r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	farmer_jen
Comment	The other commenters have hit most of the notes, but here are a few things I'd add as a fellow immigrant: 1. Getting a bank is a #1 priority. I'm a student and my school had a list of banks I could go to without issue, and your job should hopefully provide the same. My husband has a job but they didn't provide the easy route and it took him a week longer to get a bank account than me. I could use my foreign card until I got a bank card, but it was a pain in the butt and there were extra charges. 2. You can get a pay-as-you-go phone plan at first (you don't need a bank or in-country credit for that). I used the phone I already had. I transferred my foreign number to Google Voice and keep in touch with people through that, and it works well. There are so many different phone companies. I use Three, and my husband uses EE, and we have mostly good coverage (and in the spots where one of us has low coverage, the other has high coverage, so it works). 3. Grocery delivery requires an in-country phone number (as I found while in 2 week quarantine and without a phone number). 4. Your in-country credit starts from nothing, so rental places likely want a guarantor. If your job won't do that for you, they might ask you to pay up front (6 months is the most they can request). Apparently you can get around this with private landlords, but I was nervous about getting scammed and went through a letting agency. The 6 months up front hurt, but when I moved a year later they didn't ask me to do it again, so at least there's that. 5. I like the site RightMove for finding places, as other commenters have suggested. It will also tell you the council tax band on there so you have a better idea of monthly costs. When I was looking for places, I would go for a walk in the areas with a lot of options and see how I felt in them. Some looked nice on Google Maps and really bad in person, and some had the opposite. 6. Don't be afraid to live further out than city centre. You'll be able to find a nicer place with more space further out. A colleague of mine has a wife and baby with him and they have a terrace house in Paisley that they like. It's not far from city centre at all. 7. People are really nice. If you don't know how to pronounce a street name, you can ask people and they'll actually tell you the real answer instead of messing with you. It's great.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/tck7bs/moving_with_family_information_needed/i0h61a1/
Created	Sun 13th Mar 2022 10:00am
Status	normal ()

The other commenters have hit most of the notes, but here are a few things I'd add as a fellow immigrant:

1. Getting a bank is a #1 priority. I'm a student and my school had a list of banks I could go to without issue, and your job should hopefully provide the same. My husband has a job but they didn't provide the easy route and it took him a week longer to get a bank account than me. I could use my foreign card until I got a bank card, but it was a pain in the butt and there were extra charges.
2. You can get a pay-as-you-go phone plan at first (you don't need a bank or in-country credit for that). I used the phone I already had. I transferred my foreign number to Google Voice and keep in touch with people through that, and it works well. There are so many different phone companies. I use Three, and my husband uses EE, and we have mostly good coverage (and in the spots where one of us has low coverage, the other has high coverage, so it works).
3. Grocery delivery requires an in-country phone number (as I found while in 2 week quarantine and without a phone number).
4. Your in-country credit starts from nothing, so rental places likely want a guarantor. If your job won't do that for you, they might ask you to pay up front (6 months is the most they can request). Apparently you can get around this with private landlords, but I was nervous about getting scammed and went through a letting agency. The 6 months up front hurt, but when I moved a year later they didn't ask me to do it again, so at least there's that.
5. I like the site RightMove for finding places, as other commenters have suggested. It will also tell you the council tax band on there so you have a better idea of monthly costs. When I was looking for places, I would go for a walk in the areas with a lot of options and see how I felt in them. Some looked nice on Google Maps and really bad in person, and some had the opposite.
6. Don't be afraid to live further out than city centre. You'll be able to find a nicer place with more space further out. A colleague of mine has a wife and baby with him and they have a terrace house in Paisley that they like. It's not far from city centre at all.
7. People are really nice. If you don't know how to pronounce a street name, you can ask people and they'll actually tell you the real answer instead of messing with you. It's great.