As naïve as we were curious, my Californian girlfriend (now wife of 21 years) and I moved from Zurich to Orange County, California, in September 2000 (with our pet rabbit, Zwecks, on the plane, but that’s another story).
We had her loving family to support us and some savings, but no professional network and no job prospects. We thought we knew how to find a job in California but instead had to learn how to write an acceptable resume first.
A few critical differences between Switzerland and Southern California became evident early on.
In Zurich and other European cities, apartments are generally unavailable. To get into one of the few that aren’t, you have to apply like you would for a job. Leases are highly standardized.
In California, they can be “on special,” the lease is negotiable, and you can move in pretty much right away.
Vacation is a sometimes grudgingly given benefit when you have a regular job. It is not a legal entitlement, like the four weeks minimum by law in Switzerland. Since there are only typically two weeks of it here, and assuming you can afford it, plan wisely if you need to plan to see your family abroad.
Europeans often express their disbelief and disapproval of the “hire-and-fire” practices in the U.S. My wife learned the other side of that story when one of her first managers went to lunch one Monday and never came back. The team feared she had died. HR tried to get in touch with her. On Friday, her long-awaited sign of life came: Sheepishly, and surprised that anyone cared, she admitted that she had started working someplace else.
What we were used to was at least a two-month notice period as part of your contractual obligations toward your employer. (As punishment for quitting, one of my Swiss bosses had made me enter data for two months until the last hour of my last day there.)
After 9/11, when the economy tanked and we had lived in the U.S. for only one year, I couldn’t find a job. Since I like cars and there were always openings in that industry, I decided to become a car salesman. Turns out I wasn’t even bad at it. I was utterly mediocre. I showed potential so as not to get fired—until I was—for lack of sales.
What I learned from this experience, though, was how the average American handles finances. Coming from Switzerland, where being in debt was frowned upon, if not considered immoral and disgusting, this was an eye-opener. People demanded to trade in their SUVs they couldn’t afford for more expensive SUVs because they “worked hard” for what they “deserved.”
Happy with their 19% interest rate, they rode off into the sunset just like in any of the cowboy movies I’d watched as a boy—the same ones that had influenced me to come to the U.S. in the first place.
I wasn’t the only one who had to adapt to this behavior. I was surrounded by other immigrants from Romania eastward to Syria, Afghanistan to the Philippines, all of whom had their own opinions about who and what we were working with.
An eye-opening moment was when the general manager of our local supermarket couldn’t afford the luxury SUV he felt he “deserved” because he had a credit score below 620. As my fellow car salesman and mentor Omar from Kabul would say, with a shrug: “Leave him. He can’t qualify for a cheeseburger.”
All this is to show that you will be surprised, disappointed, elated, and confused all the time when you move to another country and start a new life there. Try it.
As a professional with 20 years of experience in managing relocations or in leading teams of relocation consultants, I could tell not just my own stories to explain why something is the way it is in the U.S. but share some of those tales my transferees related to my team or me.
Apart from developing a resilient mindset, I firmly believe that the best way to work through the chaos and discomfort of your new beginnings is to ask questions—a lot of questions—and to listen and observe whenever questions aren’t appropriate.
Understanding how credit, apartment leases, or car sales work without having to rely on someone else for ongoing support is the best strategy against making poor decisions or being taken advantage of.
As a consultant, whenever I received income tax questions from people moving into the U.S., I always came back with two points: “I can’t give you tax advice” (true, and also a liability to my employer) and “but it helped me to learn the basics of the tax code myself so that I can understand how it would apply to me.”
I have no idea whether anyone heeded my second piece of advice, but maybe I did make someone put in the effort to slowly, over time, understand personal finance, the tax system in the U.S., or how to purchase a car the right way.
My manager in the car dealership would bark at me: “Christian! Don’t ask questions! Go sell car!”
To both of our detriments, I didn’t listen. I didn’t sell that many cars. But I can explain what a credit history is, to any transferee, at any time.