Episodes
-
Sam Beckbessinger has written a book called Moving to the UK.
It's perfect for anyone doing just that, and awesome even if you're moving somewhere other than the UK.
In my interview with Sam, we talk about:
Why and how she wrote "Moving to the UK".
How emigrating messes with your head and makes you feel like a helpless baby.
Hard choices, and how they are an opportunity to define and redefine yourself.
How the British are basically hobbits.
Appreciating your South African-ness and learning how to be a bit more British.
The Newcomers Club, a community platform for expats in the UK. Be SURE to check this out.
Sam's superpower, which is creating meticulous tick-lists and spreadsheets which you can use.
Anyway, I can't recommend the book enough, and I want to thank Sam for a super-fun interview.
As per my ads, this show is supported by the family business, Luggage Warehouse.
If you're thinking about emigrating, I've got a discount code for you for three luggage ranges with lots of space:
BG Berlin Cube
BG Berlin Zip2
All Samsonite Ranges, if your budget can handle it.
Use the discount code: EXPATS at checkout and you'll get an extra 10% off your already-discounted purchase.
These are "Build-a-Set" ranges, which let you build a set of any size and combination, and gives you discounts the more bags you buy.
In Moving to the UK, Sam recommends considering taking extra bags on the plane and paying it, as it turns out to be more cost-effective than many kinds of shipping. -
NOTE: I will be creating more episodes of this show, but currently my focus is Off the Grid in SA - A practical guide for shedding load-shedding.
Here's a brief update on the show and where I'm going with it.
If you don't have a couple of minutes to spare, the short version is that South African Ex-Pats is on hold.
It was a project to help me explore my interest in emigration destinations around the world, as well as level up my podcasting skills, and I consider it a very successful one. However, I believe I'll learn more by moving on to other projects now.
If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at pingproductions.net, or you can just google Jonathan Warncke and use the appropriate channel.
If you want to hear about future personal projects I'm working on, please stay subscribed, because I'll post short updates here.
Thank you so much for listening. This show garnered over 8000 listens in almost exactly a year, so I hope that I added value to people's lives and the difficult decisions and pitfalls surrounding emigration.
Best regards,
Jon
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Episodes manquant?
-
Grant Norman was kind enough to join me to chat about his family's emigration to a suburb just outside Vancouver.
Grant and his wife got into Canada via the Express Entry visa, although it was a few years ago.
Grant's journey was not necessarily smooth, though, and the high cost of living in Canada has certainly not made things easier.
One person Grant wanted to recommend was Deanne Acres Lans, who helped him with his visa process. You can find Deanne here: https://canadaabroad.com
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Sorry for the long break, but I went away to Ireland and the UK for a month. More on that coming up in future episodes.
Here's a conversation from the Emigration Expo that I hope will prove revealing. I knew Malta existed, but didn't know much beyond that.
I grabbed 10 minutes with Grahame Salt at the expo so he could give me Malta 101.
Grahame is one of the directors of Frank Salt Real Estate. Grahame obviously has a vested interest in you wanting to buy property in Malta, but that doesn't make it sound any less amazing. I'd like to thank Grahame for his time and willingness to be interviewed.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Continuing my short conversations with the exhibitors at the Emigration Expo, I cornered Vaughn from Animal Travel Services for a quick chat about emigrating your pets.
We cover costs, the procedure from start to finish, and some of those interesting questions like "Do pets get sedated for travel" and "Do you transport snakes?".
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Huge thanks to Allen Jones for taking the time to chat to me about shipping your valuables overseas.
I don't fall into the category of people who LOVE their furniture enough to cart it overseas, but I know that there are plenty of people who really do.
I got an amazing sense of integrity and care from Allen and his colleagues (as I got from everyone at the Expo). If you want to chat to them, you can find them at www.biddulphs.co.za.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
I attended The Emigration Expo last weekend and recorded some great interviews with the exhibitors.
I'll be publishing the interviews as I get them lightly edited so you can catch up if you couldn't make it.
Here's a very short intro with Sarah Howarth, the organiser of the Expo. Sarah give us a little context about The Emigration Expo and tells us where else you can find it if you don't live in Cape Town.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Don't have an ancestral passport, but DO have a lot of money? Welcome to the world of
-
Paul Goodwill is an interesting guy. When others moan and groan about how difficult it is to emigrate to first world countries like Canada and Australia, he games the system. These first-world countries don't need marketers and IT managers and so on. They need carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and mechanics.
So Paul spent a few years certifying as a plumber, and that certification was his golden ticket to Ottawa, Calgary, and Western Australia, where he lives now. In this episode Paul tells us how he did it, and what life is like in the three cities he's lived in besides South Africa. Oh, and also the UK, but we don't focus heavily on that.
Paul is also the admin for the "Leaving South Africa" Facebook page. If you have further questions, you can find him and 8000+ other people there.
Paul also kindly supplied us with some fantastic links:
This is where Paul lives in Australia.
This is one of the places he goes on holiday.
Here is some of his fantastic photography.
This is Alberta, Calgary's home state. Pretty nice.
Job site for Canada.
Job site for Australia.
General information for working in Australia.
The Mader group pays diesel mechanics very well.
Gallant Plumbing in Melbourne is on the lookout for South African plumbers and helps them emigrate.
The HECS programme, which helps to finance loans for tertiary education in Australia.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Jo Galloway is a professional actress, singer, dancer, writer and international voice artist.
In 2012 she moved to Los Angeles to take her career to the next level.
Ten years and far too many productions to name later, Jo has worked with Hollywood luminaries like Jimmy Fallon and Seth MacFarlane, and is now back in SA, intending to shuttle between LA and Cape Town depending on where the work takes her.
Jo gives us an amazing insight into Los Angeles, California, and the USA in general.
Although there's something here for everyone, I think listeners in the performing arts will find her story particularly valuable.
Enjoy.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
As a minor celebration of the 20th episode of South African Ex-Pats, I'd like to tell you about what it's like to move to and live in Barcelona, Spain.
And in my case, why I decided to come back to South Africa.
Barcelona is a city for those who love the good life. Work is secondary to living, there's a brilliant restaurant on every block, and the city itself features many architectural masterpieces. It's a place of high culture and drunken stag weekends. Elegant dance clubs and underground marijuana bars. It's warm-water beaches and leafy boulevards offer something for everyone.
However, it's not all sunshine and roses. There are a few challenges to moving to Spain and living in Barcelona that I experienced and would like to share with you.
Here are some resources for those wishing to relocate to Barcelona:
Idealista is one of the most popular property search sites for Barcelona.
There's a South Africans in Barcelona community Facebook page you can check out, although I haven't explored it much.
A nice summary of the various visas and paths to residency from a law firm I have no affiliation with :P
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Sven is a technician who became a financial planner who became a technician again in order to emigrate to Canada. It turns out that they have enough financial planners.
Sven is originally from Bulgaria, but lived in South Africa for 13 years and the visa process he and his South African wife went through is an interesting journey.
About 30 minutes into the interview, Sven mentioned a government programme aimed at helping parents save for their children's tertiary education. Unfortunately he overestimated the amount the Canadian government would contribute, but $7200 is still a pretty handy amount considering it's free. Here is a link to the RESP Savings Plan offered in Canada.
Enjoy.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Sherianne Kramer is an ex-pat post-doc criminal psychologist who moved to Amsterdam to complete her research, and still hasn't come home after 5 years.
She loves the beautiful canals and the calm, safe, stable nature of the city and the country. She describes the Dutch as gentle, deeply traditional, and possessing a secret sense of fun and appreciation for beauty that belies their somewhat dour, pragmatic exterior. Also, they're very tall.
When she's not teaching university student, Sherianne is working on her side hustle, Home.Made, a bespoke relocation business that helps South Africans relocate to the Netherlands.
If you want to check out what she's doing, you can find her website here, her instagram here, and FB here.
Also, she mentioned the Genius Premium, a company in SA that bridges the education gap between South African kids and the schooling system in the country they're moving to. Their website is here.
Enjoy
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Simon is an old friend whose work in the hotel industry has taken him across the world. He and his family are now settled down in Brisbane, Australia, or Brizzo, or Brizza, or Brisby, probably. Australians can't call anything by their actual name.
Simon paints an attractive portrait of the River City, and it certainly made me consider it. Between the access to nature, thriving food scene, safety, great schooling, relative scarcity of deadly animals (compared to the poisonous animals exhibit in any zoo), Brisbane sounds great.
As I mention in the upfront of the show, we got some sponsorship! Reeva Cutting, who was my first guest, has just released a cost-of-living calculator on her website, Proudly South African in Perth. Many of my guests have stressed the importance of working out a budget before you move to your new home, and this calculator will do exactly that. It's only 9 Ozbucks, so a small investment compared to literally everything else you're going to have to do to emigrate. :P
Enjoy.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
It was a huge pleasure to talk to Steve Reardon, a Durban boy who moved to America and obtained citizenship through a somewhat complex series of misadventures. His point about looking for pull factors of a possible new home rather than focusing on the push factors that are making you want to leave South Africa has stuck with me.
Although I don't see myself as a person who lives in America, I think Steve's positivity makes it feel far more relatable, and his insight into the living and working in the US is profound. If you have any questions after listening to this episode, Steve has said that he's happy to help if you look him up on LinkedIn.
Enjoy.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
In case you're wondering, St. Albans is one of those towns outside of London, but close enough to commute in for work.
Nicole and Warren moved to the UK with their dog, Tyson (not 'Tyrone', as I so cringingly misspeak) and have been there for about 2 years.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
My guest, David Ansara from the "Solutions with David Ansara" podcast, is the Chief Operating Office of the Centre for Risk Analysis. In this episode he gives us a view of the short and long term risks to South Africa and its citizens, and offers us some strategic advice on setting up your plan B.
A plan B is all about making sure that you have as many options as possible. If you don't want to emigrate now, look into obtaining an ancestral passport you may have access to.
Build your business profile so that you have the best chance of getting job offers that come with visa sponsorship. Offshore part of your investment portfolio (more info on how to do that can be found here).
Personally, I found this to be a fascinating conversation. David takes out the clickbait and the drama, and gives us a very level-headed appraisal of the situation in our country that goes beyond clickbait and outrage. Additionally, plan B gives me something to work on while the idea of emigrating continues to percolate in the background.
If you want to hear more from David, you can listen to his podcast here and watch the video version on YouTube here.
We reference David's conversation with Frans Cronje quite a bit. Here's the podcast link and here's the YouTube link.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Rita is a copywriter from Cape Town who was offered a job in the capital city of Estonia, Tallinn.
Most people (me included), don't know much about Estonia, and group it vaguely as "one of those eastern bloc countries".
That's correct, but there's far more to it. Here's the first paragraph of its Wikipedia page to get you started:
Officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti Vabariik), is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Lake Peipus and Russia. The territory of Estonia consists of the mainland and of 2,222 islands on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea, covering a total area of 45,227 km2 (17,462 sq mi), the land area is 43,432 km², and is influenced by a humid continental climate. Estonia belongs to the Baltic states with Latvia and Lithuania, and it is the smallest of the states both in land area and population. Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, and Tartu are the largest cities and urban areas in the country. Other notable cities include Narva, Pärnu, Kohtla-Järve and Viljandi. The official language of the country, Estonian, is the second-most-spoken Finnic language.
Rita loves the old world atmosphere and culture, combined with a huge focus on digital entrepreneurship. To me, Tallinn sounds very worthy of investigating if you don't want to (or can't) emigrate to one of the more usual South African destinations.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
In this episode my guests are Hailey Roos, managing director at Carrick Global Wealth Limited, and Candice Koenig, business consultant at Currency Partners.
Together Hailey and Candice boil down the basics of moving your money offshore, whether you're planning to emigrate or not. We talk about the how much you're allowed to move, what it will cost you, and what the process is. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that it's a much simpler process than I had imagined.
Note: I've set up an affiliate partnership with Currency Partners here, who are very well-known and trusted in the forex space. If you decide to work with them in sending money abroad, using that link will pay me a small commission and cost you nothing. Any support for the show would be deeply appreciated by my fat dog, who insists she is on the edge of starvation and requires expensive kibble.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. -
Jason is a musician who moved to Dublin during the height of the pandemic last year and has now been living there for a year.
Although his move was logistically and emotionally tough, he's loving the Emerald Isle and has a lot to share about it.
As I mention in the upfront introduction, there is a 4ish minute-long editorial from me about the podcast, what I'm trying to accomplish, and especially a call for you to let me know how I can improve the show. If you've got feedback or ideas, let me know by leaving a voice note on the Anchor website, or message me on LinkedIn.
Enjoy.
You can support this show by supporting Luggage Warehouse, the business my father started in the 80s, and my brother currently helms.
Two products of particular interest for emigration-curious South Africans: Build-a-Set and Luggage Glove.
If you need luggage, accessories, handbags, leather goods, noise-cancelling headphones and other awesome travel stuff, please check out Luggage Warehouse. We deliver nationwide and are just better than the competition. - Montre plus
