How To Move To France: A Guide-Blog

This will hopefully be a brief post as getting set up with EDF isn't too painful, as long as you have all the right info to hand. EDF ( électricité de France ) is - you guessed it - France's state energy and electricity provider. It's highly likely that your home's previous tenants will have used EDF. Getting set up with EDF early on is essential, not least because almost everything else you will be sorting out (bank, insurance, etc.) will want to see an EDF bill for proof of your address. (You can always email them and request a document from them with your name and address on for this proof if you haven't started receiving bills yet.) You can get set up either by phoning them if you're feeling fluent, or emailing like I did and just going through the slow, gentle process of back and forth providing various bits of information. Here is what you will be asked for: The address (and apartment number and floor if applicable) What the apartment...

When I moved to France, I was totally without WiFi for almost a month, and it wasn't until two months in that I had a working WiFi setup. This might sound like a whiny millenial non-problem, however if you are at the same time desperately trying to set up your electricity bills, research bank accounts and find a way to solve the never-ending Internet problems, it's quite essential. Luckily for me, I was able to go to a library and use their computers. Here is two months' worth of hard-won information distilled into a ten minute read: One:   you are going to need a French phone number of some kind in order to get yourself an internet connection. In fact,  you are going to need a French phone number  (+33 or 06)  for almost everything in France  (banks, doctors, your job) so get one  as soon as you can. You have two options: the first is buying a French SIM card   ( carte SIM ) - they're sold in  tabacs  and supermarkets. Watch out: wi...

This is a short post all about home insurance (or assurance habitation ), and why you have to get it. In France, unlike in the UK, you must have home insurance by law . No one told me this, so I am telling you now. Getting home insurance is something you should make a priority, unless you want Emmanuel Macron to come knocking. (No one wants that.) A running theme: this is something that took me ages to get around to, partly because I didn't know I had to, partly because it is yet another daunting task on the never-ending list of daunting tasks. (But don't worry, I'm here to explain so it's not daunting for you.) In fact, when I did do it, it was very simple. The best way is to just take out home insurance when you set up a bank account - most banks tend to offer un compte bancaire and assurances . When I finally managed to get a meeting at the bank to create (yet another) French bank account, sorting out insurance, which I had been anxious about for ages, turned ...

France gets a bad rap when it comes to paperwork and bureaucracy, and all for very good reason, as you are about to discover. It took me about five or six separate meetings with various people sorting out various things before I once went to one where I had all the right documents. Here I will list exactly what those are, so hopefully you can skip the infuriating trial-and-error period that many have to go through. Obviously, having a French bank account is very important. A French bank account comes with a 'RIB' - a long code which is absolutely essential for you to function in France, not least because your employer requires it to pay you. (It also comes with a 'BIC/Swift' code, an IBAN number and the code of the bank you are with.) 'RIB' might not mean very much to you now, but by the time you get one you may well weep with joy. Choosing your bank . A bit of background on the way French banks (and France in general) works: everything has to be done the pa...

Once you know where exactly you're going to be living, you can start the house-hunting offensive. This is a very daunting task, especially if this is your Year Abroad, in which case you're probably very young and have never had to do anything like this before. I was so overwhelmed that I put this off until about three weeks before I left (don't do that). If you want, you can start with the most obvious idea of doing a general search for ' location  [town/neighbourhood name]' or ' immobilier [region]'. This allows you to get a general idea of rent prices. At this point, you're going to start seeing a lot of confusing French housing- and rent-related vocab and abbreviations, and you might take one look and want to run away, which is pretty much what I did at first. The best thing to do is look what these mean up once and make a mini glossary, as this will save you a lot of time. Here are some that come up frequently: TTC = toutes taxes comprises (...

So, you know you're going to be moving to France. Step one, then, is choosing where you're going to be living. Before you even start researching available housing, you need to ask yourself a few questions. How much choice do you have over where you're moving to? Is the country your oyster and you're going to find a job in whichever place takes your fancy? Or have you been posted in a town, like I was? If your answer to the former was 'yes', then that's a bit easier for you, as you're likely to be moving to a bigger town or city where you'll have fewer challenges regarding (poor) choice of housing and public transport, amongst other things. If you're choosing to move to a smaller place, then more of the information here will be relevant to you. If you are being posted somewhere, and that somewhere is quite a small-looking place (make sure you do a lot of searching on Youtube and Google Maps to get a feel for this as soon as you know where yo...

Welcome to How To Move To France! My name is Emily and I moved to France two months ago for my university Year Abroad. I can honestly say that it has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, but that is because I had no advice or guidance on how to do anything right. This blog will be dedicated to explaining all the many and ongoing mistakes I made when I moved, in the hopes that others in the future can learn from them. Moving to a foreign country (especially one as disorganised and unhelpful as France) can be a stressful and lonely experience, so if I can make that process a bit smoother for just one person, I will be happy! I've done everything the hard way and from scratch myself, so will be covering topics such as banking, insurance, the internet, and French benefits (CAF), with particular mention of the British Council (as that is what I am doing!) However, this information is not just for people on their Year Abroad but anyone who is moving and could use a b...