I've lived between the US and Brazil for the last 24 years. Moving with little kids is very different than with teens.

28.12.2024 - 17:53 / insider.com

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Andrew Jernigan, CEO of Insured Nomads. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The first time I moved to Brazil was in 2000 to marry a Brazilian woman I had been introduced to by a friend and had been writing to for quite some time. We were engaged on my first visit and married the following year after I moved there.

My family has moved four times between the US and Brazil. We learned that there are more things to consider when moving with teenagers than when moving with little kids.

After getting married, my wife and I moved back to the US and then to Ghana for a time for her work. In 2008, we decided to take some time to live back in Brazil with our three young children. We wanted our children, who were half Brazilian, to learn Portuguese and be exposed to different cultures. We also wanted to live somewhere for a while with a low cost of living to enjoy the benefits of the dollar's value.

We moved back to the US when I had a job opportunity in Northern California. It was an adventure with fun times in the Bay Area , hiking in the mountains, and a community of diverse nationalities that the kids thrived in as well. My wife pursued further education while there, then her MBA and MPH at the University of Alabama. A company in Brazil hired her, so we made another move to Brazil in 2019.

When we lived in Brazil without children or with young children, there was nothing but good about living abroad. The cost of living was cheaper , and the children could attend local schools, pick up the language, and experience Brazilian culture. As a family, we'd escape to the mountains and seaside for days out. We felt that we could have lived there forever.

During the last stint of living in Brazil, from 2019 to 2021, our children were all over the age of 12, and we had to consider their futures and their safety.

My kids wanted the opportunity to attend universities outside Brazil. This meant that we couldn't put them in the local Brazilian schools because they wouldn't allow them to work toward SATs or A-levels to get into American or British universities.

Instead, we budgeted to place them in the American School of Rio de Janeiro. They got a great education and were exposed to expats from all around the world, but it was very expensive.

The school didn't have the same level of sports clubs as in the US. My daughter had played lacrosse, and my son wanted to row for the crew — neither of those sports was available to them in Brazil.

As teenagers, they wanted to be independent of us, but we had to be very watchful of them due to safety concerns. They could be targets of theft and even kidnapping. We know it happens, and were very protective