I am totally a city bug and that is one of the main reasons why Luxembourg is driving me nuts and the mention of NYC got me all starry eyed. I grew up in the countryside and I hated every minute of it. To me quality of life is all about how many things there are to do, how spontaneous you can be when deciding what to do on a given day, how easy it is to get to places without a car (I have extreme driving anxiety after having had that stroke), in short everything associated with major urban areas. Luxembourg is driving me nuts. We manage as we have a lot of money to spend on nannies, taxis and whatnot, but to be honest, one big issue is that this is a very boring place to be if I am not working, and if I am here I better be working as I get paid a lot for it. And I am quite burnt out with my job as it is, well, boring and there is a lot of petty office politics around it and, while I could easily pursue a different job with the same employer, I am too afraid that taking on a bigger bite might make it even harder to manage children so I am just being a vegetable in my current job and living for the day I go on parental leave with the baby I am pregnant with. This NYC thing came up almost as a joke because our 6 year old often asks to go to "America" and I know husband works with the US a lot but he's mostly been talking about Dallas and I wasn't super keen on moving there (could be a load of prejudice but I don't think someone who hates Luxembourg because it is not enough like Sweden should be moving to Texas)...but now there seems to be a NYC option and that sounds a lot more appealing.
If we do go, I will definitely be viewing it as a money spending as opposed to money saving adventure so we will get whatever it takes to make life easier and better... au pair, nanny, large apartment in a fancy place etc.
I don't think they can offer my husband a package that would offset the loss of my relatively high salary but that's really not necessary as I am dying to take time off and we are not running a tight budget.
We have been saving over 100 000$ per year for years now as we are both well paid and rather Mustachian in our ways (no car, live way below our means in terms of housing, travel etc).
Even if my husband's entire NY package gets blown on maintaining sanity in NYC it will probably still be worth it. I think in some ways knowing that it is impossible for the offer to be financially better than both of us working right here is letting me focus on quality of life questions. Because we are earning a massive fortune here compared to what we could realistically ever earn in Sweden and yet I am quite sure that we'd have had a nicer life there.
When we were just starting out with our stash I was very focused on how much money we can save, by now I am a little bit tired of it all. We have saved a lot. Husband's career is moving upward. My job is as secure as they get. At this point I really mostly want to explore other locations and other set ups (I am dying to be a stay at home mom, I am loving the whole US idea as I am assuming that the visa I get will not allow me to work, which will remove the guilt factor (my husband is Swedish so to him a stay at home wife is a foreign concept, everyone should want to work) so yey, bring it on!)
My husband will probably want to move back as for him this is a networking opportunity that he can then capitalize on back here. I will also still need to go back to my job at some point as I still need to work for about 5 years in order to qualify for a very generous pension. It owuld be a stupid move to leave the job before I have qualified for that, simply as a matter of precaution. I am a civil servant of the European Union, it is a veryprivileged position to be in , it can't hurt to be entitled to these benefits when I turn 65, even if I forego actually working until that age.
We own property here that we would probably keep and rent out (even if I'd love to sell it as we will need larger when we come back, but this market here is so crazy it may be smarter to wait it out and sell when we want to buy bigger).
Internet tells me that the salary for his position in NYC is 150-190 000$ so surely they will not offer less than that for someone who is supposed to drag over a wife and three kids? That would surely be enough to live a normal life there, especially knowing it is temporary so we have no long term concerns such as college for kids and/or job loss, if he finds himself out of a job we just go back to my job and our numerous assets in Europe.
Ah, now I am even more excited, I can't wait to hear back on what exactly they would be offering. To be honest my main concern now is that we would have to go before the baby is born so I might have a clash with the dreaded healthcare almost right away.