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Hello, Britain! I will be emigrating to the UK in a week and I have questions and could use advice. Here are 20 questions!
(lemmy.world)
I have most of the big details sorted, but because I am going to be new in the country aside from a few family visits and one business trip, I have far from expert knowledge on living in the UK. I try to research as much as I can, but there are limits.
These questions are going to probably be subjective, and some may be dependent on where we're going to live in Britain long-term, something I can't tell you until I get a job, but I trust people on Lemmy more than some random Google search to tell me what they actually think.
So, here are my 20 questions- although some are really multipart questions- and I will probably end up asking more based on what I find out. I felt like 20 was an exhausting enough number. They are not in any particular order, I had about 8 and then I kept thinking of others and stopped trying to organize them. Please feel free to answer as many or as few as you like. Assume we won't be getting rich off of my salary, but also won't be living in a council flat.
- Which mobile phone company would you recommend and why? Getting a UK phone number for both me and my daughter is going to be one of the very first things on my itinerary.
- Obviously, I will need a place to put my money. I would rather go with a building society than a bank. Which would you recommend?
- Which supermarket(s) would you recommend? Which should we avoid and why? Believe it or not, my daughter is happy to eat the cheap supermarket sushi they have in supermarkets here. Is that available there?
- What should I think about when getting us a GP? I have health issues and need to get a National Insurance number as quickly as possible, but should I wait until we have a more permanent place to live? What are my options there?
- My daughter is a 14-year-old neurodivergent lesbian who has no problem letting people know exactly what she thinks and also likes to go on long tangents about esoteric subjects that interest her, which makes it difficult enough for her to find friends in the U.S., but I have no idea how she's going to find friends in the UK. She will hopefully make some in school (it's sure as hell been hard for her here, and it's going to be hard on her there being foreign), but I'd love other suggestions on ways she might make friends in the UK that might not be a way in the U.S. She is super into Japanese stuff, but slightly off Japanese stuff, like obscure anime and electronica bands from the 1970s and 1980s, although she also loves punk rock and Hello Kitty 🤷. She also is a very talented artist and spends all day sketching in sketchbooks and on her iPad.
- This is going to sound really stupid... do I just carry around my passport or how do I show ID if someone needs it? I'm not going to have a driving license.
- What difficulties do you think I might encounter trying to rent a flat or house? I really don't know how the process works in Britain. In the U.S. they often do a credit check and you provide first and last month's rent, plus a security deposit. Utilities are not always included.
- Once we get settled, is Ikea the best place to go to get furniture (I don't find what they have to be all that comfortable), or are the similar affordable options?
- How about house wares? We care much more about utility over aesthetics, especially when getting established. I'd rather have cheap, durable plates and bowls and pots and pans than pretty, expensive ones.
- And how about clothing? I do not care at all about fashion, I just want decent clothing that will look appropriate at a job. Obviously, I have plenty of that already, but it will need to be replaced eventually. Where do I go for cheap and durable over expensive and fashionable?
- Are ISPs as dependent on where you live as they are here? We have very few options available and they are entirely geographically dependent. ISP recommendations would be great. I would especially love an ISP that didn't have data caps.
- If I watch everything on a monitor via my computer, do I still need to pay a TV license fee or do I only need to play it if I want to use iPlayer? How does that all work? I definitely will not have an actual TV for a while.
- My daughter's absolute favourite breakfast treat is going to a diner and getting corned beef hash. Is that a thing over there? Is there an okay breakfast place to take her to so she can have it once in a while?
- I'm guessing this is a no, but if anyone knows of anywhere in the UK that serves decent Mexican food, even if it is just somewhere I can take her to as a weekend treat, please tell me. That is her absolute favourite kind of food in general. By "Mexican food," I mean "the shit they call Mexican food in America which isn't really Mexican food" (you might notice I'm not a fan), so you would have to be familiar with both in order to answer this.
- I have been looking for a long time and I just haven't found anything good- does anyone know a video or series of videos I can show to my kid as a basic "life in the UK in the 2020s as a teen" primer? I try to tell her all that I can, but it's not like I can tell her what it's like to be a teen in the UK in 2025. I was last there as an adult in the 2000s, before she was even born, and Britain was already a noticeably different place from the last time I was there in the 1990s. I mean I know she's going to make a lot of cultural faux pas, but it would be nice to find a way to minimize them beyond me telling her things like what "pants" means in the UK and that "cunt" is not thought of in the UK as the horrific word it's considered to be in the U.S.
- This is just something I've been wondering from job ads: when they say "casual dress," what do they mean? In the U.S. that means you can show up in a T-shirt and sweats. I don't want to make my own faux pas there.
- If we end up having to move to Wales- I am interviewing for a job in Swansea this week- it's my understanding that my daughter will have to study Welsh in school. Does anyone have any experience moving to Wales with a teenager who is suddenly put into a (what I assume would be very remedial) Welsh language class? Any advice there?
- I basically never carry cash on me in the U.S. at this point. What might I need to carry it for there or is it also unnecessary?
- Do UK institutions care about your US credit rating?
- I hate Marmite. Is that still a capital offence?
Check coverage. There are a few "main" ones that own their networks like EE, O2, Vodafone and Three. They will get priority on bandwidth and so offer the best speeds but cost more. There are lots of others that piggyback on those networks that are usually cheaper but speeds are less reliable in my experience.
The major banks and building societies are all pretty much the same service-wise. Stick to well known ones like Halifax or Nationwide, whatever offers the best deal. You'll be pleased to know that current (checking) accounts are free here, but you'll probably get less interest than in the USA.
Supermarkets can be put into tiers: Top end: M&S and Waitrose - More expensive middle class supermarkets but the food is bloody lovely there and the quality is consistent between stores. Middle: Tesco, Morrisons, Asda, Sainsbury's. Average, quality will vary between locations, so try them all and pick your favourite (let's face it, it will be whichever is closest and isn't terrible). Cheap & Nasty: Iceland, Farm foods etc. Mainly frozen goods and very little nutrition but cheap. Cheap yet good: Aldi, Lidl. You'll probably know those two already.
Register with a GP as soon as you can. There is a bit of a waiting list at the moment with our perpetually underfunded NHS but persistence will pay off. Do the same thing with Dentists too.
UK opinions on such matters are in general a lot less right wing than the USA, especially amongst teenagers. E.g. Gay marriage was legalised well over 10 years ago and is considered a non-issue now by the majority. She'll find like-minded people no problem.
Tough one.. you could apply for a provisional license and just not learn to drive if you haven't already. It's a more wallet-convenient size than a passport and is valid for 10 years.
Sounds more or less identical to here.
IKEA is generally the best for cheap furniture here too. There are other flat pack stores but let's face it, they are all wannabe Ikea's.
Supermarkets will have what you need at good prices, just not in the smaller "corner shop" versions.
H&M, TK Max might be good to start with. There's a few high street brands that you'll get to know but as someone in my mid-30's I find they're not for me anymore so I look online. Jacamo is quite good for mens clothes.
ISPs are a lot better here. Far cheaper for unlimited broadband, it's only like £20-30/month. One thing to note: most use the OpenReach broadband service, and they haven't yet upgraded everywhere to fibre-optic yet, though they are working hard. Search for the OpenReach full fibre map to see if your area is done yet. If not then you'll have to use the service on slower copper cables or pay for Virgin Media who have their own network. They have good introductory prices and high speeds but will jack the prices up after the contract expires so beware.
TV licence is for live TV and iPlayer. If you just stream things on other services and don't watch them live then you don't need one. One thing to note is that the TV licencing people will send you threatening letters pressuring you to pay if you haven't already or declared that you don't need one, but don't get worried, the letters are automated.
That's a known food here and you can certainly buy the ingredients but it's not as commonly served in cafes. You'll have to look around the area. Try smaller businesses rather than chains.
Taco Bell has started making inroads over here, but we don't get proper Mexican food here as there are very few Mexicans. You'll find the occasional takeaway style place but they tend to be a bit bland. Indian food on the other hand is as good as you can get, every town over a certain size will have multiple 10/10 Indian places.
Honestly maybe just have her watch some UK sitcoms. There was a very good teen series called Skins that's still recent enough to give a good picture of teenage life here. Channel 4 is a good source of UK life in general.
It's a mystery to everyone. I'd go for a plain polo shirt and black chinos as a man, and for a woman just something that doesn't show too much cleavage I guess.
No experience schooling in Wales but have lived in Mid-Wales for a time. I can tell you that some Welsh people refuse to speak English even if they know it in an effort to keep the language alive but I think that tends to be older folks.
Same here, card for nearly everything. Some places like local cafes and barbers will want cash for "tax efficiency" reasons (wink wink) but there will normally be a cash machine (ATM) somewhere nearby. Withdrawals are nearly always free if you use a debit card.
We have credit scores here too. They might be linked but calculated differently.
No! Marmite is gross.
Awesome! Thank you!
(Also, as an American I am amused that you're all saying Taco Bell when I ask if there's any Mexican places. Because there's real Mexican food, there's food that you get at an American Mexican restaurant, and then there's Taco Bell. In that order of edibility.)
Yeah it's collectively on everyone's mind because they only started appearing in the last year or two and most people's reaction was "Isn't that the brand that Americans always say makes them shit themselves but they keep going back??"