It requires a big financial effort to leave your home country and settle abroad to live with your children. You need to make several arrangements and financial adjustments to ensure your assets are well taken care of. Also, you need to ensure you are financially ready to live in a new country. Let’s check out three important things that parents should keep in mind before moving to a foreign location with children.

Get Your Bank Account Ready To Shift Abroad

After you settle down in a foreign country for a requisite time, your residential status will change from a normal resident citizen to a non-resident Indian (NRI). Thus, you will not be eligible to maintain a regular bank account in India. You have to convert your regular bank account to a non-resident ordinary (NRO) bank account. An NRO account is also required to receive all the income accrued in India. You can close the regular bank accounts if you don’t want to convert them into NRO accounts.

If you have investments in shares and wish to receive dividends, you may link your NRO account to your demat. Similarly, if you have some investment redemptions scheduled in the near future, you may link such investments to your NRO account so that you don’t miss them.

Manage Your Investments

Before you move abroad, try to close your small ticket investments, which you may be unable to track from a foreign location. Also, you must ascertain the rules related to the tax compliances on earnings from your investment in India. For example, if you are moving to the US, your investments in India will be subject to foreign account tax compliance (FATCA). You may choose between adhering to the applicable compliances, moving your investments gradually, or closing your investment before moving to a foreign country.

Make Arrangements For Care Of Your Property

When you move abroad permanently with your children, the biggest challenge you may face would be related to the safety and security of your properties. Securing your properties from trespassers could be a difficult task. If you rent out your property, then getting it vacated after a few years could be a nightmare. You may create power of attorney in favour of a trustworthy person in India to take care of your properties and execute property-related transactions in your absence. If you have sufficient time in hand before moving abroad and you don’t have a plan to return in the future, it is better to sell your properties.

Before you move abroad, you must ensure that your properties in India are adequately insured. You should also check your own health insurance product and make sure it allows you coverage in the country where you plan to move, or you have to get a new health policy in your new country.

The author is an independent financial journalist.