When people found out that we were moving overseas, the most common question I get asked, as the wife, is, “Are you excited?”

Some ask sincerely as they want to vicariously experience what it’s like to make such a big change in one’s life.

Some ask - well, in a way you know you’re not supposed to answer in a positive manner because you can see from their faces that they think you don’t deserve such luck.

For both, I answer as honestly as I can, because while I am 30% excited, I am 50% scared (and 20% just tired from all the planning and packing).

Scared that adjustment to life in an entirely different country and culture might not settle as easily as we’d wish it to. Scared that my husband might not like his job and we’d all have to move back. Scared that my kids will be uprooted so easily by the American culture when their own Malaysian Chinese roots have not even taken a good grip yet. And that my husband and I can do nothing but struggle to hold them back before they get swept away into ‘living the American dream’ when we’re not even Americans!

A lot of people also ask then, why we are moving there. The first - and only good reason we can think of now - is education. With my salary and my husband’s, we definitely cannot save RM500k a child to send them to uni when it’s time for them to go. At least, in a country like the USA, if given the chance to stay permanently, that will at least be taken care of without having to cost both ours arms and legs. Or our retirement fund.

Ironically, when we move to the US, we will be making less money. Contrary to what people must be thinking, we will only be bringing home 1/2 the bacon, with me not working. I think this is a good thing, though. It will, at the very least, make us more careful, conscious human beings.

Is that enough to make such a move? I think so.

Why would YOU move to a more developed country, if given the chance, except to make more money?