Shopping for Expats

If you move to live abroad how will you survive without English books and groceries? The good news is you don’t have to!

There are no two ways about it, living overseas can be a fantastic experience – which is probably why so many of us think so seriously about giving it a go and becoming an expat.  After all, exploring different cultures and places, meeting new people and setting up home in a country different from your own is an exciting adventure…and we all love an adventure!

As an expat you’ll find that almost everyday can bring new discoveries, but after a while you can start to miss things from home. 

Argentina has fantastic steaks for example, but you can’t get a curry, and curries in Germany are horrible.  Branston Pickle is hard to find in Portugal, and in New Zealand it’s a case of “oh for an English sausage!!!” So if you’re one of the increasing number of Brits living abroad, how can you get hold of your English comfort food and other items from home to ease the odd pang of homesickness?  Well it can be done, welcome to the world of shopping for expats!

If you are living abroad in an area heavily populated with other Brits you may well find that some aspiring individual has set up a shop catering for expat shopping needs.  If this is the case it is solely a question of dropping down to the corner shop, just like home! 

You may however find that selections are limited and prices are expensive because of extra import duties for example, so if you haven’t got a “dear old Aunty Mabel” back home, who’s prepared to send you out a monthly basket of comforts from Blighty, and you’ve exhausted the list of friends who can bring you out two jars of Patak’s curry paste and a bottle of Glenmorangie, you need to get yourself straight on to the internet for your shopping fix.

A simple search for “expat shopping” will bring up a vast number of pages offering home delivery groceries for expats living abroad.  With sites like British corner shop and UK groceries, you can get hold of most of your favourite products at UK prices (plus P+P of course.) Products on offer range from things like Birds Custard powder to Alpen muesli, to magazines and periodicals. 

Delivery is usually within 10 days, and groceries can be purchased using credit cards or paypal in most cases.  Obviously shipping costs vary from destination to destination with a standard 30 kg box of groceries costing between £8 - £19 to send within the European Union, to £22 - £40 to Canada or the United States, and up to £140 for countries further a field such as Argentina.

But you know, once you’re living abroad it’s not just the groceries you’re going to miss believe it or not.  If you are living in a country where English isn’t the first language then finding reading material might be a problem.  Trawling through secondhand book shops only to come up with 25 year old Mills and Boon bodice rippers can be a bit of a frustration (for most of us anyway!) Sites like Amazon come in handy for any literary needs for expats living abroad, and these days they’re stocking so much more.  A browse of their site lists a mound of products bound to be on any expats shopping list, electronics, cookery equipment, home and garden accessories, as well as a mountain of books.  They have a very concise section on shipping destinations and costs and can ship most goods worldwide.

Lastly, don’t forget good old eBay.  Listing everything from watches to boots to cars and planes, eBay websites, or mercadolibre sites in Latin American countries, offer expats living abroad the chance to buy all kinds of new and used items.  Whilst not everything can be shipped overseas, if you check out the seller’s site for any items of interest to you, you will find that in the majority of cases sellers are prepared to ship items overseas at a reltively reasonable extra cost.