We moved from the US to Switzerland and our apartment costs $2,883 a month

If Mary Brown met her husband Sebastian, they both lived in Chicago. But on their second date, Sébastien, who is from France, told Brown he didn’t plan to stay in the U.S. for long — he’d been in America for 15 years and wanted to return to Europe soon.

“He actually almost came back, but then he decided to stay a little longer and met me, so it was really weird,” Brown tells CNBC Make It.

In late 2020, the couple moved into a two-bedroom apartment on the north side of Chicago together. At the time, Sebastien was working as the head of a business unit at ZF Group, a German technology company, and Mary was working as a social media manager for a hair care company.

Both worked remotely, and eventually the apartment was too small for them, so the couple moved across the street to a 3-bedroom, 2-bath duplex, where they paid $2,585 a month in rent.

“I miss him so much. It was a really cute building that still had the brick walls and the Chicago character, but it was torn down and renovated,” Brown says.

Brown and Sebastien lived in the apartment for about a year and survived the COVID-19 pandemic together. During this time, they began to think seriously about moving to Europe and about which country they would soon call home. Switzerland topped their list.

Sébastien was enrolled in the Executive MBA program at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. “He chose it because he could do a lot of it remotely from the US,” Brown says. “Since the long-term goal was to go back to Europe, it made sense for him to do a European program.”

Another mitigating factor for the couple was that Sébastien was unable to see his family in France for an entire year due to travel restrictions due to the pandemic. He began actively working on the transition to the European offices of his company.

ZF Group offered Sebastian a transfer to the German office, but Braun rejected the idea. She didn’t speak the language, and there were no direct flights to and from Chicago. Sebastien was then offered to move to Belgium, but it didn’t work out. He was given another opportunity to work in a brand new office in Bern, the capital of the country.

Although Brown still didn’t like the move to Bern—it also has no direct flights to and from Chicago—she realized that Zurich was close enough for Sebastian to commute to the office every day.

“He really thought it was the best opportunity for his career, and the company I was working for at the time was willing to let me go and work for them remotely from Switzerland,” says Brown. “The stars have aligned.”

By December 2021, the couple had begun the process of moving to Switzerland, which included obtaining a Swiss visa, so they did not move until September 2022. Brown and Sebastian married in March of that year, shipping most of their belongings to Switzerland and moving in with Brown’s parents while they waited for the paperwork.

“We still had a lot of time to get used to it and be with my family,” Brown says. “Which I think helped make the transition easier.”

When Braun and Sebastian finally moved to Zurich, they lived in temporary housing, first in a furnished 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom house for which they paid 3,880 francs, or $4,253, and then in a 2-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom apartment. rooms, which were rented for 5090 francs. or $5,580, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.

“I remember sitting on the bed in the temporary home with our dog and thinking how real is this? How are we in Switzerland? How did our dog end up here? How did everything fall into place?”, says Brown.

“Now this was our real life and we had to deal with it. It was just surreal.”

In December of the same year, the couple found a more permanent home. It was a 2-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom apartment in the Enge district of Zurich, where the rent was 4,120 francs, or $4,516.

The couple loved the apartment, but in January 2023, Brown found out she was pregnant. Living on the fourth floor of a house without an elevator became a big problem. The couple was also notified of the rent increase. They thought it was time to find a place with more space.

Five months later, Braun and Sébastien left their old apartment and moved into a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment in Witikon, a town near Zurich, for 3,950 francs or $4,330 a month. Brown says one upside for them was that their taxes went down because they no longer lived in the city.

In Switzerland, people pay federal income tax at rates between 0 and 11.5%, but this does not include local taxes, according to H&R block. Cantons, similar to states in the US, and municipalities also levy taxes.

Minus? It was not so easy to move around a new city without a car. When Brown gave birth to the couple’s daughter and went on maternity leave, she was hired as a social media manager at a Swiss company that didn’t take kindly to remote work. “I started to worry about balancing my life,” she says.

There was a possibility that Brown would lose her job if she did not return to her office full-time when the leave ended.

“If I was in the US, I would want my mom or someone I knew well to watch our daughter. We started thinking that we need to make a plan for the worst financial case.”

When Brown’s boss confirmed the worst, Sebastien decided to find a higher-paying job while she considered her options. “I appreciated that (my boss) was very honest with me, but it was hurtful because I had to choose between my career and my family,” she says.

“I’ve accepted the loss, but being at home with my daughter has other benefits. Being a stay-at-home mom is a completely different job.”

Last year, the couple and their daughter moved to a town outside Friborg, just under two hours from central Zurich, where the family still lives. They pay 2,630 francs, or $2,883, a month for their 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment.

“We managed to save a lot of money and Sebastien was making more money. It didn’t really bridge the gap between me losing my income, but it definitely helped financially,” says Brown.

Also, since French is the primary language in the area, Brown was happy to raise his daughter there, knowing that she would learn the language and be able to improve her own.

Since becoming a stay-at-home mom, Brown has come to appreciate the sense of security that comes with living in Switzerland. She walks a lot in nature alone with her daughter and pet dog.

“The level of safety here is so different that, honestly, as a woman, I just feel safer doing things that I would probably think twice about doing in the U.S.,” Mary says. “I feel very safe and beautiful at the same time.”

Brown and Sebastian have been living in Switzerland for more than two years now, and while they miss the American holiday and having so many things available to them like Amazon delivery and shops open after 6pm, the results of the 2024 presidential election mean that that going back is out of the question for them: “There is too much uncertainty in the US”

“I never want our daughter to feel like she’s not American, and I want her to culturally identify with the U.S., at least in the good parts,” Brown says. “It is also attractive because it would be easy for me to return to the job market with my journalism education, especially as a freelancer, which is not really acceptable in Switzerland.

But “I think from a social point of view it doesn’t make sense for us at this point,” she adds.

The couple thinks they will eventually move again to be closer to Sebastian’s family, but that won’t happen anytime soon. “Being able to get help and have someone to lean on and watch over our daughter is amazing,” Brown says. “Having her grow up in one of her cultures, I think, would be really cool for us.”

Until then, Brown is focused on learning French to expand her career opportunities if and when they move to Sebastien’s home country and she is ready to return to work.

Want to improve your AI skills and be more productive? Take CNBC’s new online course How to use artificial intelligence to be more successful at work. Expert instructors will teach you how to get started, practical applications, tips for effective prompt writing, and mistakes to avoid. Sign up now and use coupon code EARLYBIRD to get an introductory 30% off $67 (+ taxes and fees) until February 11, 2025.

plus, sign up for the CNBC Make It newsletter to get tips and advice for success at work, with money and in life.