Your First 90 Days Abroad: What Actually Has to Happen, and In What Order

I have moved countries more than once, and the thing nobody warns you about is that the first three months are not really about the country at all. They are about paperwork, and about the strange order in which that paperwork has to happen. You cannot get the bank account without the address. You cannot get the address registered without the rental contract. You cannot get the rental contract without the bank account. Every newcomer hits this loop and every newcomer thinks they are the only one who has ever hit it.

You are not. There is a way through, and it is mostly about doing things in the right sequence and knowing which of those apparent walls is actually a door.

This post is the map I wish someone had handed me. It is deliberately country-neutral, because the specifics change wildly - what Portugal calls a fiscal number, Germany calls a tax ID, and the Netherlands wraps into one municipal appointment. The shape of the first ninety days, though, is remarkably consistent almost everywhere. Once you know the shape, the country-specific details in the country guides slot straight into it.

Before you land: the fortnight that saves you three months

The single highest-leverage window in your whole move is the last two weeks before you leave. Not because there is much to do abroad yet, but because certain documents are almost impossible to obtain once you are gone.

Get your paperwork certified while you are still standing in the country that issued it. If your destination will want an apostille on your birth certificate, or a sworn translation of your degree, or a criminal record check that is less than three or six months old, that is a home-country errand. Doing it later means posting originals across borders, paying a courier, and waiting - and it is the single most common reason people’s first-month timeline slips.

The short list worth having in a folder, both paper and scanned:

• Passport, plus a scan stored somewhere you can reach from any device
• Birth certificate, and marriage or divorce documents if they affect your status
• Degree, diploma or trade certificates - see getting your qualifications recognized if you work in a regulated profession
• A recent criminal record check from every country you have lived in for the last few years
• Driving licence, plus your vehicle history if you own a car
• Vaccination and medical records, and a letter from your doctor listing any ongoing prescriptions

That last one matters more than people expect. Prescriptions do not travel between health systems automatically, and a written history from your existing doctor turns a difficult first appointment abroad into a straightforward one.

If you only do one thing from this section: get the apostilles and translations done at home. Everything else can be fixed from abroad. Those genuinely cannot, or not without real pain.

Weeks one and two: address, then everything else

Almost every country has one keystone bureaucratic act, and in most of Europe it is registering your address with the local municipality. It goes by a dozen names, but the effect is the same: it produces a piece of paper that proves you live where you say you live, and that paper is the key that unlocks the bank, the health system, the tax number and often the phone contract.

Book that appointment before you arrive if the country allows it. In several cities the wait for a slot is measured in weeks, not days, and the whole rest of your timeline is stacked behind it.

If you have not yet found somewhere permanent to live - and most people have not, because signing a lease from another country is a good way to get scammed - you need a temporary address that the registration office will accept. Some accept a landlord’s declaration from a short-term rental, some do not. This is exactly the kind of local quirk worth checking in the guide for your destination before you book flights.

The chicken-and-egg problems, and how they break

Here is the honest truth about the address-bank-contract loop: it breaks because one of the three links is weaker than it looks.

Usually the weak link is the bank. Traditional banks want proof of address, but app-based banks across the EU, the UK and a growing number of other markets will onboard you on a passport and a phone number, and issue you an IBAN in an afternoon. That account is often enough to pay a deposit, receive a first salary and prove to a landlord that money exists. Once your address is registered you can go back and open a full local account at leisure. I have walked through the document pack and the traps in how to open a bank account abroad.

The other frequent weak link is the phone. Prepaid SIMs need almost nothing; contracts often need a credit history you do not have yet. Start prepaid, switch later - the details are in setting up your phone, internet and utilities.

Weeks three to six: health, tax and a place of your own

With an address registered and money moving, the second phase is about becoming a real resident rather than a visitor with luggage.

Get into the health system early

People put this off because they feel fine. That is precisely the wrong reason. In most countries there is a lag between registering and actually being covered, and there is often a further lag before you can get an appointment with a family doctor who is accepting new patients. If you wait until you are ill to start, you will be dealing with two systems at once - the health one and the admin one - while feeling terrible.

Sort your cover first, then your doctor. Whether you belong in the public system, the private one, or both, depends on the country and on your status, which is the subject of public versus private healthcare. Once you know where you stand, registering with a doctor is usually a short, dull, enormously worthwhile errand.

Find somewhere to actually live

Six weeks is roughly when the temporary rental stops being charming. Rental markets treat newcomers with suspicion almost everywhere, and the requirements - deposits, guarantors, proof of income, sometimes a local co-signer - catch people off guard. I have written the full walkthrough in renting your first apartment abroad, and, because it is the single most common way newcomers lose money, a companion piece on how rental scams work and how to avoid them. Read the second one before you transfer a deposit to anybody.

Deal with the deadlines that are quietly running

A few clocks start on the day you register and nobody sends you a reminder. The most common one is your driving licence: many countries give you a window after becoming resident to exchange it, and once that window closes you may be facing the full theory and practical tests. Find out in month one whether yours is exchangeable and by when - the whole trap is laid out in exchanging your driving licence abroad.

Understand your tax position before it understands you

You do not need to become an expert. You do need to know two things: whether this country now considers you tax resident, and what that means for income you still receive from elsewhere. Getting this wrong is expensive and slow to unwind. The principles are in tax residency explained, and the wider financial setup - accounts, currency, credit - in managing money as an expat.

Weeks seven to twelve: the part that is not paperwork

By around the two-month mark most people have the admin under control and hit something they were not expecting, which is that they are lonely. The novelty has worn off, the friends back home have stopped checking in quite so often, and the local social world has not opened up yet because you cannot yet make a joke in the local language.

This phase is real, it is close to universal, and it is not a sign you made a mistake. I have written honestly about it in beating culture shock and building a social life. The short version: build routines that put you in the same room as the same people repeatedly - a gym, a class, a five-a-side team, a language exchange - and accept that the first three attempts will feel awkward.

The language piece compounds with everything else. Even modest ability changes how officials, landlords and neighbours treat you, and it is the slow-burning requirement behind the path to citizenship in most countries. If you are going to start, start now rather than “once things settle down”, for reasons I get into in learning the local language fast.

The order, in one paragraph

If you remember nothing else: certify your documents at home; register your address as early as the country lets you; get a working bank account by whatever route is open, even a digital one; sort health cover before you need it; sign a permanent lease only once you can view in person; check your tax residency position in the first couple of months rather than the following April; and start building a social life before you feel ready to.

None of that is glamorous. All of it is the difference between a move that takes three months and one that is still generating problems a year later.

Where to go from here

The sequence above is universal. The specifics - which office, which form, which deadline, which document needs an apostille - are stubbornly local, and that is exactly what the country guides are for. If you are still deciding where to go at all, start instead with how to choose your country, because the honest answer is that the destination shapes the difficulty far more than your preparation does. And if you would rather run this as a tracked checklist than as a blog post you half-remember, how to plan your move with this site explains how the pieces fit together, with the supporter unlock opening the in-depth sections for every country.

Two small things to add to week one, because they cost half an hour and matter disproportionately later. Save the local emergency numbers and work out where urgent care actually is - the whole just-in-case layer is in staying safe and handling emergencies abroad. And if an animal is coming with you, note that the veterinary timeline runs to months rather than weeks and has to start long before any of this: bringing your pet abroad.

You will also, throughout all of the above, be dealing with offices, appointments and forms in a system built for people who have always been in it. That is a skill of its own, and I have written down what I have learned the hard way in dealing with bureaucracy abroad.

One last thing. Whatever weird obstacle you hit in week three, somebody has hit it before you, usually recently, usually in the same office. That is what the general discussion forum is for - go and ask. Nine times out of ten the answer is embarrassingly simple, and finding that out from another expat is a great deal faster than finding it out from a website.