December of 2010 is turning out to be big ‘news month’! Big time! Here’s the next showstopper for ya:
We are moving to Sweden!
No, there is no need to rub the sleep out of your eyes or renew your contacts prescription, you read it! The Harrison-Helin’s are closing the books on Scotland to set up shop in a new-old country. Good old Sweden. The home of IKEA, Volvo, ABBA, Roxette, Mats Sundin, H&M, Ace of Base and the Harrison-Helin’s. Has a certain ring to it, doesn’t it?
Why, you ask?
Short answer: Because opportunity knocked.
Long answer:
After working very closely with the sales- and management team in my company’s Swedish office for over 3 years from over here in Edinburgh, the time has finally come to join them, full time and on location in Stockholm. I have been offered a very exciting opportunity to work even closer with major accounts in Sweden together with this awesome group of people and the details around this move were finalized yesterday. This is no doubt a fantastic career opportunity and I am so ready to get my teeth stuck into a new challenge!
The opportunity to work for CareerBuilder in Sweden aside; the timing could not be better for us. Moving to Sweden has always been an option for us when we’ve been discussing ‘what to do when we grow up’, only we love Edinburgh and our wonderful network of friends here so we’ve had no desire to change that. Now that we have Ethan and with H2 on the way, we’ve had to reconsider and rethink our priorities. For some time now, we have weighed our different options for things like childcare, benefits, opportunities, etc here in the UK and compared with our options in Sweden and needless to say, Sweden won.
Here’s a math example to illustrate part of our reasoning behind this decision:
Fulltime day care in the UK per month for 1 child: £900 or 9653 SEK
Fulltime day care in Sweden per month for 1 child: 1280 SEK (monthly fee capped at a maximum of 1280 SEK by the government)
So, if you do the math, you will see that 9653 SEK divided by 1280 SEK = 7.5. Hence; we could in theory have our flock of 7.5 future kids in fulltime day care in Sweden for the same cost as for 1 fulltime day care spot here in Edinburgh! To top that off; In Sweden, for a second child the fee is reduced to 840 SEK, for a third child it is 420 SEK and for a fourth child, completely free! …and as an added bonus, Ethan will of course get to learn Swedish even faster by hanging out with his fellow Swedish toddler friends all day long!
Moving country with everything that comes with it in terms of logistics, planning & timing, visas, etc is a huge undertaking. We know this after moving from both Sweden, Canada and Ireland. Now add a 17 month old son with a need for speed and a bun in the oven to the equation!
But we love a good challenge and we have already started our usual research and are Googling, phoning and emailing like crazy. To top all of this off even more; my start date in Sweden is February 1st, we are about to head off on our fabulous Christmas trip to the States and once back in Edinburgh, I am away for a few days on a work trip to Barcelona. Phew!
Wish us luck!
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