Were You a Calculated Risk Taker, or Did You Just Jump?
When you decided to move to Ireland, which one were you?
I have met both kinds in this community.
Two types of movers
There are the ones who had spreadsheets. Five-year plans. Savings targets. Visa routes mapped out months in advance. Colour-coded folders. Back-up plans for the back-up plans. They knew the exchange rate to the cent and the average rent in Cork to the euro.
And then there are the ones who basically said “right, we’re doing this” and figured it out on the way. Packed in a month. Hugged the dogs goodbye. Got on the plane.
Neither is wrong. Both work. They just work differently for different people.
But looking back, most people I speak to say the same thing.
The risk they calculated was not actually the hardest part.
It was the eish they did not see coming.
The financial runway
Everyone budgets for the move. Very few budget for the first six months of slower-than-expected income and all the “ohhhh damn” moments.
Ireland is expensive in ways that catch people completely off guard. The rental deposit. The first Electric Ireland bill. The cost of school uniforms and shoes that have to fit Irish feet by Irish winter. The “oh we need a bigger fridge” moment. The petrol. The groceries. The “why is a single cucumber €1.50” moment.
Did you have enough buffer? Did you plan for three months, only to find yourself still digging for work at six? Did you have a quiet cry in the car after a Lidl shop in month four?
Most of us have.
The emotional cost of starting over
You can be thriving on paper and completely hollowed out inside.
New country. No history. No context. Nobody knows who you were before you arrived. No one knows you were the one who organised every birthday party in the family. No one knows your reputation at work. No one knows the funny story about you and the baboon in the Kruger that one time.
You are starting from zero, socially. Professionally. Sometimes emotionally.
That is harder than most people admit out loud. A lot harder than expected.
You walk into a room full of people and realise you have no shared references. No school in common. No friend-of-a-friend connection. You are the new kid, in your 40s, and it is a very strange feeling to sit with.
Your partner’s plan, not just yours
So many moves are driven by one person’s opportunity. The other person follows. And then, quietly, struggles.
Did you both have something to land on here? Or did one of you land on a job and the other land on Google trying to figure out what to do every day?
I have seen relationships stretched to breaking point because one person is happy and the other is not. One is thriving in the new office, making new friends, ordering the same coffee at the same shop every morning. The other is at home, alone, trying to figure out how the bin collection system works, missing their mom, missing their friends, missing their sense of self.
And the kids? Some are absolutely thriving. Running free in Irish fields, making friends, never locking a door. Others are really not. They miss their grandparents. They miss their school. They miss the sunshine.
Which way did yours swing?
Honest answers only, please. This is where we quietly support each other.
Employability, not just eligibility
A work permit gets you here. It does not keep you employed, or fairly paid.
Did you research what the Irish market actually pays for your skills, or did you just do the euro-to-rand conversion and think woohoo, happy days? Because those are two very different exercises.
Did someone take advantage of the foreigner who did not know better? Were you paid less than the Irish colleague doing the same job? Did you discover, three months in, that your title in South Africa meant something completely different here?
Is the work culture vastly different from what you were used to? Did you check Glassdoor before you signed? Did you check the actual cost of living here before you negotiated your salary, or did you just look at the euro figure and feel rich?
Ireland pays well in some sectors. Not in others. The cost of living eats euros the way load shedding ate electricity. Fast, and without warning.
The point of no return
At what point were you going to call it and go home?
Most people never ask themselves this before they leave. Having an honest answer is not defeatist. It is smart.
It might be financial. “If we are still this tight in 18 months, we go.” It might be emotional. “If the kids haven’t settled by the end of the second school year.” It might be relational. “If my partner is still this unhappy in a year.”
Plenty of people reach a point where going back is simply off the table. They are Irish now, and that is that. Their kids have Irish accents. Their Christmas is a roast dinner and a pub quiz. They would not know how to live anywhere else.
But plenty of others have made the brave decision to go back. That is also a valid outcome. A move that teaches you that your home was where you left is not a failure. It is data.
