A family member recently asked me if I could go back in time, would I have prioritized bidding on Mauritania when I first joined the State Department, and the answer is an emphatic YES! At the time, my list had 4 African countries (3 of which have since had coups) and 3 eastern European countries
What sort of banking do you use when living abroad? Don’t foreign transaction fees add up? Are your credit/debit cards even useful abroad? Easily one of the most common question I have been asked by newly hired providers, and in general one of the most common questions you see repeatedly on the FS Subreddit. Several
A pretty common question I get asked by friends, family, and readers is what level of airfare accommodation the U.S. government provides. The answer can be complex. The simplest answer is the U.S. government will pay for the cheapest unrestricted economy class tickets. These tickets whenever possible must also be in compliance with the “Fly
How has educating your children in the Foreign Service been thus far, are the schools decent, and do you have to pay for their education abroad? This is a pretty complex question to answer just because there are so many variables that go into education, even domestically, so it can be particularly amplified abroad. Just
With my recent announcement that I will be doing a one year unaccompanied tour, I have been getting quite a few questions on the nature of the assignment, and why exactly someone would choose to do this. A Special Incentive Post or SIP for short, is any post around the world that due to extraordinary
Some of the most common questions I seem to get from prospective hires, is in regards to salary, financial prep before joining, and what true take home pay actually looks like. After I was hired, but before I started, I did a little dive into the way salary is calculated in the Foreign Service (FS),
Since I will be moving to Peshawar next summer, I thought it would be nice to highlight the assignment a bit, and give a brief history on the city and our role there. Peshawar is a city of 2.3 million people and the capital city of the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It is found in
How difficult is it to get time away from the job if you are the only provider at the embassy? If you are new, is accruing paid leave difficult? A few people have asked me this, and this was something I also asked folks before I onboarded. Simply stated: It is not difficult to get
Several folks have asked me recently what my “day to day” work life is like, and I realized that even before I arrived to post, but had completed orientation, this was a huge black hole of knowledge for me too. I think most folks coming from the private sector are focused on patient volumes and
This week we will talk about promotions in the Foreign Service. After my post about the cost of living increases and awards, a reader sent me this question: It is cool to see the government typically gives annual cost of living raises, but how do promotions work if there are any at all? I want
