Moving to Spain

Most people moving into a Spanish home end up making the same mistake: running to the store three or four separate times in the first week because they didn't think ahead about what they'd actually need. It's a common frustration, and an easy one to avoid. None of this is stuff worth paying to ship from the US anyway. Tools, cleaning supplies, and basic household items are heavy, cheap, and often sized or wired for a system Spain doesn't use, which makes shipping them a poor use of your container budget on top of the wasted trips.

Going back and forth to the EU to plan for a move is a significant part of relocation costs. We've tried to plan our move related trips to coincide with vacation trips to save money on airfare. While airfare to Europe has never been cheap, prices keep rising due to all of the current things going on in the world.

One day while getting ready to book a flight, I accidentally reversed the airport codes on the website, going from Spain to the US and back to Spain. The surprise? The exact same transatlantic flight can cost noticeably less if the round trip starts in Europe instead of the US. Same route, same plane, even the same airline — different price depending on which end of the ocean the ticket originates.

if you have Global Entry and you're spending a significant chunk of time living abroad, there are two things you should make sure are current in your Trusted Traveler Program (TTP) account.

In most US homes interior walls are drywall with wooden studs. WiFi signals pass through these materials fairly easily. Spanish homes are built very differently. Walls are usually concrete block, brick, or reinforced masonry and floors between levels are often solid concrete.