A cost desk for families moving abroad

Most writing about moving abroad is written for one adult with a laptop. Families face a different problem, and it is mostly arithmetic. School places have deadlines. Visa income thresholds count your children. Health cover has to be arranged before a residence card is issued. The dog needs a rabies titre months before the flight. Each of those has a real, published number attached to it, and almost nobody puts them in one place with a source.

That is the whole job here.

What this site does

• Publishes what it costs a family to land in a destination and get through the first year: the visa, the residence permit, schooling, health cover, rent and the deposit.
• Traces every one of those figures to the authority that charges or publishes it, links to that page, and prints the date we read it.
• Puts the figures into a cost estimator so you can change the family, the schooling choice and the housing size and see the shape of your own first year.
• Publishes a quarterly Family Relocation Cost Index comparing the same reference family across every destination we track, so the changes are visible.

What it refuses to do

• Guess. If we cannot read a figure at an official source, it does not go on the page. Destinations with gaps are marked and kept out of search until they are finished.
• Rank countries for you. There is no best country to move to with children. There is a country that fits your income, your children's ages and your tolerance for a second language, and those are different answers.
• Pretend to be a lived experience. This is a research desk. The authority here is the sources and the method, both of which you can check.
• Sell you a relocation. We do not run scouting trips, we do not broker visas, and we do not take a commission on a property.

How it is paid for

Advertising, and payments from service providers when a reader requests a quote or opens an account through us. Both are disclosed where they appear, neither has any influence on what we publish, and the full arrangement is on the how we are paid page. We do not describe ourselves as independent. We take money. What we offer instead is that every figure is checkable, and we tell you exactly where to check it.

Who publishes it

Leah Ford is the editor. Every destination page and guide goes through her before it publishes, and she is accountable for the figures on it. Mario Bailey is the publisher and built the verification method the site runs on. Corrections reach the editor directly through the contact form.