of people in mega-cities but the climate there means it's easy to be homeless - you're not going to freeze to death!      It's why poor people go there in such huge numbers.