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Why a checklist beats a calculator

Online relocation calculators are a good way of estimating an order of magnitude. They are not a planning tool. The reason is that the costs they miss are systematically larger than the costs they include. A typical calculator quotes shipping, flights, school fees and rent. The real budget includes setup costs that compound silently, lease deposits in cash, school registration and capital levies, tax-equalisation gaps, banking and translation fees, repeated furnishing of two households during the overlap, and a long tail of one-off purchases that no one warns you about.

The checklist exists to make those items visible before the move, not after. It is a list rather than a formula because the right number depends on your family, your city and your employer's package, and the most useful thing we can do is make sure nothing is missing. Couple it with our cost calculator for the numerical estimate, and the school choice guide for the largest single budget item.

What is inside the 42-page PDF

  • The full setup-cost line items, from visa fees to driving licence conversion, organised by week of arrival.
  • The hidden housing costs: deposits, agency fees, furniture rental during overlap, utility connection and the legal-translation fee that catches everyone.
  • The school fee loading matrix. Tuition is usually 65 to 75 percent of the all-in figure. We list the other 25 to 35 percent.
  • Tax-equalisation gaps and the lump-sum hidden in cost-of-living indices.
  • The healthcare, insurance and dental items that fall outside corporate coverage in most countries.
  • One-off purchases: school uniforms, sports kit, summer camps, language tuition for accompanying parents.
  • Banking and currency: account-opening fees, FX spreads on regular tuition payments, multi-currency tools that pay for themselves quickly.
  • Return-of-move planning. The line items that decide whether the family ends the assignment whole or out of pocket.
  • City annexes: typical setup-cost ranges for Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Geneva, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Stockholm, Madrid, Lisbon, Bangkok, Tokyo, Seoul and London.

Already shortlisting schools?

Our school finder filters by city, curriculum, fees and language of instruction. Pair it with the checklist so the fee number you use in the model is the all-in number, not the headline tuition.

Who this is for

Three groups of families get the most out of the checklist. First, parents whose employer has put forward a relocation package and who want to test it line by line before they accept. Second, self-funded movers who are not sponsored by a company and need to budget the move from scratch. Third, returning expats moving back to a higher-cost home market, where the assumption that "we know how this works" tends to be most expensive. The framework is the same in every case. The numbers shift by destination.

What other parents have said

"We were eight days from signing the package. The checklist surfaced three items missing from the offer that added up to a five-figure annual cost. HR added them all without quibble once we put it in writing."

Family of three, London to Singapore

"I had moved three times before. I still found four items I had been absorbing personally for years. The Dubai annex on its own was worth the signup."

Single parent, Dubai

Frequently asked questions

Is the checklist really free?

Yes. We send the PDF immediately on signup. No charge, no upsell, and we do not pass your email on to schools or relocation firms.

Which destination cities does it cover?

The checklist itself is destination agnostic. We include an appendix with typical cost ranges for fourteen major expat hubs, from Dubai and Singapore to Berlin and Rotterdam.

Can my employer use this with the relocation team?

Yes. Many HR teams use it as a baseline for negotiating relocation packages. There is no licensing restriction on sharing it within a single organisation.