Hey everyone,
I often see the same topics being posted over and over here. "How do I move to Sweden to be with my [significant other]?" and "Struggling to find work and accomodation" are common threads.
I will first and foremost tell you that I am admittedly a jaded person. I am a toxic expat, poisoned by all of my experiences here, with a terrible lingering aftertaste.
Please don't believe all the magical fairytales that the internet tells you about Sweden. It's not all candy and rainbows and unicorns here.
First of all, there is NO financial help for expats who come here to be with their Swedish sambo, so don't count on that. If you come here for love, your sambo essentially agrees to provide for you if you can't find a job, and if you and your sambo both fall into a dark pit of doom, you're SOL (shit outta luck). There is such a thing as an SFI bonus which you can get for completing the SFI course within an allotted amount of time. Most people just lose patience with SFI and drop out anyway because it's shoddy and disorganized. I personally trucked through both SFI and SAS because I'm a sucker for punishment it seems.
Don't even get me started on the terrible weather here. I come from Canada where temperatures dip to -40 in the winter and +30 in the summer. At least the white snow brightens things up a bit. If you move to Gothenburg you will be greeted by grey skies, constant rain, and just gloom, slush and muck everywhere. Summers aren't even real summers because it hardly ever goes above 22 degrees celcius here, and there's always that ever lasting wind. If you like to see the sun, this is not the country for you. I think I almost forgot what the sun looked and felt like.
Housing is my next gear to grind. If you intend to rent an apartment, you'd better have good networking skills and some good friends, otherwise you will be stuck waiting a good 2-5 years on an apartment waiting list. You're better off saving as much money as possible and buying a condo or a house. Good luck with that though, because according to Swedish government, you're considered an utländsk medborgare until you've been here for 3+ years and nobody will want you to transfer money or buy a house until you're a svensk medborgare. If you do, it will be incredibly difficult and you will likely have to use your sambo's line of credit (if they have one), seeing as you will have no lines of credit here due to zero work history within the country. Speaking of svensk medborgare, you will also not qualify for CSN for schooling until you become one.
If you have a credit history back home, it is worth a thousand hugs and kisses and warm cuddles. Most Swedes don't start working until much later in life than the rest of us, and the job market here is tense, intense even, and hard to get into unless you're a developer of sorts. The job market here is hard to get into EVEN FOR SWEDES. You probably have a better credit rating than your Swede, because Swedish credit is based on how much income and how many years of work you've done in Sweden. If you speak English, it's not worth a dime, because everyone here speaks English. If you speak Swedish and English, that helps you get on your way, but just a bit. If you have a university or college education, you will likely have to supplement your studies and adapt your specialized vocabulary into Swedish, but that's understandable, and the supplementary studies are a cakewalk by comparison to most other countries' higher education systems.
Speaking of schooling, if you're planning to have children here in Sweden, just remember that Sweden is TANKING on the international charts. Their schooling used to be good years ago, but over the last 15 years things have gone downhill. I don't know if I would dare enter a child into the education system here after I've experienced it myself. Teachers don't even have a permanent place in the workforce here. In fact, most teachers are on term contracts and change jobs or schools every 3-6 months, so the children are not always following a steady curriculum either.
If you come from a country outside of the EU, you will be required to re-do your driver's tests. It costs upwards of $500 just to take the tests, not including books or practice runs or lessons, which all come at an extra cost or a package deal which will actually run you closer to $1000. I don't know how well the driver's education is here, so I can't talk about that, but let's just say that if you ever try to cross a crosswalk, be prepared for the drivers to stop only just short of ripping your soul out.
To end it off, if you have a special diet, for example: vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, or if you just like your fruits and veggies in general, this is not the country for you. You'll get your heart torn in half just by looking sideways at the prices of mangoes.
Nobody ever says this stuff because it's more polite not to. Often I find myself speaking with expats who moved here for love, and they express that their Swede had no idea how hard it was either until they brought their loved one here.
If you've read up to here, I will tell you my advice.
If you come from another country in this world which isn't currently in war, or if your life is not being threatened by war, you're better off trying things on your own soil first, or if you're young enough, sign up for a working holiday and see what "trying to make things work" in this country is really like. If you came here on vacation and decided that you liked it and want to try to live here, you're just feeling a bit of holiday syndrome. When you're here, yet not on holiday, it's not exactly a slice.
You likely have better credit in your home country than your Swede has in Sweden. Your credit history and any assets you have will help make the transition more fluid.
You likely have or had a job, friends, and other social contacts back home which could help your Swede integrate. Since most Swedes speak English, it will be easy for them to get a job (and any job helps) and integrate into your country, even if it's a low-grade job, which is already more than you would get if you came to Sweden. Two incomes are always better than one, and easier on the dignity.
Keep in mind this was entirely directed toward love-expats or "love-pats". Just because I am only one jaded person speaking out doesn't mean that there aren't more. Not just love-pats either, but many more who have come here in high hopes, only to be pushed backwards 10 steps with every step they try to take.
If you have any questions and immigration and the process, please feel free to look through my previous posts, which are much less jaded and much more informative, including relevant links to the applicable government websites.
Jenna