TODOs: Work relocation ...

Variations here can be many, depending on the employer. Some can push the date all the way to the end so that you don't have that bargaining power (trust me, I am not kidding, employers do this). You should start at least 6-8 months in-advance, planning to have the offer letter at least two months in-advance. Lots of people say it is better to have another offer in-hand so that you can negotiate with the current employer but in-practice, with the all of the things going on at the same time, do you have time/patience to do a job search, interview and get an offer? Might work, just to have an offer in-hand but definitely will take some time and your energy away.
 

When it comes to current employer relocation, you should note that it is like a new employment - you need to bargain for salary, position etc. When it comes to tech positions, there is always shortage of experienced hands and your Indian employer knows that (at least in the current situation).

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TODOs : Investment/long term 'back to US' house ...

If you are planning to buy a house that you plan to keep for long term (say, in-case you get back to US down the line), you need to work on this early, like one year in-advance. Issue is - you need to produce the employment letter, which can only be done when you are employed. Even if you are relocating with the same company, most likely you will get terminated first and get re-employed in India, which means you won't have a US employment. With the current scrutiny of loans, it won't be possible to get a loan in such state.

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TODOs : Financial consultation

Assuming you have the mental readiness (if you read this far, most likely you are mentally prepared !!!), will list down several TODOs, which are again, done sooner the better. Even if you have the idea to move few years down the line, it wouldn't hurt to get these prep work done in-advance - you will have more mental piece and some extra physical space at home as well :-)

One of the top most things to do is - Financial consultation

This one is better done in-advance - things like a living will, term life insurance, decision on how much funds to keep versus how much to sell, if you have company options, what to do with them (sell versus hold) etc are the financial matters that you need to take care. Best option would be to sit with a financial advisor, who is familiar with how things work in India and US. You can pay flat fee on hourly basis and get your doubts clarified - hourly rates are usually in the range of $150 and well worth spent.

You can buy a term life insurance (assuming you have US citizenship, you can get insured in $$s instead of Rs, which can give you a good coverage at better premium). Also, when you are younger when you can get better rates. The logic is - for a similar or bit higher cost in India, you get a much bigger coverage (like a 1 crore of life insurance). Also, the life term in US is much longer as compared to India (due to life expectancy). So, if you want to get a life insurance get that in US in-advance. One of the logic folks back in India use is - if you are going to have a home loan(which is a larger amount), you need life insurance so that your family has coverage in-case something goes wrong. 

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Preparations: When to start?

This may not be a million dollar question but definitely worth several hundred $s!!!

[Since I have seen many visits to this page, doing some re-organization of the page so that you don't freak out when you see this page :-)]
For the checklist of TODOs, please see this page first...
http://r2idiaries.blogspot.com/2011/09/sample-checklist.html

One word here - start early!!. What is 'early' - depends on your situation but following can be one of your situation:

Family with school going kids,especially grown up kids: Definitely advise to start a year n-advance. First priority goes to school admission - filtering down a school that is close to work place, close to the area you want to stay, possibly the need for kids to take a test etc takes good amount of time and planning.

You own a home in US: In the current real estate market in US, getting out of a home can take good amount of time and make or break the move decision - you can always rent the home but that is extra work that you need to do and timing of the rental needs to align with the move, which could be a challenge as well. One year is advisable here as well.

Family that hasn't cleaned up or moved in a while: Even if you don't own the home but haven't moved for a while, you are bound to have good amount of surplus items, which you can sell. At least start 6 months in advance.      
You need ample time to sell of items that you don't need - we had kid's car seats that we hadn't been using for few years and collecting dust. If you start selling these items early, you can pick & choose the price at which you want to sell - there are always buyers for these items and it is just the question of time - good amount of time and patience to hold on until you get a good buyer. If you start selling towards the move date, you are under pressure to sell things off at whatever price you get since you are in the cleanup mentality. having said that, I personally feel we could have sold off more stuff than we did if had started even earlier - there is always the thought of 'we might need these items' but those items really become a headache towards the end and you think I should have sold of these early.

You are staying in a rented place and no kids: This could be much easier. However, 6 months of prep work would be still needed. If you have to look for a new job, that takes a good amount of time. If you are simply relocating with the same work, you need to negotiate at work and find a suitable position in the counter part in India etc.

Worst case - you have a family with kids, own a home, need to look for a new job or finalize relocation etc and you have few months pending: Better to stay put and wait out for a year or so and start early towards end of this year. It wouldn't be worth the hassle and tension to complete all of these in a hurry. If your kids are rushed up and not satisfied with the school or you don't a find a place/job that you like, you will be looking west before you know ! Even if you are an Indian and have stayed here, adjusting to the conditions here takes time, trust me!

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Preparations: Mental prep ...

How many times you have come across friends who say they are going to move back 'next year' but you still see them around next year and a few years down the line as well!. I think good example of was one of my good friend's who said he was the one who initiated the move discussion, his several friends moved back but he is still in US! Unfortunately, move is not a simple thing and several factors work out for a move to happen and this gets complicated further when kids have grown up and work is well established.

As they say, when doing anything mental readiness is the first thing before you can get the physical readiness and that is true here as well. I guess you never get 100% readiness since there are always those uncertainties with a move. Better half's question was - we are well settled here in US, it is going to be a start-all-over deal when we move. However, I think kid factor (i.e, now or never) made it easier to come to a mental preparedness of saying we should make the move or we will never be able to move.

Frankly, I would say we always had the second thought of whether move will happen. There are many uncertainties like whether school admission in India will happen in proper time, whether work transfer will happen in time etc. We continued with the admission process for next grades (both kids were changing schools, one to KG and one to middle school). However, one thing greatly simplified things was the decision to sell the house and rent - with home ownership and the real estate market being the way it is in California, mental readiness wouldn't have just been enough for the physical readiness.

More thoughts on these topics in further posts ... 

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Preparations ...

Having listed the reasons for move and the concerns we had in-mind, time to post about the actual prep. work we did before the move. I will list several in the upcoming posts which you may find useful ...

Concerns ...

Warn you in-advance, this post is going to be a large laundry list :-)

Who doesn't have concerns with a change? Especially true when you are moving away from one of the world's advanced countries to a developing nation, which you don't expect to see becoming a developed nation in your life time? Following were some of the concerns I had in my mind, without getting some good answers.

Water: Will water be available for most time of the day, even if it is not 24 hours? Water was a big issue few years ago and our question was - has it changed? The last thing we want to do is stand in-line for a water tanker or in-front of a water tap with a bucket!

Pollution: When we visited India, we could see tree-lined street turning blue by evening with smoke. With the heat, most of the doors and windows are kept open which lets in the smoke as well. Specially true, if you are living next to a main street. However, we did see many pockets of Bangalore where you would see fresh air and not much vehcles either. It was clear that location will matter most but the question was - would we have a choice, given the work locations and school location of the kids.

Electricity, internet connection etc: Is the situation same as before where electricity goes off for couple of hours a day? We knew we could have a back-up power supply in-case we need to manage. So, this wasn't a big concern but question of disruption when working from home was still there. Whereas in US, working from home or being at work didn't make much difference in-terms of connectivity.

Long term where India will be?: This is a question for which 'time will tell' is the answer. You do see lot of coverage about growth in India, companies moving offices, expanding in India etc. However, you also know that the political system in India and the corruption etc, which will pull down any progress.

Family interactions: This is a good thing when compared with the stay in US, where you are pretty much isolated. However, can this be a 'too much of a good thing'? I have seen relatives in family circle, who ended up having visiting guests every other day and they expect to be treated as a 'guest'. Can this happen to us? Getting bombarded with relatives when both in the family are working can be a challenge in itself...
       
Kids school adjustment: We had heard lot about international schools in India. Compared to how we studied when we were in India, it was clear that kids from US won't survive that system. The environment would be so culturally different that kids won't find the matching bandwidth to study along with other kids. Hence, our choice was clear - it will have to be international school, at least for few years. However, question on quality of teachers, behavior of other kids in school still remained a question.

I will post down the line how each of these concerns got addressed or have remained still as concerns... (having been in Bangalore for 3 months now after the move as of this post...)

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Reasons for moving: Life gotten bit dull?

Frankly, I thought life in US was bit dull! Of course, there are good friends with whom you can talk and meet but the most common topic was back to technology(after doing technology for the whole week at work!!). That was the best common topic for the groups. 

The setup in US facilitates work/productivity - which some times you get too much of it, I think. There is the uninterrupted power supply, internet, hot water with no wait, much less traffic jams, if you can plan around that (like staying close to work, starting bit early/late to work, which are possible) but at the end of the day, you have put so much work for an employer, who can throw you out with a day notice? 

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Reasons for moving: Kids growing up in US...

They will be like any US born person. Difficult to instill Indian culture. I have heard people say 'India has changed and you can't get the kids to grow up like old times anymore. They get better culture in US' etc etc, One response --- very convenient argument!!!

True, India has changed and younger generation doesn't look like the way we grew up. However, they are still living and growing up surrounded by Indian culture. Where as in US, Indian culture is mostly a week-end exposure and majority of the time, it is the US culture.

I am not saying US culture is bad - every culture has good and bad points. US culture teaches lots of good values to kids like being truthful, sincere, hard working mentality etc. Indian culture teaches respect to parents, elders etc but surrounded by people who may not be hard working, not very sincere etc. At the end of the day, it all boils down to how comfortable you are in having the kids grow up in one culture versus other - don't expect your kids to grow up with Indian culture when they spend their majority of the time exposed to a different culture. In US, they will grow up like US kids and have the same mentality.

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Reasons for moving: Why not try it out?

Given all of the factors above and more, other thinking was that - why not try it out? We are in the tech industry and this is the only place where jobs are well distributed and an engineer can pretty much do the same job as done in US. This becomes especially true if you have a team back in India working along with you - change is much smaller, as was in my case. 

So, the thinking was - why not try it out? If things really don't work out, we can get back to US - assuming there is a job market and conditions are still good. But, there is a risk in any type of change.

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Reasons for moving: Education

This was one of the factor in the mind of better half. Agreed, public education standard in California has gone down and is going down, with no relief in sight. Private education is way expensive with no middle ground between public and private. 

However, in my mind, quality of education in India is a TBD -- there are tons of schools, from international to campus schools but there is only so much they schools can/will do get the best teachers. Since there are so many schools, I am sure teachers have a good time moving from school to school without establishing permanent contacts with the kids at school. 

I will expand further about our school experience so far in India in a post down the line ....

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Reasons for moving: Distance

Have you woken up with a bad dream that one of your family members back in India is not well? This is especially true when you have aging parents and you dread the thought that somebody gets ill and you are not close-by. This is where physical distance does matter. Have seen many friend's shuttling back and forth to visit the close ones who are not well or going thru' the well-sick-well cycle and it gets tough if you feel like staying close with these events.

Even though world is flat now, distance to India has remained pretty much the same or has grown a bit more ! Surprised? With airline prices going up every year, it has made a major dent on family travels. A family of four paying for an economy class has to shell out at least 7000-8000 US $ for each trip (assuming school going kids who can take a break only during peak season). Indian families do treat this as a major expense. If there is a family ceremony or emergency that you need to be there, it is not easy to attend unless you have to. Forget about making a trip every month or two to visit families. 

Of course, with all of the tech connections, communication has increased but physical distance has remained the same. This may not be a big deal for many families since interaction is limited to close family circle but if you have a large connected family, how do you expose the kids to this family circle and get to know that circle better? If that doesn't happen, it is pretty certain that they will never get to know the family circle in their life.
        

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Reasons for moving: Family, Kids getting to know the family ,,,

This was the basic criteria for our move. When the family is large and you don't have many close relatives living next to you, our feeling was that we are breaking that link between our kids and the family tree. With out they being next to the family folks, it is hard to get them know this circle. We did visit India once in every 2 years at least (which became difficult with our first kid reaching higher grade). Even with that, the time they spend with the close family is spread out so thin that they hardly get to know anybody properly.
       
Before they get to know somebody, it is time for us to move to next place. Before you know, you are already shopping for return trip to US!. As the jet lag vanishes, they are ready heading back again and it is back to routine. 

Without relocating and spending more closer time with family, our feeling was that the link will not get established between our kids and family back in India and that connection will be lost for-ever. True, kids may not realize this when they grow up but you don't know what you don't know!

However, I have to admit, after staying for 16+ years, it felt 'back at home' when we reached back - the carpets felt soft, roads seemed empty and surprisingly silence was deafning. We hated all of the extra noise like non-stop car honking, stray dogs barking etc in India but the absence of everything was too much missing.

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Reasons for moving

I will try to list down some of the reasons that made us move. Needless to say, you may not agree with these reasons but as I said earlier, relocation is a very personal thing and reasons might be quite different - some of these might be just perspectives and 'time will tell' kind of things - which time will decide whether they are correct or wrong, Others are quite straight forward thoughts like more interaction with family etc...

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Way to use this blog

I have tried to list out the entries in the chronological order - this was pretty much the order we did things when we moved. So, if you are starting with your move to India, best way is to start all the way from the start of the blog - yo will find the sequence in which you can complete things to have a successful move. One way you can use this blog (assuming you find this early enough) is to check mark each activity and pick the ones you need and complete it for your case. 

I am sure I may not have all the todos that you need to complete (as I said above, each case is different) but this blog will give you a good coverage, I assure. Some of the things I don't cover are issues relevant to H1 visa holder, green card holders. Also, I don't cover job search in India if you are looking for a change of job in India.
   
To note, I will have a spreadsheet of TODOs down the line in this blog, which you may find useful. Also, will have a sample spreadsheet of items we shipped which can be useful as well. 

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