Dr. Jeremy Sharp (00:00.568)
Hello everyone and welcome to the testing psychologist podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jeremy Sharpe, psychologist, disowner, and private practice coach.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (00:12.066)
Many of y’all know that I have been using therapy notes as our practice EHR for over 10 years now. I’ve looked at others and I just keep coming back to therapy notes because they do it all. If you’re interested in an EHR for your practice, you can get two free months of therapy notes by going to thetestingpsychologist.com slash therapy notes and enter the code testing. This podcast is brought to you by PAR. Check it available on PARiConnect is an online library of
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Testing Psychologist podcast. I’m glad to be here with you. Today’s topic is super interesting to me personally and I think to a lot of you out there in the audience. I’m talking with Dr. Hillary Anand about living abroad and
getting licensed in other countries and practicing in other countries and moving your family around the globe to be a psychologist in places other than the United States. So Hillary has done this in a couple of different countries, New Zealand and Canada. And like I said, we get into all of the logistics around, well, what it means to be a nomadic psychologist.
All right. we talk about paperwork, unexpected visa stuff, personal and professional benefits of the nomadic lifestyle. we dive into the details of how to get licensed in these, two places. We talk about ethical and kind of logistical hurdles that you might run into, financial considerations in terms of the, things you have to spend money on to live and work abroad.
and all kinds of other things. We delve into the family dynamics and how to handle it with kids, which is sort of my main block at this point with older kids. So lots to take away if you have considered working abroad as a psychologist. So for the formal introduction, Hillary is the co-founder of Lumos Assessment, a clinic focused on providing learning disability and ADHD testing for teens and adults.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (02:37.41)
She’s been traveling around the world with her family for the past several years, and she’s in the process of moving abroad in the current moment. In her spare time, she likes to spend lots of time with nature and her cats and writing fiction. So there’s lots to take away here as always. Let’s see, if you are a psychologist looking for some business support, the place where I actually met Hillary was in one of my mastermind groups.
And there are new cohorts starting in the first week of August. They’re going to be beginner, intermediate, and advanced cohorts. So if you’re looking for a group experience with accountability and coaching to kind of get your practice unstuck, this could be the thing for you. So you can go to the testingpsychologist.com slash consulting and book a pre-group call. All right. Thanks everybody. Let’s get to my conversation with Dr. Hillary Anand.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (03:46.254)
Hillary Hay, welcome to the podcast.
Hi. Nice to be here.
Thanks for being here. Yeah, yeah, this is an exciting topic. This topic of practicing abroad has come up a lot in the past few months, I think, and certainly in the past several years. You know, I’d imagine there are kind of cycles to these discussions, but right now we are in kind of an upcycle around practicing abroad and how we might go somewhere besides the US.
we chose to. And you’ve done this. You’ve done this. So I’m excited to chat with you. So we can start with the question that I’ll always start with, which is, you know, some variation of, you know, why is this important to you? You can take that in whatever direction you want. It’s kind of an interesting application to this topic. So yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it is. It’s not a typical like, what do you, how do you practice? What do we do? So I’ll say a little bit of background for myself. We’ve been pursuing living abroad, moving abroad, pretty much since college, but really since 2022. And that was when post pandemic, we’re like, you know, just head out for a little bit. And we just really wanted to travel. And so we looked and we tried to find all these places. And I think
Dr. Hilary Anand (05:03.534)
to your question about, you know, why is this important for us to travel and adventure is important. We’ve taken our whole family, including our cat, abroad. we have traveled. Can’t forget the cat. She can’t go to all the places, but she’s been to many of them, including to Europe. So she’s a very well-traveled cat. But it’s just getting the experience of being abroad and living abroad and being in these places has really been valuable for me and for our family.
For the way I practice, for the way I think about the world. My kids are young, so for the way they see the world, it’s been incredible. So I think that’s why it’s so important to me. I’ve learned things about going through the licensure process in these other places that made me really think about the way we practice in the U.S. I’m in California and just, you know, pros and cons, good things and bad things about it. But it’s made me really think about that on a deeper level. So I think.
Just getting that experience is really important for me personally.
Yeah, yeah. Can you think back to the moment when you decided to take the leap? Because I feel like that’s, you know, a lot of us are in this maybe contemplation stage, right? Like we’ve done some research, maybe a lot of research, and then it’s a whole other thing to actually move to action. And I don’t know, can you remember back? Was there like a tipping point or was it a slow build and you like did all this planning and then…
went when you plan to go or how did that process work?
Dr. Hilary Anand (06:35.03)
gosh, there’s so many mistakes we made. Okay, so I’ll talk about I’ve gotten licensed in two other places in New Zealand and in Alberta, Canada. And those processes were a little different. So New Zealand, we were kind of in the height of the pandemic in California, especially Northern California, we stayed in pandemic protocol much longer than many other places did. And so we’re really looking at like 2021 2022 and
We’re like, you know what, we just want to leave. Like we want to get out. We want to go somewhere. Hey, New Zealand doesn’t have, you know, they’re doing this really well. And then I am learned what you talked about, just research, like did a ton of research, like, Hey, could this actually work? Do I like this? I am not a paperwork admin person by nature. I’m really quite awful at it. And so it was a huge test of my ability to like, can I actually.
do the thing. can research everything, right? I can research, can find out more about it, but like, can I actually do the thing? And we did finally settle on New Zealand. It was far enough away to be adventure. It was similar enough that our kids wouldn’t have a terribly hard time kind of adjusting. The other place we were thinking about was Portugal at that time. And we were able to take a trip in early 2022. And for several reasons, it was not the right fit for us. Beautiful country, wonderfully warm, you know.
inviting spot, but it just wasn’t a good fit for, we didn’t want to be in the city. We wanted to be kind of out in the, in the wilderness with the sheep. And so we really like, it was just kind of step by step. It was like, okay, we’re going to do this. And then like, let me just take the next step. Let me just do the next thing and the next thing. And so there wasn’t a moment in time, but I will say there was a moment in time where we’re like, we’re, we’re leaving, we’re out.
And for us that came at the Uvalde shootings that came very much at the like, okay, we’ve got young kids, know, our kids were going to be enrolled in school at that point. And we’re like, we’re out. Um, and so it was kind of a slow build up till that point. And then it was like, we’re going for this a hundred percent. Um, and luckily I had already been licensed, like I already got licensed.
Dr. Hilary Anand (08:55.31)
pre then and then was just kind of in the process of looking for jobs. And then I think I got a job off, I think I got two interviews like within the next week or two. So it was really kind of like all landing at the same time. But I remember being out to dinner with my partner and being like, yeah, it’s time to go. It’s go time. Let’s do this. We also had moments in which we reversed our decision and I can remember those very well too.
right right
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:15.406)
Got it.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:21.27)
Yeah, I could imagine that. mean, there’s a lot of ambivalence. know, can, yeah, pros and cons, and I think we’ll probably get into a lot of that. But just speaking, you know, personally, I can identify with some of that, you know, to a minor degree, right? Like we’ve considered moving abroad. We’ve done a lot of research into different places and I would say maybe gone like 60 % of the way down the path.
But there is a lot of back and forth and like, about this and how do we handle this? And of course, ultimately we’re still in the U S.
Yeah. what made the difference and what I would recommend to everyone, if you can, is to see the place ahead of time. Yeah. Which I know is like really silly, but was not silly when you were in, you know, 2022 and it was hard to travel and there was no one on airplanes. It may travel wonderful, but it was like very hard to do, right? And you couldn’t even do it to certain countries like New Zealand. Because when I got licensed in Alberta, was a very different decision-making process because it was very much
Hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:16.238)
So.
Dr. Hilary Anand (10:23.374)
Hey, we love this place. We absolutely love this city. We love this location. I want to be a part of the community. I want to help. Let’s go through the licensure process. And that was a different decision-making, but similar, like, oh, a little bit more conviction, I think.
I see. see. Well, let’s dig into some of the nuts and bolts here. I know people are probably anxious to hear what this actually looks like. So, I would love to start with more of the professional stuff. You know, we can talk about licensure and maybe some ethics and just practice guidelines and things like that. And then definitely want to hit the personal components too and talk about what this was like for your family. How did you actually, you know, live somewhere else and, you know, adapt to that and all those.
things. So let’s start with the kind of the licensure and logistics and you can start with either Canada or New Zealand. Let’s talk about both. Start with whatever one makes the most
Yeah. Let me start with Canada because it’s a little bit fresher in my mind. It’s more recent. So we did Alberta, which might be different province to province. So I can only speak to that. So we did Alberta licensure. And what I did first was seek CAP licensure, I believe is the acronym. It’s with the board.
and you can basically get this kind condensed life insurance. California is not a part of SciPact, so this was a way I was looking at getting licensed in a different state for practice reasons. And I was like, hey, let me just get this kind of life insurance that I can transfer to different states. So I had luckily already done that.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (12:06.638)
Okay, yeah, let me ask a quick question. Does SIPAC impact or influence Canadian licensure at all? Does that somehow pave the way?
It’s a good question. I don’t know because I can’t because I can’t do sci-pac.
Right, right, right. just, yeah, since you mentioned that, thought maybe there was something.
I don’t know if there is, but I know through this licensure type, and I can send a link to you later, but through this licensure type, I could just basically send this to Alberta. And it was almost everything. It was almost everything that I needed to get licensed there. And I had to fill out one or two more forms and of course pay them and get a reference or two. But it made the paperwork down to two pages because I had already gotten it.
And so I don’t know if side packs work similarly. I would like encourage people to check that out. So I did that and then I took, I’m taking my ethics exam. So you get licensed and they say, Hey, here’s your preliminary licensure. You just have to take an ethics exam in six months.
Dr. Hilary Anand (13:12.076)
All right. So it’s pretty safe for it. It’s a self-study handbook. Yeah.
Right. So that’s interesting. there’s no, it sounds like it’s similar to US licensure where there’s no national license necessarily. It’s province by province.
province by province. Yeah. And I do believe they’re working towards kind of being able to work across provinces. I met somebody in Canada who works in BC and Alberta, but you had to do province by province. So that’s part of going there and figuring it out because they’re all very different, you know, country. And so yeah, that was it. That was a pretty straightforward one.
Yes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:51.854)
Right. So very practical question. Is this just something someone could Google like Alberta psychologist licensure and it should come up pretty easily.
Yes. So over there, one thing that’s different from the U S is it’s usually called the college board instead of university or, or things like that. And so you can look up just licensure, psychologists, and then insert the province name, and then you’ll usually get taken to their website. I am a huge advocate and you’ll hear this in the New Zealand part too, especially in the New Zealand part is just call them. Like if you have a question, there was something I had to get like proof of being licensed in.
New Zealand and in California and I had a particular question about it and so I just called them and they’re like, yeah, here’s the way to think about it and talk through. So they’re super friendly just if you have any questions on any of process. And then the other thing I would say is there’s often multiple ways to get licensed. There’s if you’ve been educated in the country, if you’re an international trained psychologist, if you’re international but with this PAP organization, right? Like there’s different ways to do it.
Yeah, I was going to ask about that in terms of reciprocity of a US license. And listen, we could just stick with Canada for now. It sounds like you went the CAP route. As far as you understand, there pretty good reciprocity? mean, does the US license carry enough weight?
It carries a lot of weight actually. what I have found is in the countries I’ve looked into, have been mainly, again, Canada, but Alberta and New Zealand, also some other ones I’ve looked at, the US license and the standards that we have for, especially if you did an APA internship, are pretty widely held across the world, which is great. And then you have, like I said, you usually have to take an ethics exam, which 100 % agree with, you know, makes sense.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:44.066)
Asap.
But it’s pretty reciprocal and our training here is usually pretty reciprocal.
Okay, great, great. So before we pivot over to New Zealand, maybe this is the place where we can also talk about work visa stuff. Yeah, so at least for Canada or Alberta, what does that look like in terms of, okay, so maybe you get the license, that’s fantastic, but how can you actually work there?
Yeah.
Dr. Hilary Anand (16:09.122)
What can you do? Yeah. So there’s a couple ways that I am not an immigration attorney. So I’m going to like hugely copy out that, right? I’m going say the way we have done it, if you can do, you can basically either you form a co like you can form a company, right. And, and hire yourself. We are lucky that we have friends there and we have, my husband had a coworker there. And so he’s able to have the coworker and him establish a company there in, in Alberta.
and then hire one of us. So they could establish a mental health company and hire me as the main psychologist. Yeah. So there’s that way. The other way that my attorney had talked about that we didn’t pursue, so I don’t know as much about is the USMCA. Like there’s a lot of reciprocity in terms of working between Mexico, Canada, and the US. And so there’s also kind of pathways that way. I would highly recommend you can find an immigration attorney and just get a consultation for like 30 minutes.
for roughly 75 US and then just be able to be like, here’s my licensure, here’s this, what are my options? And then they can walk you through all the things, which is what we did. And then you can apply either through the system or you can apply at the border too, currently. This is in June, 2025. you can apply at the border. Yeah.
Right, right. Okay, that’s interesting. Yeah, I wasn’t even thinking about establishing a separate business in Canada, although that is certainly a viable.
A lot of people can also find jobs, right? So if you get licensed, this is what I did in New Zealand, you could also do it in Alberta. Once you’re licensed, you can apply for jobs locally and get somebody to sponsor a work visa too. And there’s a huge shortage, that’s the thing. Like there’s a huge shortage of mental health professionals in both of these countries. And so while it is harder to get hired as an international trained psychologist, it’s not nearly impossible. And you have training, a lot of people don’t.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:08.43)
Fantastic. Okay, so let’s switch over to New Zealand. What was that process like as far as getting licensed?
New Zealand, I love New Zealand. It was so much trickier and I think that was a little bit a couple things. One, cost a lot of money to ship things there, like a lot of money. Every time I had to ship documents over there, was like $150 because of the international fee. So it’s a silly thing. cost.
For somebody who’s not great at administrative stuff like I am, I had to ship two or three packages because I couldn’t get it all together and do it one time. So that being said, again, it’s more forms. I’ve called them several times to be like, hey, what does this mean? What can I do here? One of the tricky things about New Zealand and being in California, which is not applicable to all US states, you had to get documents notarized.
But then the person notarizing it had to certify it for you. I couldn’t self-certify. And in California, you have to self-certify when you notarize. So I had to, on one of our trips, I had to drive to a different state, get it certified there, and drive back and then mail it out. Gosh. It was really bizarre. And it was like for one document in particular, I’m, I think it was for like my grades or something like that.
Yeah.
Dr. Hilary Anand (19:28.558)
like innocuous form and they were very particular and this is why I had to mail multiple times. was like they’re very particular somebody else had to certify it not me. What do want me to do? I can be in California. So that was the part that I felt like it was much trickier in New Zealand than Alberta was they were much more particular on that type of paperwork and wouldn’t flex. This is how it goes in California like I’ve gotten a notarized three times I don’t know what you want me to do.
And answer was go to another state. So I was lucky that we were like 20 minutes away on one of our trips. So I could do that. But I’m sorry. I remember that being really tricky. I did not need to take an ethics exam. I thought it was really interesting. know. thought it was really interesting there. Yeah. So that it was just a little bit different of a process. Like it was more.
heavily paperwork focused, which is again, not my strong suit, but it was less of an adjustment in the way I practice versus Canada. It was more like, hey, let’s look at your ethics exam. How do you retake an ethics exam? And their CE form, I didn’t mention this, but their CE form is really different than California. And I had to fill it out and basically say what CEs I think I’m going to get this year and how I’m going to meet each requirement, including Alberta has a requirement for Indigenous.
Like you have to educate yourself for four hours every year on indigenous culture and things like that. And you have to see how you’re going to get that training, which is not something we do in California. yeah, so it was a little bit more like theoretically interesting for Alberta and like paperwork difficulty for New Zealand.
I hear you. And when we’re talking about paperwork and again, very practical, but are we talking like transcripts and I don’t know, licensure documentation like of training? mean, what can you remember? What kind of document?
Dr. Hilary Anand (21:28.79)
Yeah, so was forms you had to fill out, transcripts, or wherever you’ve been licensed. Where, what else was it? There was like a, there’s two or three more forms. you had to get references. Again, more references. You had to get, I believe you had to show like your most recent CE’s. I could be wrong on that one. But yeah, you had to kind of show that. You had to show your most recent licensure for sure. if you.
renewed it. You had to list out your professional activities and send a CV. Like there was just a lot of detail to that one. Think I’ve tried to like plot out of my memory.
That’s fair. Do you remember how long it took?
Yes, I do remember that. It took me six months, I think, for New Zealand because of all that back and forth on the certifying that transcript. And then it took me two months for Canada and seven weeks of that was waiting for California to send my license.
Very different, very different.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (22:28.714)
Yeah, yeah. Seems like Canada’s much easier. Yeah. Gotcha. And then how about the work visa situation in New Zealand? What did that look like?
So that I did not do, it’s harder to do like set up your own business there. So I didn’t pursue that path at that time. so I went to interviews. There are a lot of recruiters that will help you find a job. so I think I had like six interviews, one or two of which I found on my own, four of which a recruiter helped me with. there, so there are lots of jobs available. If you’re like, Hey, New Zealand’s great. mean, I love New Zealand. It’s a fantastic place. There are a lot, there’s a lot of need for mental health.
And so your wages will not nearly be the same because the is so different, but the job availability is there. And you’re still making, to be clear, you’re still making really good money for being in New Zealand. It’s just less than you would get paid in the US.
Okay.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (23:28.046)
I see. I see. Fair enough. And how long did you end up staying there?
So New Zealand was tricky. Smiling, because it was such a ridiculous process. So I got a few job offers, one of which I would have loved, but to meet their visa standards, you have to make a certain amount of money. And at that time, that job offer didn’t offer enough. So I couldn’t take it. And that was really unfortunate because it was in the city we wanted, all of that. Then I got another job offer, which was fantastic. The team was great. The university was great. All of it was really, it was a really cool job. We went to the city.
Um, was a crazy trip. We went there, we got COVID, we had to isolate. again, 2022. was like a really crazy, crazy trip. We went to the city and we’re like, I don’t know if we can do this. Um, and so I remember going home and I remember being at dinner with my husband and being like, what do we do? We’ve already pulled the kids out of school. We’ve already like gotten the house ready to rent. Like we’ve done everything to be able to do this. And I don’t know if we want, if I want this job.
And again, it wasn’t the team, wasn’t the university, all of that was fantastic. It was the location and being real about moving halfway around the world that I think got us cold feet. so we decided not to, and we decided like, well, I guess we’re just going to travel around the world because we’ve already set up our whole life to be able to do this. My husband took a remote job, like everything. We’d set up everything for it.
And so we did end up traveling and it was great and we got to try out all these places. So we ended up going back to New Zealand for seven weeks the next year, because again, it’s a fantastic place. love it. Ironically enough, we’re thinking about going for another couple months next year. It’s a place we have not been able to quit, but I think when it came to that point in time, we were having a really hard time committing to it. So we were there for seven weeks. We’ll be there for another couple months, I think. Next year.
Dr. Hilary Anand (25:22.88)
And then in Canada, we are actually currently in process of doing it. So we are in process of, I’ve talked with several people in the local area, figured out kind of what renting office space will look like. And then we’re just kind of in the final stages of getting the work permit and then finding a place to live.
Right. Yeah. So in each of these scenarios, it sounds like you would be working locally. So there’s no, there’s not really any conversation around like how to manage different time zones and like, you know, clients in different parts of the world or are there?
There is. So, um, for each of these places, I’d be working locally, like you said, but also still supervising and kind of managing for back home. So there’s times in which we’re back home and there’s times in which I need to meet with my business partner or I need to do things like that. And so those are more managing the time zones. Luckily, both of those are pretty easy. Alberta is an hour ahead of California. So really easy there. New Zealand is 19 hours ahead.
which functionally just means they’re like, it’s a day in like five hours. Kind of wake up early and early, you know, that’s an easier time zone. And my partner’s had to work in both places. So we’ve had to manage like, what does his schedule look like off shifted to ours? So yeah, and I’ve definitely messed it up a couple of times. Like I’ve been like, I totally did not put the time zone on correctly.
Of course, of course. So before we transition to more of the, I guess, lifestyle factors, what that was like, any hidden, I don’t know, ethical concerns, legal implications, I mean, anything in these processes that people may not anticipate that was kind of surprising to you.
Dr. Hilary Anand (27:05.966)
Yeah. So one, can say the tax concerns, Kind of really thinking through that, especially if you open up your own business and really working with kind of somebody who does taxes to do it, to manage it. There is a certain amount of money you can make abroad before taxes kick in in the U.S. because they’ll always tax you if you’re a U.S.
but you can earn us up to a certain amount of US dollars abroad before that will kick in on top of it. So also thinking about that when you get a job offer of like, ooh, can I stay below this limit? So you don’t have to pay more taxes on top of it.
Sure.
Yeah, so I think Texas just in general.
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s important. That’s important. So this is getting in the weeds a little bit. are you talking about the, I know you have, you know, your private practice in Cali, that’s based in California. So when you are you saying that when you live abroad, then it’s the money that you make from your private practice while living abroad, or it’s the money that you make from the local job while living abroad? Both. Is still, yeah, okay.
Dr. Hilary Anand (28:13.037)
Yeah.
All that funnels into US taxes. Exactly. In California, as long as you own a property, you owe state taxes. So that’s a thing to think about. But then for your salary, anything you earn in the US is taxed in the US. But anything you earn abroad, over the last time I looked at this, it was $110,000. It could have been different by now. But anything you earn over $110,000 abroad is also taxed in the US for the federal, on the federal level.
we’re thinking through and kind of managing that depending on your income level, depending on what you need. A lot of these places have a lower cost of living than where we’re living in California. And so we could kind of play with that, like how much I needed to earn to get out. So yeah, that’s probably the trickiest thing that I did not expect. Like I didn’t think about it.
Thank you.
Dr. Hilary Anand (29:13.344)
until we were talking to other friends who have moved abroad. so that’s worth thinking about.
Sure, sure. And did you just find an accountant who could navigate all of that or did you have to go outside and kind of reach, you know, find a new person?
No, we, so our accountant couldn’t, our person who had done taxes before. And so we had to go through basically, you know, when we’re setting up this business, okay, who do you recommend we talk to, to figure out the US? And there are people who specialize in this, right? Sure. People who specialize in working with expats. So it’s like, hey, we can do, you know, figure out all that liability. Great. So that’s the thing. And then as far as ethics,
You know, way you practice has so many kind of social dynamics in it, that really educating yourself and seeking out consultation and support in how do you navigate that because the issues are different in different places. Like what the societal pressures look like, what the norms look like, you know, what the particular populations you’ll look like for New Zealand.
I had to start learning Maori phrases and really kind of educate myself on that. So it’s not a culture I had known much about. New Zealand did a wonderful job of really taking steps towards integration and helping. And they haven’t nailed it. No one has nailed it in the entire world, but you know, they’re taking steps towards it. And so it’s a really, really, really big way and a big part of how people practice over there, at least in the university kind of sector that I was looking at.
Dr. Hilary Anand (30:48.854)
And then in Canada, know, there, there, again, the fact that I had to fill out a thing on CE saying, yep, this is how I’m going to get it was just so different. And in a really cool way, in a really great way, but just really different. so making sure you educate yourself on, on kind of what is really important for being a psychologist in that culture.
Quick question before we transition. keep saying we’re gonna shift topics, but did you get any sense of the receptivity of these other places to US people?
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Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:40.43)
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Let’s get back to the podcast.
most part, biologists are very welcome. Yes, we’re so excited. We love your background and your focus. Again, one of the job offers I had in New Zealand that I really wanted but I couldn’t go for, unfortunately, was working with diagnosing learning differences, which is what I do. That’s my private practice. But there, the training is still up and coming for that particular concern. And so they were like,
Yes, you have so much more experience, like you have so much experience, please. And I think the hesitation is more on the work permit and like kind of legality side and a little bit on the, the, you actually move here side, which I get obviously, I’ve been on both sides, unfortunately on that one. But I think most people are really welcoming towards your citizens. We were up in Canada for a couple months earlier this year and I really did not get the sense.
that, especially people who are looking to move there and kind of bring skills into the economy. think there’s just much more openness. will say I’ve been to Portugal twice, one in 2022 and then one last year in 2024. And you can tell there’s a tension coming between expats and locals. And that’s a very different economic picture than Alberta and New Zealand that I’m talking about. And so
Dr. Hilary Anand (34:38.836)
Yeah, so think it is present in some places, but not in the two that I was looking at.
I see that. Yeah, I was just reading something maybe within the last week around protests and things like that in certain, I think European countries around tourism and overtourism and expats and that kind of thing.
Portugal was one of those and I get it. I totally get it after being there and I understand. Like I said, that’s a tension, a different economy, a different setup. And so that’s part of knowing the local culture, right? And knowing like, oh, hey, is this good for not just myself, but for kind of the society at large.
Yes. Yes. So let’s talk about the, yeah, the personal component and the family piece. I know, again, just speaking personally, this is the biggest hurdle for us. We have a 12 and a 13 year old, they’re smack in the middle of middle school. They’re involved in sports and, you know, all their teams and all the stuff. And so that’s all that’s the biggest hurdle when we think about how would we do this? What would that be like for them? So just selfishly, that’s where I want to start is how did you start to think about this for your kids and uprooting kids?
Yeah. So my kids, when we first started thinking about this, my kids were six and five. So different stage, right? Totally different stage. And as they’ve gotten older, they’re now eight and seven. There have been shifts. And so I don’t ever want to tell people like, yeah, your kids will be fine, you know, cause they might not be, they’ll ultimately be fine, but you know, they might not adjust really well to that. I, having done it and having kind of traveled all these different places and lived in these different places and all of that.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:55.191)
Okay.
Dr. Hilary Anand (36:17.102)
or at least a couple months at a time, it’s been really, really cool to see what our kids have gained and the perspective that they have that’s just really different in both obscene ways and not. They’re like, I want to go to this place for my birthday. I want to go to the Great Barrier Reef. I’m like, that is 15 hours away by flying friend. And so what they expect, right? What they expect from the world of wow.
I’ll never forget we hopped on a plane, I know it’s a one or two hour flight. And my kids are like, this is short. Like we don’t even have enough time to like get into this. And I’m like, right, because you’re used to these like 10 to 13 hour flights. Massive or we’re about to go on a massive road trip. And I’m like, yeah, they could do a 10 hour day in the car. They’ll be fine. They can sleep anywhere. They’ve had so many conversations cross language cross
passive.
Dr. Hilary Anand (37:12.494)
Culturally, I have this distinct memory of my very small, like five or six year old. He’s very, he’s just a small kid. Talking with in Switzerland with these giant waiter, they’re like six feet. So they just towering over him. And he’s like ordering his french fries and they’re all diligently paying attention to him and being very sweet. But just the skills they’ve been able to learn in traveling have been really cool. And
the ability to adapt to a different culture and learn, you know, and I think one of the things in my raising in the US was very much, it’s very myopic. It can be very myopic and very US focused. If you look at our headlines, it’s all US focused, you know, not all, but mostly. they’re just knowledge of the world writ large has been really cool. And then the other thing I would suggest for people when you’re thinking about kids in particular is you can do a trial run.
You can go over like two or three months, right? During summer break during a two different place and be like, yeah, okay, now this is good. Like we’re good on the two or three months. We don’t need to move anywhere. Or you can, or you can be like, oh, this is great. I want to do this more. Right. It doesn’t have to be a, move abroad or nothing. It could be like, oh, we’re going to go for a little bit or we’re just gonna, we’re going to try this out. we’re, you know, they have programs that, um,
have school included. And so you can kind of look at these different ways of doing it. So that be my take on it.
That’s awesome. mean, all those things you mentioned are, I think, the benefits that we would hope for that, you know, our kids become more worldly and can talk with anyone and have these experiences expand their horizons. What do you, what did you do for school? I mean, I know from offline that you do some homeschooling, but yeah, how did you navigate the school situation?
Dr. Hilary Anand (39:07.406)
Yeah, so while they happened, we pulled our kids out. We’re like, no, we’re committed to doing this. And then we get to, you know, August and we’re like, oh, no, we’ve already pulled our kids out of school. Like, what are we gonna do? And I’m like, okay, I guess we’re gonna homeschool and I guess we’re in trouble around the world, which has not ever been in my life plan. Like, that’s not what I foresaw myself doing. And so we ended up what I call accidentally homeschooling like, whoops.
Okay, we’ll figure this out. And that’s been the most part we have put them in camps or like one day programs in a lot of these places. So they’ve been in for school in Canada in the middle of winter in the Rockies, you know, zero degree Fahrenheit weather, I’m like, have fun, you’ll be fine. See ya. And they love they it’s funny, they’re going there for camp for a week in July. And they’re like, but there’s no ice. Like, I don’t really want to do this if there’s no ice that I can slide on. And I’m like,
That’s a unique perspective. So we’ll find these like kind of one day program. There are also international schools that can take kids for a semester at a time. There are and then there’s also yeah, so we did homeschooling. That was kind of our jam and it’s ended up working way better than we thought we would. I’ve got a whole I mean, you’ve already had a podcast on homeschooling and and having your regular practice and yeah, that’s the whole thing.
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (40:32.098)
Yeah, yeah, okay. I mean, so the ease with which you are talking about this tells me that it worked. I think that’s the thing. Like it’s easy for me and my personality to really get wrapped up in details and like, how are we going to navigate this? And like, what about their friends and all that, you know, would you say just like philosophically? That’s this question. It made sense in my mind and now I’m having trouble.
articulating like philosophically is there just some like role with it attitude you have to you have to let go of some of that stuff at a certain point and just like trust that it will work
Yeah, I think both you have to have it but also like, we’ve kind of beaten it into ourselves. There’s so many experiences I can tell you where I’ve just like, what are we doing? Why are we doing this? Like this is a nightmare. You know, getting COVID in New Zealand and having to isolate in a town of 1000 people with no children, silent all. Like that’s one. And so it happens but if you go through enough of those, you’re like,
we can just deal with this. Like this will be fine, you know? And I think like as on a minor note, I hate flying. I hate flying. I’m very anxious flyer. And I’ve always been at people like what in the world? I’m like, yeah, but the end result, what I get to do when I get to those locations is worth all the like anxiety that I kind of went through. And so it’s kind of having almost that framework, not a like, you have a role with an attitude or you don’t, but I like,
it’ll be, we’ll figure it out. And if it is really terrible, we’ll change it. Like, we’re not going to sacrifice our kids happiness or health, you know, over it. And so if it gets really bad, you’ll shift it, like you’ll figure it out. And I think that has been the bigger attitude shift. And it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There’s definitely been hard parts where the kids are like, can we go home? Can we do this? So that happens too.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (42:28.342)
Yeah, I believe it. believe it. Maybe that’s something to talk about, you know, any surprising, like things that were particularly hard, you know, warnings you might give other families who are considering this, things to look out for.
Yeah, I think the logistics were particularly hard, especially every time we made a transition. It was just setting up new ways for the kids to make friends, new experiences, housing, readjusting to how do you shop in the grocery store. Every time we made that transition, it was really stressful. And so if you can minimize the amount of transitions, I have a friend moving to New Zealand next month.
actually, and she’s just going for two years because she’s also done what we’ve done, which is like travel around a lot with the kids and she’s like, we’re just going to go in one place and be there for a little bit. And so I think if you can minimize that and if you have somebody, either yourself, your partner, maybe your kids, if they’re old enough, that can deal better with the logistics, know, that was the part that I think tripped us up the most. And when we have struggled, it’s kind of almost always falling down to that.
gotcha. I gotcha. Yeah, that makes me think of another question or two around the transition. mean, what did you do with your house in the US? Are you renting your house during this time? Are you, do you own the house? I mean, I have a lot of questions. What is your possessions? Do you, what do you do with these things?
Yeah.
Dr. Hilary Anand (43:52.322)
Right. So we own our cars, we own our house. We’re lucky in that way. And we set up mail forwarding, first of all, like that was like one of the weird logistics things that we’re like, no, we’re in a different country now. So we set that up ahead of time. The first time around, we did not rent out our house and I 10 out of 10 don’t recommend that. Just from the financial burden of it was just. Yeah, that was a lot. so to carry.
It seems hard. Too.
Right. All your rental, all the unexpected things, your flight costs, all that jazz. So don’t recommend that. But there are several ways you can rent out your house. We’re currently doing it as a longer term rental. And you can do that. You can rent to traveling nurses, which is kind of another big way of traveling physicians in general. You can do Airbnb if that’s your jam. That again, was just another level of logistics that we couldn’t handle.
And so we rented out our house. We still own it because we want to come back, you know, and we want that, that place and that neighborhood and all of that. Our cars, we would have friends move them every now and then because we didn’t want them, right? We didn’t want them losing out their battery. Or, you know, street cleaning would happen or whatever. So have friends move them every now and then, or give them to family. like, Hey, here’s a car you can use for a little bit.
Yeah, if you travel, I mentioned traveling with a pet and other logistics. Look up the requirements, right? For certain countries, especially island countries have a lot of strict biosecurity. New Zealand has one of the strictest biosecurity I’ve ever seen in the world. My shoes from my bag got taken out and bleached down because they’re like blue dirt. Absolutely no speck of dirt. So, you know, we couldn’t bring our cat there.
Dr. Hilary Anand (45:43.054)
You have to go through nine months of prep for that. didn’t. so, but other places you need like a rabies vaccine or a recent medical, you know, health certificate or what have you. So making sure you look those up ahead of time. If that’s something you want to do. I have friends who have people take care of them for a couple months when they leave as well.
That makes sense. So I’m putting this all together. So you are in San Diego now, but you are not living in your actual house. Is that right? Interesting. So you just long-term rented your house and know that you’re going to be in San Diego, like at certain points and you’ll just rent something while you’re there.
No.
Dr. Hilary Anand (46:20.462)
Yeah, so we found like a short-term rental here, like a month-to-month rental here. And so we’re doing that because we have family here, we know we’ll be here a couple months out of the year, all of that. And so we kept our house, which is in a different part of California, and then we are renting here. And then the good thing is when we get all this paperwork all sorted, then we can kind of give 30 days notice and then go up to rent somewhere else.
Yeah, gotcha, gotcha. So someone is thinking about going down this path as far as budgeting. there a ballpark? there a… I don’t know, it’s going to vary depending on the family and the person, financial situation and all of that. So we could either tackle this in terms of general kind of budgeting strategies or things that pop up that you don’t anticipate. Yeah, either of those.
So many things that pop up that you don’t anticipate. So I mean, I have so many budgeting strategies, but I’m going to go with kind of the first part of that, which is the things to think about. Think about your visa costs. And so those typically have run between four and 10 K for the, for the family, for getting all the paperwork done, for hiring the lawyers, kind of things like that. You can do it on your own, but.
Okay. Yeah.
paperwork is not our strong point. So we were like, we’re not going to get a visa if we have to do this on our own. If you get a job offer that will do it for you that could cut down on some of the costs and then you would just have to do your family. So that is that’s a way to mitigate that. But if you’re doing setting up your own business or something like that. already mentioned taxes, license your fees in different places, right? They’re usually a couple hundred a year.
Dr. Hilary Anand (48:07.97)
depending on the place. just kind of thinking about that. And then I would tell everybody to just give yourself a little bit extra cushion if you’re going to move because your Airbnb you’re going to rent while you look for a place all of a sudden has mold. I don’t know. Ask me how I know that. You’re, you know, you need to eat out for a week because you like haven’t figured out the local grocery store.
There’s just so many weird things that can come up. You forgot this item in your packing or you you need to pay for extra suitcases or what have you. They’re all little things that can add up. So really building yourself a cushion. And again, this depends on how logistically minded you are. But if you’re not like us, I would cushion in a couple of several thousand dollars just.
Mainly for the mainly for the housing, making sure you have enough money that you can get other housing if you need to. That’s kind of the main question. Everything else isn’t super expensive, but the housing can be really tricky.
Yeah, that makes sense. Any resources that were particularly helpful for you or are particularly helpful for you as you have navigated these journeys? Either online or, you forums or reddits or, I mean, yeah, like…
Yeah. So I found when I was looking at going, kind of going to New Zealand, I’ll say in particular, because we couldn’t travel there. We couldn’t like go and check it out first. found these great podcasts, to be honest. Like that was where I started was I started with podcasts and then some of the podcasts had members, member communities. And those were really helpful because they were like, Hey, here are some local resources that are helpful. Here are some things to think about here navigating both the
Dr. Hilary Anand (49:52.184)
practical and emotional side of all of this. Here are other people who are doing the same thing so you don’t feel a little nuts, you know? Like that’s really valuable because especially when we were doing it, people were like, what in the world are you doing? Now we have a ton of friends who are traveling abroad and living abroad, but like back then it wasn’t quite the case. So, you know, it kind of depends on where you’re at in that cycle, I guess.
Yes.
Dr. Hilary Anand (50:15.638)
I would say podcasts are a great one. Facebook communities are another one. Like I have mixed feelings towards Facebook, but I also have like found a lot of communities here, right? This is one of them. That’s been just very valuable for myself. Those two I’d say are the biggest one. And then don’t forget if you’re interviewing for jobs in particular, ask to be connected, right? Like, hey,
Who can I talk to of people who have made this move similarly or things like that? And that can be really, really helpful. New Zealand in particular was really good around that because it’s such a big move, right? It’s so far that people are like, nope, here’s all these people you could talk to about how to move abroad and what they wish they would have done. And many people had moved them there themselves. So those were all really helpful. yeah, podcasts would be the place to start. You can also have friends who moved to Portugal who did a lot of YouTube videos, right? And so like,
seeing that so you can kind of see what life will look like and all of that. And also as a way to like hype yourself up when things get hard. Right, because you get kind of down on it. You’re like, oh, I don’t want to do another one of these things. We just encountered something in our move literally in the past couple days. Like, okay, let’s look at pictures, let’s look at video, let’s like remind ourselves why we want to do this. And I think that can be, for me, it’s very important.
That’s important.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:32.492)
Yeah, that totally resonates with me. could see there’s probably a lot of excitement around it at first. you know, there’s like a dip when you have to do all the logistics and paperwork and, you know, stuff doesn’t work out and you have to pivot and do something different. Yeah, of course. Like you would need something to like pick yourself back up again. That’s a huge undertaking.
Or you don’t get the job interview you want or like there’s just so many things that you could kind of fall down on. Yeah, I would just, I would highly recommend kind of building that community. It’s something I’ve thought of, of like, should I just build this community of people who are interested in it? I haven’t undertaken that yet, but it’s something I’m thinking about.
Nice, nice. Well, maybe there’s a business idea for you. There we go. Well, this has been great. I know there’s so much more that we could talk about and, you know, details and stories and things like that. But I just wanted to give people a sense of what this could look like in a couple different countries. I really appreciate you talking through all of this.
There you go.
Dr. Hilary Anand (52:38.464)
Absolutely, I’m happy to be on here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp
Yeah, if folks did want to reach out, first of all, are you open to talking with folks? And if so, what’s the best way to contact you?
Absolutely. So I would say my email is best and I’ll give that to you, but it’s hillaryannandphd at gmail.com. So that’s probably the best way. And then also my practice is Lumos assessment, Lumos like the long lighting. And so you can also do a contact form that way too.Dr. Jeremy Sharp
Yes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:09.238)
Nice, nice. Yeah, we’ll make sure to put those in the show notes so folks can reach out. yeah, this is super cool. And it’s, personally very interesting because we’re still, the door is wide, it’s still wide open. So I love just hearing your experience. And it sounds like, correct me if I’m wrong, just as we close, it sounds like you have had a generally positive experience to the point that you’re pursuing these adventures more and more.
I would say they’ve been generally positive. They’ve always been learning even when they’ve been hard. They’ve been learning Yeah, we’ve got a couple adventures on tap for the fall and next year that obviously we’ve not been dissuaded by any of it
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, this is super cool. Yeah. Great to chat with you, Hillary. Thanks for being here. All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes, so make sure to check those out. If you like what you hear on the podcast.
course.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:15.222)
I would be so grateful if you left a review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you’re a practice owner or aspiring practice owner, I’d invite you to check out the testing psychologists mastermind groups. I have mastermind groups at every stage of practice development, beginner, intermediate and advanced. We have homework, we have accountability, we have support, we have resources. These groups are amazing. We do a lot of work.
and lot of connecting. that sounds interesting to you, can check out the details at thetestingpsychologist.com slash consulting. You can sign up for a pre-group phone call and we will chat and figure out if a group could be a good fit for you. Thanks so much.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:20.472)
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