Positive financial stories
So, considering that I posted that long rant about how frustrating it is to deal with expat finances, I figured I should post some cheerful things.
Studetbane finally got his replacement bank card and PIN (mailed separately for security reasons) last month. The bank card was sent to the correct address. The PIN was sent to 20 Londonstreet, Bajo 3 bis (our Spanish apartment number), London, UK, postalcode. The UK post office was nice and delivered it anyway. Now both of us can actually withdraw cash. Thank God our bank assigned us completely separate bank cards, so mine didn't have to be canceled when his wallet was stolen.
We visited Paris for four days and used our credit card with trepidation. It wasn't shut off the whole time.
We were unable to use the official USPS method for renewing our mail forward to ljedi because Citibank updated the primary address on our credit card to the international one, so we couldn't prove to the USPS's satisfaction that we actually lived at our house. We hacked a solution, and then our mail didn't go anywhere for a month. We were starting to get nervous about this, but Ljedi just received about a 4" stack of mail yesterday, including our tax information. Whew.
I find that this is bringing me a lot of unexpected peace of mind. Having a pool of red tape to wade through that gets deeper no matter how fast you go it exhausting. I still haven't settled all of the details from my mandatory retirement fund rollover at work, but at least there's the sense that we might be making progress.
Studetbane finally got his replacement bank card and PIN (mailed separately for security reasons) last month. The bank card was sent to the correct address. The PIN was sent to 20 Londonstreet, Bajo 3 bis (our Spanish apartment number), London, UK, postalcode. The UK post office was nice and delivered it anyway. Now both of us can actually withdraw cash. Thank God our bank assigned us completely separate bank cards, so mine didn't have to be canceled when his wallet was stolen.
We visited Paris for four days and used our credit card with trepidation. It wasn't shut off the whole time.
We were unable to use the official USPS method for renewing our mail forward to ljedi because Citibank updated the primary address on our credit card to the international one, so we couldn't prove to the USPS's satisfaction that we actually lived at our house. We hacked a solution, and then our mail didn't go anywhere for a month. We were starting to get nervous about this, but Ljedi just received about a 4" stack of mail yesterday, including our tax information. Whew.
I find that this is bringing me a lot of unexpected peace of mind. Having a pool of red tape to wade through that gets deeper no matter how fast you go it exhausting. I still haven't settled all of the details from my mandatory retirement fund rollover at work, but at least there's the sense that we might be making progress.