Living a double life ... sort of

Moving abroad has certainly taught me the importance of being organized. We've come across so many details we never considered when we first talked about making this trip. For example, we have separate credit cards and bank accounts for the U.S. and NZ. We must file taxes in both places, and the tax years are different. We even own cars in both places, so there's the licensing and insurance that go with each of those.

We actually tried to sell the Audi in Kansas City before moving but didn't find the right buyer before we needed to leave. It worked out great though, as it's saving us a ton of car rental fees when we come back for visits and we won't be rushed into buying something when we make the big move back.

We even need to keep multiple mail addresses. Jake's folks have generously agreed to let us keep it at their home, and leave their address on record with the license and insurance folks. My U.S. credit card company won't allow me to use my card if I'm not a U.S. resident, so they think I'm living with my folks for now. This means, too, that we have to pay some bills here and some there.

And we have six phones (two not pictured).

1. NZ home phone for local calls.
2. My prepaid mobile for NZ texting and calls.
3. Jake's blackberry for work in NZ.
4. Our Vonage voip phone that uses a US number and rings here at home. This is the phone most likely to wake us up in the middle of the night (you listening to this, Matt?). If you believe anything Jake says, apparently I usually wake up just enough to elbow him in the gut and yelled "US phone!" at him before I fell back asleep.
5. Our prepaid mobile that works when we're in the US. (We mostly use it to look up our US friends' numbers, and then make the call on the Vonage phone.)
6. The MagicJack, another voip system/infomercial product that we can use anywhere in the world where we have an Internet connection and a phone receiver. At this point, we don't use this amazing system often, but it deserves it's own blog entry.

If I have to remember another phone number, I'm going to pull my hair out! Just kidding, but I think it's quite an interesting lifestyle to get used to. Thank goodness for online banking and bill pay! I can't imagine living abroad without the miracle of the Internet.