Nobody talks about what it actually costs to wing an international move.
What watching a friend move her family internationally taught me about the difference between surviving a global move and planning one.
I watched Nadia do this whole thing in real time.
We are real friends. The kind where I knew the details, the late-night conversations with Toby, the pivot from Johannesburg after Lyric had already fallen in love with a school she saw online, and told her mom she wanted to go there because she saw the pool. The “we’re doing it” energy in July that somehow didn’t become “okay we’re really doing it” until September.
This week, I interviewed her on Substack.
And when I asked her what she would do differently, I got exactly what I expected from Nadia… the full, honest answer.
She did it. But she did it the hard way.
Let me tell you what Nadia’s process actually looked like.
The election happened. Lyric turned 10. Toby (her husband) got laid off two days after coming back from the holidays. She called it a culmination. I call it the universe removing every reason to wait.
So she started researching. Mexico. Panama. Thailand. Costa Rica. Spain. South Africa. At some point on a Saturday morning, half awake and scrolling, she asked ChatGPT which African country had the easiest immigration process.
Mauritius came up.
She had never been. She didn’t visit before she moved. She found a couple who did a ninety minute information session for a hundred dollars, watched Toby’s face shift from skeptical to “I think this might work,” and kept going.
They started packing seriously after Thanksgiving. They drove cross-country to Florida on December 16th. They landed in Mauritius on January 14th.
In her words, hot mess express!
But what she said next is what stayed with me.
“We wasted months of the year where we weren’t doing anything to prepare.”
Not because she isn’t smart. Not because she wasn’t committed. Because she didn’t have a plan for how to use the time she had.
She got there. And it is beautiful.
I want to be clear about something before I go further.
Nadia is living her life on an island in the Indian Ocean. Lyric (her daughter), who has been quietly struggling in her US school and has had her confidence chipped away year by year, is coming home excited. She signed up for a woodworking class on her first school break. She told her mum she is going to ace the spelling test.
Nadia is running her sales agency from Mauritius. She has a 10-year residency. She made it!
She got there.
I just want you to see what it cost her to get there without a framework, because I think you are in the process of making exactly the same move she made.
The thing she said that I cannot stop thinking about
Toward the end of our interview, I asked her what she wished she had done differently.
She didn’t hesitate.
“I probably thought more about preparing the house to go on the market than I thought about the business. I had a checklist for that. I just didn’t have that checklist for the business.”
She was trying to build the systems she needed three months before leaving. While also selling a house. While also managing a cross-country move. While also making sure Lyric was okay. While also making sure Toby was okay. While also running a sales agency with clients who still needed her.
“You forget things. You’re making decisions under duress, and you just forget.”
That sentence hit me hard. Because I have been that person. We moved from the UK to Doha, and even with everything I knew and all the moves behind me, the framework I had been building for years, there were still moments where I was juggling too much at once, and something fell through the cracks.
Now imagine doing it without any of that. Without a structure. Without someone whose job it was to think about the business while your mind was elsewhere.
That is the version of this move that most people are making.
Your current actions reflect where you currently are
Here is the honest thing I want to say to you.
If you are in the “we’re thinking about it” phase, researching countries, watching YouTube videos, having the conversation at the dinner table that starts hypothetical and gets uncomfortably real, your actions are reflecting that.
You are doing closet clean outs when you should be auditing your business dependency.
You are researching visa options for three countries, but you have not yet identified your non-negotiables.
You are having conversations with your partner that go in circles because neither of you has a structure to land in.
This is not a criticism. This is just what moving without a framework looks like. I have seen it enough times now to recognize it immediately. And I saw it in Nadia’s timeline.
January to June: great idea, doing some research.
June to September: more conversations, maybe.
September: let’s do it.
October, November: okay, now we are actually doing this.
After Thanksgiving: we are packing.
She didn’t need more time. She needed a plan that told her what to do with the time she had, from the very first month.
What comes next is the part that actually changes how you use your time.
The Global Citizens Framework was applied directly to Nadia’s journey, pillar by pillar, showing exactly what would have been different if she had started here rather than at Google. What her Non-Negotiables work would have looked like before she fell in love with Johannesburg. What the Business Viability audit would have surfaced six months before she needed it. What Alignment between her and Toby could have looked like from the beginning, instead of nine months in.
This is what a premium subscription is for. Not more content. A clearer picture of what your own move actually requires and when.
If you are ready to stop circling the research and start making the decision properly, this is where that work begins.
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