Sign Here: Should I renew my contract when working abroad?

The time has come to decide whether you will renew your contract for working abroad. Do you or don’t you?

A fantastic year of travel, exploration and adventure has come to an end in the blink of an eye. All of a sudden you’re presented with a renewal contract – well done to you for being an excellent employee. Do you resign and commit to living abroad for another year, or pack up and go home? Deciding whether or not to renew your work contract as an expat is just as riddled with uncertainty as deciding whether to move away in the first place (curious about how to make that decision? Take a look here). But there are some important differences.

Differences between coming and staying

First and foremost, choosing to renew your contract is usually much easier than securing it in the first place. Secondly, staying put avoids the hassle of moving all your stuff across the globe. Lastly, after working abroad for a year or more, you know the ropes. So, it would seem that choosing to renew is a much simpler choice compared to the initial decision to become an expat. However, the move home can feel bittersweet. You might be unsure about whether you should close this chapter of your adventure abroad. To help you decide what to do, here are three reasons why you should renew your contract and stay longer. Plus three reasons you should consider going home.

Stay put

1. Good quality of life

Your quality of life could have increased through becoming an expat. Working abroad might give you access to cheaper healthcare, a lower cost of living or, importantly, a greater feeling of safety in your day-to-day life. However, over time you might become indifferent to these improvements to your quality of life. It’s not until you’re offered the chance to go home that you remember some of the reasons you left in the first place. For example, extortionate rents and unfathomable taxes.

When considering whether to return home at the end of a work contract, think about whether there have been significant changes in your home country while you’ve been away. For instance, affordable healthcare might be more accessible or a reduction in inflation could be making products cheaper. These would be very good reasons to convince you to go home. In contrast, a reverse in circumstances or no change at all could make your decision to stay put more clear. Staying afloat of news in your home country can help to put your current quality of life into perspective. You might realise that it’s might be better to stay put. 

2. Stability

Don’t rock the boat! It was a big deal picking up your life and moving abroad. It would be just as much of a hassle to pack everything into a suitcase and move back. And what are you moving back to? The instability that comes with hopping between countries is a big reason to stay put. Instead of spending your evenings thinking about how to transport all your worldly possessions home or booking flights, you can choose to renew and spend your time enjoying life abroad.

And not only is their instability associated with the moving process, but things might not be all easy, breezy back home. After all, where will you stay once you return to your home country? Do you need a job? How about sorting out a phone plan and bank accounts when you get back? There’s so much to think about with a move of this scale. Sometimes it seems more appealing to stay put and renew your contract. A contract assures a sense of stability that moving back home might not afford you. With this contract in hand, you’ll have some certainty about your job position and pay. Unless you’re someone who craves a volatile life, I suggest either staying where you are in your life abroad. Otherwise, make sure you have plans ready for once you return home. This ensures you can enter the next stage of your adventure with some absolutes.

3. There’s still more to do

I was gutted when I found out that I’d missed out on Korea’s Waterbomb Festival when I arrived in the country. As a newbie expat, I was overwhelmed by all the new adventures open to me. I hadn’t figured out how to seize every opportunity in the first year. Resigning my contract gave me the chance to right some wrongs. In my second year, I could focus on more events and places that I wanted to visit. With this extra time, I was able to plan a trip to Jeju. I also revisited some of my favourite cities. During this time I was also able to connect more strongly with friends and colleagues in my life. The extra wiggle room afforded by resigning my contract let me transform blossoming friendships into lifelong bonds and talk to colleagues I hadn’t worked with.

All in all, resigning for another year gives you a greater chance to chip into your bucket list. It also gives you more breathing space. In the first year of your time abroad, your life might be chaotic with evenings and weekends filled with nonstop plans. With each additional year you stay away, you can settle into a more relaxed pace of life. Eventually, you’ll enjoy sitting back and appreciating those empty moments abroad. Whether you feel like there’s still more to do or you want a shot at living abroad now you know the system a little better, you should stay a little longer if there’s more to experience.  

Go home

1. Homesickness

To put it bluntly, sometimes living abroad just sucks. You feel alone and the people who could give you comfort are thousands of miles away and probably asleep when you try to phone them. The cultural shocks have piled up and you feel excluded because of the vast differences that surround you. Maybe you dislike that everybody is silent on public transport. You might feel isolated because people don’t understand your sarcastic sense of humour. Worst of all, you can’t understand anything that anyone is saying because you’ve barely grasped the basics of the language. It’s not easy to live in a world where you don’t utter a word or day, not for shyness or want of something to say, but because you can’t!

You’re homesick. You miss the people you love. You miss your town, your pets, and even your old teachers. And the homesickness you experience isn’t just a passing flare of emotion when you look at your camera roll. It’s a constant pang of pain that threatens to overwhelm you from day to day. When feelings of homesickness seem to surpass any emotions of excitement and joy from living abroad, it’s a sign to go home. Reconnect with past family and friends and consider putting the renewal contract to the side.

2. Static career

A contract renewal does not necessarily mean an improvement in the contract. Just because you’re committing yourself to another term of employment, you’re not guaranteed to receive any new benefits. Having a contract as an expat might make certain that you have a Visa and accommodation, and obviously the opportunity for adventure in another country. Renewing your contract ensures much of the same, but might not promise much more. A pay rise, more holiday time or a promotion to the next job stage might be impossibly out of your reach as an expat abroad. And depending on your relationship with work, there might not be much room for negotiation.

Within my work contract, the only certainty was a smidgen of a pay rise at the end of a year of hard work, but I would never be able to become a homeroom teacher or head teacher like other employees at the school. Eventually, this pushed me to quit my contract and search for a less static career back home. On the whole, working as a foreigner abroad might be a difficult ride if you’re looking for steady career progression. That being said, life has a way of presenting you with opportunities out of nowhere and you have to weigh the fixed nature of your job with the stability it might offer. 

3. Losing your support network

Even though you might be on the fence about staying or leaving, your friends might be certain about their choices and future. I’ve already mentioned the horrors of homesickness. Therefore, I don’t need to describe how these feelings could be made more difficult if you lose your support network. Granted, when you first moved abroad, you likely left all your close friends and family behind to journey to a new land. But you persisted and found a close-knit group of friends. You’ve done it before so you might think that losing your expat friends at the renewal of a contract is no sweat. Alas, it’s tiring reforging new relationships and starting from the ground up again, especially when there are no constants or familiarity to fall back on. There’s no family or homely comforts to keep you company when your best friends decide not to renew their contracts.

Don’t take your friend’s decisions lightly. Discuss their thought process, how they feel about their job, their likes and dislikes about the expat lifestyle and the emotions tied to the prospect of returning home. Think about whether you feel the same and, as hard as it might be, try to imagine your day-to-day life without them. Would it be difficult if you don’t have friends to make plans with on the weekend? How would you feel if your friends are in a different time zone and can’t reply at the drop of a hat? If this isolated life sounds like a nightmare, maybe you should follow suit and head home too.   

Am I giving up by going home?

The answer is no. You’re not throwing in the towel, or quitting or losing in any way. You’re naturally moving on and turning the page on a poignant moment of your life. Returning home won’t erase all your memories of a wonderful time working abroad and this way you can end on a high. If you feel as though there’s still more to explore and you’ll be well supported if you remain, by all means, continue your adventures abroad. With job security and the promise of a better quality of life, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to stay forever. But if doubt has begun to creep in, consider returning home.

Take a moment to assess how you feel now and the emotions you associate with home. Do you feel a pang of homesickness at the moment, which would only be exacerbated by your support network leaving? Can you see a trajectory for your life abroad, or does it already seem static and slow at the cusp of an additional contract? Should you go home? Who knows, maybe another adventure is waiting just around the corner in your hometown. Perhaps, it’s time you tried living in a different country altogether.