Steph Wickham

So they either have lived abroad or are living abroad at some point.

Yeah.

So I suppose what's quite interesting is, you know, we do consultations like like you yourself mentioned you do.

And it always resonates with me when I talk to clients about how stressful it can be to be living away from your place of origin.

Returning there even can be difficult.

We ourselves, my husband and I lived in Australia for eight years.

So I had trained with KPMG in Dublin.

We relocated, worked with KPMG in Australia, and then life happens.

And we had started a family.

And as we were saying before we started to record, there's this common thread that, you know, Irish people feel the pull to come home, that desire to return at some point in their life.

For us, it was when we started a family.

And just memories of, you know, the logistics of packing up a container, trying to find a rental property in Ireland and the emotional part of saying goodbye to the friends that you'd made and then returning to a place where life had gone on as if you had, you know, as if you had never left.

In some ways, but in other ways, things have moved forward.

So just reconnecting professionally and kind of in a social setting, it's difficult.

You know, we call it coming home, but it doesn't always feel like that initially.

And as time passes, then you'll find that it gets easier.

So often we'll see in forums and with clients that clients are, you know, returning expats will have questions about, am I doing the right thing?

And, you know, is this going to work out?

So we try to bring a sense of that when we advise our clients.

And interestingly, obviously, you know, we are a team of eight people.