When I became a teenager and received my first driver’s license my father gave me a few pieces of advice about safety and driving, etc. Of course, as a teenager that “knew” everything I rolled my eyes. One additional piece of advice my father gave, which also caused me to roll my eyes, was to never leave anything valuable visible in the car because someone might pass by and break the window to take it.
I basically ignored that last piece of advice and for many years didn’t think about it until the day came when, you guessed it, someone broke the window of the car and stole something. Ignoring my father’s advice cost me about $1000 in damages and stolen items. What I didn’t know at the time when my father gave me that advice was that my older brothers had had a car broken into not too long after I got my first drivers license. I’m not sure why he never mentioned the robbery and perhaps it was because it was very minor, they stole some weights my brother kept in the back of the car.
But the whole point of this story isn’t about the sage advice my father gave me which I ignored and came to regret and cost me money. This story is about me giving similar advice to my son and he too rolling his eyes and ignoring my advice.
In the modern case, it wasn’t about a break in, this was a lesson about PLANNING.
Moving Overseas
My son got a job offer in Europe and he excitedly took the offer but as soon as he told us about the job and was moving literally in a month, I told him he should consider slowing down. Further I told him that a move of this magnitude needed extensive planning. As you might imagine, he rolled his eyes the same way I did to my father decades ago. And as you might imagine, poor planning led to a pile of problems.
First, I told him to look into setting up bank accounts ahead of time, this activity alone requires a great deal of research. For example, which bank should he pick? What type of account? What are the requirements for opening an account? What are the fees? Is there a direct deposit requirement? Does direct deposit exist in his new country?
Of course, he did none of the research, arrived and was worried about all the things he needed to do to open a bank account which I won’t go into here because they are extensive.
Second, I told him to create a checklist for an apartment search including all the various variables such as location, cost, requirements, etc. When I told him this he gave me an eye roll and told me not to worry about it. Well guess what happened? He called me asking me to wire him money because the apartments there require a full month security deposit and a full month pre-paid so essentially he needed TWO months rent money. Of course, I am always happy to help my kids and even though I mentioned the whole “planning” thing I did not rub it in. Needless to say, if you’ve ever wired money from the U.S. to a foreign country, it can be a daunting task. The wire wouldn’t go through because we needed the European’s bank address which wasn’t listed on the bank’s website he chose.
Third, I told him to ensure he had a mechanism to move money back and forth between the U.S. and his new home country because wires are expensive at $50 a pop. He found an app that transfers money to/from from anywhere in the world but it required extensive paperwork and time to setup but along the way ended up wasting a whole lot of money because of poor planning to the tune of about $1000.
Lessons Learned
Like my father before me who had experienced a break in with my brother’s car and a subsequent son (me) who ignored his advice and suffered the same fate, I find myself wondering why we tend to ignore those older and wiser than us.
Ultimately, my son is getting settled in his new country and we’ve worked through most of the unplanned issues and hope to visit with him next month but so much stress could have been easily avoided with better planning.
Ironically, after all of this happened, I realized that I had a ChatGPT account and I could ask AI what an appropriate checklist is for moving overseas and it cranked out a nice long list of things to prepare so I sent him the info and link to ChatGPT for his next adventure. Perhaps AI will be our next “father” substitute that we won’t ignore.