One Year Abroad: 10 Things Nobody Warns You About

Introduction

Moving abroad is usually presented as a fairly simple calculation. Choose a country, work out the visa, check the cost of living, find somewhere to live and get on the plane.

The reality is rather different.

The biggest surprises during the first year are rarely the things you worried about before leaving. They are the small changes in how you spend your time, how you relate to money, how you make friends and even how you see yourself. Some are wonderfully positive. Others are uncomfortable. A few simply leave you wondering why nobody thought to mention them beforehand.

I was reminded of this by a woman I know who moved to the Philippines after 28 years working in financial services. She had done far more preparation than most people. She had visited twice, researched the country carefully and built a detailed budget before making the move.

Four years later, she is still there and says she is happier than she has been at any point in her adult life. But when we talked about her first year, she admitted that she had been caught out repeatedly by things she simply hadn’t anticipated.

Looking back, most of those surprises were entirely predictable. They just weren’t obvious from the outside.

So if you’re considering a move abroad, or you’re already somewhere new and wondering why the reality feels different from what you expected, here are the first five things worth understanding.

1. Freedom Can Feel Heavier Than You Expect

This is probably the biggest surprise for people who retire or leave a long corporate career.

Freedom sounds like an entirely positive thing. After years of having somewhere to be, somebody expecting something from you and a calendar full of obligations, the prospect of waking up with nothing you have to do sounds wonderful.

And initially, it is.

The problem comes a little later.

When the novelty of your new surroundings begins to wear off, you can suddenly realise that the structure of your old life has disappeared as well. There is nobody expecting you at the office. No meeting at ten o’clock. No commute. No deadline. Perhaps no children living at home who need taking somewhere.

You are free to do whatever you want.

That sounds fantastic until you realise you now have to decide what you actually want to do.

This is particularly important for men who have spent decades defining themselves through work. A job can provide far more than an income. It gives you routine, status, social contact, responsibility and a reason to get out of bed every morning.

Take all of that away and moving somewhere warm doesn’t automatically replace it.

This is one reason I think people sometimes misunderstand retirement abroad. They imagine that the answer is simply to live somewhere cheaper and enjoy the weather. But a good retirement still needs some structure. You need interests, people to see, places to go and things that matter to you.

You may decide to play golf, join a cycling group, volunteer, learn a language, take up photography or simply become more involved in the local community. It doesn’t really matter what you choose. What matters is that you choose something.

The people who tend to struggle are often the ones waiting for their new life to entertain them.

It won’t.

You have to build it.

The first year abroad teaches you that freedom isn’t the absence of responsibility. It is the responsibility of deciding what your life is actually going to be about.

2. You Miss Things You Never Expected to Miss

Most people know they will miss family and friends.

That’s obvious.

You may also expect to miss certain foods, familiar shops or particular places. What catches people off guard are the tiny things that had become so ordinary at home that they never realised they mattered.

Perhaps it’s the sound of rain against a British window.

A particular brand of tea.

The smell of autumn leaves.

A radio programme you used to listen to on the way to work.

A particular street you walked along hundreds of times without ever giving it a second thought.

Then, six months after leaving, something completely insignificant reminds you of it and suddenly you’re standing in a supermarket in Manila or Bangkok feeling unexpectedly nostalgic about a life you thought you’d left behind.

It can seem ridiculous at the time.

It isn’t.

When you move abroad, you’re not simply leaving a house or changing your address. You’re leaving an entire collection of familiar routines, sounds, smells, places and habits that accumulated over decades.

You don’t notice most of them while you’re living your old life because they’re simply part of the background.

Once they’re gone, some of them become surprisingly important.

This is also why homesickness can arrive at odd times. You can have a brilliant day, eat a great meal, meet interesting people and still find yourself missing something as mundane as a Sunday newspaper or the way your local high street looked on a wet afternoon.

Don’t mistake that feeling for evidence that you’ve made the wrong decision.

Missing something doesn’t necessarily mean you want your old life back.

Sometimes you simply miss a small piece of it.

That distinction matters.

3. Your Body May Change More Quickly Than You Expect

This is one of the better surprises.

For many people, moving abroad changes their daily environment in ways they didn’t fully anticipate. In a warmer country, you may naturally spend more time outside. Walking becomes easier. Sitting indoors all day becomes less appealing. You may start swimming, cycling, playing golf or simply walking around your neighbourhood because the weather makes it possible.

The changes can add up.

Some people sleep better. Others lose weight without deliberately going on a diet. Some drink less because their new social life isn’t centred around the same habits they had at home.

And there is something else worth considering.

When you are no longer commuting for hours, sitting behind a desk all day and spending much of your spare time recovering from work, you may suddenly have more physical energy simply because your daily life has changed.

That doesn’t mean moving to the Philippines or Thailand magically makes you healthier. It certainly doesn’t.

You can become just as unhealthy abroad as you were at home if you spend every day drinking, eating badly and sitting around.

The difference is that some environments make an active life easier.

You have to take advantage of that.

One of the pleasant surprises of the first year for many expats is discovering that their physical condition has improved without the process feeling like a traditional health programme. They’re simply living differently.

And for someone approaching retirement, that can be far more valuable than it sounds.

4. Your Relationship With Money Changes

This one can take several months to fully appreciate.

Before moving abroad, most people do the obvious calculation. What will rent cost? How much will food cost? What about healthcare, transport, visas and insurance?

Those numbers matter.

But there is another calculation that doesn’t appear on the spreadsheet.

What happens psychologically when the same income suddenly buys a very different standard of living?

Someone who has spent decades watching every pound disappear into rent, mortgage payments, energy bills, transport and the general cost of living may arrive in a lower-cost country and discover that money feels different.

Not because they suddenly became wealthy.

Because the constant pressure has eased.

A pension that felt rather tight in Britain can provide a much more comfortable life in parts of Southeast Asia. A modest budget can sometimes cover good accommodation, eating out, taxis, domestic help and regular leisure activities.

That change can remove a background level of financial anxiety that you had stopped noticing.

And once that anxiety disappears, you may start asking different questions.

Do I actually need to keep working?

Why am I spending so much of my time trying to earn more money?

What do I genuinely want to spend money on?

How much is enough?

Those are much bigger questions than whether your monthly food bill has fallen by 30 percent.

There is a warning here, though.

Don’t allow lower costs to convince you that money no longer matters.

It does.

Healthcare can become expensive. Flights home aren’t free. Property mistakes can be extremely costly. Exchange rates move. Visas and residency requirements change. And the fact that you can live comfortably on £2,000 a month today doesn’t mean you should build a retirement plan that requires exactly £2,000 every month for the next twenty years.

The sensible approach is to enjoy the financial breathing room without becoming careless.

That is where the real benefit lies.

5. Building a Social Life Takes More Work Than You Expect

This one catches people who assumed that moving abroad would automatically mean meeting lots of interesting new people.

There may be an established expat community where you move. There may be Facebook groups, clubs, restaurants and regular meet-ups. People can be incredibly welcoming when you first arrive.

But meeting people isn’t the same as building friendships.

Think about the friendships you had at home.

Many of them probably took years to develop. Some began at school. Others came through work, neighbours, children, sport or simply living in the same place for a long time.

You had shared history.

You don’t have that when you arrive somewhere new.

You are effectively starting again.

That means you have to make the effort. Go to the meet-up even when you don’t know anybody. Join the club. Talk to your neighbours. Accept invitations. Go back to the same places often enough for people to recognise you.

It can feel slightly awkward at first.

Do it anyway.

The strongest social networks I’ve seen among expats weren’t created because somebody arrived in paradise and instantly found their perfect group of friends. They developed because people kept turning up.

There is another trap here.

Some people move abroad because they are unhappy or lonely at home and assume the new country will solve that problem.

It might help.

It won’t solve it for you.

If you never made friends at home because you didn’t make the effort, moving 6,000 miles away doesn’t fundamentally change the person you are.

The loneliness can simply follow you onto the aeroplane.

The first year abroad therefore becomes a bit of a test. It forces you to decide whether you’re prepared to put yourself out there and build relationships again.

Those who do usually find that the effort pays off.

And sometimes the friendships you build abroad become considerably closer than the ones you left behind, precisely because they were chosen rather than simply inherited from circumstance.

The Other Five Surprises of Your First Year Abroad

The first five surprises tend to involve the practical and emotional changes that happen around you. The remaining five are more personal.

They concern culture, language, time, identity and, eventually, the question of whether the decision you made was actually the right one.

These are harder to put into a spreadsheet before you leave. In many cases, you only understand them properly once you’ve lived through them.

6. The Culture Is Deeper Than You Realised

Most people arrive in a new country with at least some idea of what the culture is like.

They’ve watched the videos. They’ve read the travel guides. Perhaps they’ve visited several times before making the move.

Then they start living there.

That’s when the difference between knowing about a culture and actually understanding it becomes obvious.

The Philippines is a good example.

The warmth is real. Filipino hospitality isn’t simply something invented for the tourist industry. But underneath that warmth are social values and relationships that can take years to understand properly.

Concepts such as utang na loob, the importance of family, hiya, the role of the barangay and the importance of maintaining dignity in difficult situations don’t always reveal themselves immediately to an outsider.

You learn about them through everyday life.

Sometimes that means getting something wrong.

You misunderstand why somebody reacted the way they did. You assume a direct answer would be appreciated and discover that the situation was more complicated than you realised. You find yourself wondering why a family decision involves so many people when, from your perspective, it should have been a private matter.

Then, gradually, things begin to make sense.

The people who treat the local culture as nothing more than background scenery tend to remain outsiders. They may live comfortably for years without really understanding the place.

The people who stay curious have a different experience.

They start noticing the subtleties. They understand why people behave in certain ways. They become better at navigating relationships and, more importantly, they begin to feel that they actually belong somewhere rather than simply living there.

You don’t need to abandon your own culture to achieve that.

You simply need to accept that yours isn’t the only way of doing things.

That’s one of the more rewarding lessons of the first year.

7. The Language Barrier Is Smaller Than You Feared, But Bigger Than You Expected

If you’re moving to the Philippines from Britain, America, Australia or another English-speaking country, language probably isn’t at the top of your list of concerns.

And that’s understandable.

English is widely spoken in the Philippines. You can deal with government offices, hospitals, banks, shops and restaurants without having to become fluent in Tagalog first.

That is a huge practical advantage.

But there is another side to it.

There is a difference between being able to conduct a transaction in English and being able to participate fully in a conversation.

You may be sitting with Filipino neighbours and understand everything that’s being said while they’re speaking English. Then somebody switches to Tagalog or Kapampangan and suddenly you’re completely outside the conversation.

It can happen without anybody intending to exclude you.

They’re simply speaking their own language.

But if it happens regularly, you begin to understand what it feels like to be the person who doesn’t quite belong to the conversation.

This is where learning a little of the local language can make an enormous difference.

I’m not suggesting that somebody approaching retirement needs to become fluent in Tagalog before moving to the Philippines.

Learn the basics.

Learn how to greet people. Learn the polite expressions. Learn enough to show that you’re interested.

People notice.

And in my experience, making that small effort tends to be returned with considerably more warmth.

There is also a useful psychological shift that happens when you start learning the language.

You stop seeing the country entirely through your own linguistic framework.

You’re making an effort to meet the place halfway.

That matters.

8. Your Sense of Time Changes

This is difficult to explain until you’ve experienced it.

Life abroad, particularly in countries such as the Philippines, can operate at a different pace from the one many Westerners are used to.

I wouldn’t necessarily call it slower.

It’s simply less obsessed with the clock.

If you’ve spent forty years living around meetings, appointments, commuting, deadlines and productivity targets, you may initially find this deeply frustrating.

You want something done.

You want to know when it will happen.

You want somebody to give you a precise answer.

Then you discover that the answer doesn’t always come in the form you were expecting.

The first reaction is often irritation.

After all, you’ve spent decades being trained to value efficiency.

But something changes if you stay long enough.

You begin to realise that not every part of life needs to be measured by how quickly something gets done.

A conversation can take longer.

A meal can take longer.

An afternoon can disappear without producing anything that would look impressive on a Western productivity spreadsheet.

And perhaps that’s not necessarily a problem.

This doesn’t mean you should abandon common sense or accept poor service indefinitely. There are times when something genuinely needs to happen on time, and you still need to be assertive about that.

But there is a difference between being relaxed about time and being incapable of organising your life.

The first year teaches many expats that they don’t have to be permanently in a hurry.

For someone who has spent decades rushing from one obligation to another, that can be a surprisingly profound change.

You may discover that doing less doesn’t necessarily mean wasting time.

Sometimes it means actually experiencing it.

9. You Discover Things About Yourself That You Didn’t Know

This is probably the most personal surprise of the ten.

When you leave a familiar life behind, a lot of the things that helped define you disappear.

Your job may no longer matter.

Your professional reputation may not mean much in your new country.

The people who knew you for twenty or thirty years aren’t around every day.

Even the routines that once seemed unavoidable have gone.

That creates an unusual amount of space.

And in that space, you can start noticing yourself more clearly.

You might discover that you actually enjoy things you never had time for before.

You might realise that your old career was never as important to you as you thought.

You might discover that you’re more adventurous than you gave yourself credit for.

You might also discover things that are less flattering.

Perhaps you don’t cope particularly well with uncertainty.

Perhaps you rely more heavily on other people than you realised.

Perhaps you become bored when there isn’t a job giving your day structure.

Perhaps you discover that some of the things you blamed on your old country, your employer or your circumstances were actually problems you carried with you.

That’s uncomfortable.

But it’s useful.

Moving abroad doesn’t magically create a new personality.

It removes some of the familiar surroundings that helped conceal parts of the old one.

And that can be one of the most valuable things the first year gives you.

You get a clearer view of who you actually are when nobody is telling you what you’re supposed to be doing.

The important thing is what you do with that information.

You can ignore it.

Or you can use it.

10. You May Realise You Made the Right Decision

This final surprise doesn’t happen to everyone.

That’s worth saying clearly.

Some people move abroad and discover that it isn’t right for them.

Perhaps they chose the wrong country. Perhaps they underestimated the distance from family. Perhaps healthcare becomes a bigger concern than expected. Perhaps they discover that they need more structure, more social contact or a different climate.

Going home isn’t failure.

Neither is moving somewhere else.

The whole point of testing a new life is to find out whether it works.

But for people who have prepared properly, chosen their destination for sensible reasons and arrived without expecting paradise, there can be a very satisfying realisation towards the end of the first year.

It worked.

Not perfectly.

There will still have been lonely days, frustrating bureaucracy, unexpected expenses, cultural misunderstandings and moments when you wondered what on earth you’d done.

But overall, the life you have built is better suited to you than the one you left.

That’s a very different conclusion from saying the country is perfect.

It isn’t.

No country is.

The difference is that you deliberately chose where to live, how to spend your time and what you wanted your life to look like.

That choice can have a surprisingly powerful effect on how you feel about the years ahead.

The woman I mentioned at the beginning of this article experienced all ten of these surprises during her first year in the Philippines.

Four years later, she’s still there.

She told me that the woman who arrived at the airport was almost unrecognisable from the person she had become twelve months later.

The Philippines hadn’t magically changed her.

The space it gave her had allowed her to change herself.

And I think that distinction matters.

The First Year Isn’t the Finished Life

If you’re in your first year abroad and things feel harder than you expected, don’t automatically assume you’ve made a mistake.

The first year isn’t the finished product.

It’s the construction phase.

And construction is messy.

You’re learning how things work. You’re finding your people. You’re working out where you want to live, how you want to spend your time and what parts of your old life you genuinely want to keep.

Some things will work.

Some won’t.

You’ll probably change your mind about a few things along the way.

That’s normal.

The mistake is expecting your new life to be completely settled simply because you’ve successfully moved countries.

Give yourself time.

If you’re still planning the move, accept that no amount of research will prepare you for every part of the experience.

Research can tell you about visas, property prices, healthcare and the cost of living.

It can’t tell you exactly how you’ll feel when you wake up on a Tuesday morning six months after arriving.

It can’t tell you which friendships you’ll make.

It can’t tell you what you’ll miss.

And it certainly can’t tell you what you’ll discover about yourself.

Those are things you only learn by living the life.

That is the real first year abroad.

Not a holiday.

Not an extended escape.

A period of finding out whether the life you imagined can actually become the life you live.

Related Articles

• Important Steps Once You Arrive in Another Country to Live
• How to Foster Expat Relationships With Fellow Expats and Retirees in Asia
• Best Places to Retire Abroad: The Truth Exposed
• Choosing Your Right Base in the Philippines
• Healthcare in the Philippines: Facts Every Expat Needs to Know
• The Philippine Retirement Authority SRRV Programme

Further Reading

• Free Expat Guides
• How to Protect Your Assets When Marrying Abroad
• How Expats Lose Their Assets Abroad