When Mary Brown she met her husband Sébastien, they were both living in Chicago. But on their second date, Sébastien, a French native, told Braun that he wasn’t planning to stay in the United States for long — he’d lived in America for 15 years and wanted to return to Europe soon.

“He was about to come back but he decided to stay longer and he met me, so it was a little more difficult that way,” Braun told CNBC Make It.

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

They both worked remotely and eventually the house became too small for them, so the couple moved across the street to a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment where they pay $2,585 a month in rent.

“I miss it a lot. It was a beautiful building that still had the brick walls and the Chicago character but it was gutted and remodeled,” Braun says.

Braun and Sébastien lived in the house for almost a year and went through the Covid-19 epidemic together there. At that time, he began to seriously consider moving to Europe and the country he recently called home. Switzerland was at the top of their list.

Sébastien is enrolled in the master’s MBA program at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland. “He chose it because he was able to do more away from the US,” says Braun. “Since the long-term goal was to return to Europe, it made sense for him to do the European program.”

Another thing that weakened the family was that Sébastien was unable to see his family in France for a whole year due to the travel restrictions of the plague. He started working hard to transfer to his company’s offices in Europe.

The ZF Group offered Sébastien to move to the office in Germany, but Braun rejected the offer. They did not speak the language and there were no flights to and from Chicago. Sébastien was then asked to move to Belgium, but it was not possible. He was given another opportunity to work in a new office in Bern, Switzerland, the capital of the country.

Although the move to Bern did not appeal to Braun – it no longer has flights in and out of Chicago – he realized that Zurich was close enough that Sébastien could go to the office every day.

“He thought this was a great opportunity for him, and at the time, the company I was working for was willing to let me go and work for them remotely from Switzerland,” says Braun. “The stars aligned.”

By December 2021, the couple had begun the process of moving to Switzerland – which included obtaining Swiss visas – so they could not move until September 2022. Braun and Sébastien married in March of that year, and shipped most of their belongings to Switzerland. Switzerland, and stayed with Braun’s parents while they waited for the papers to be removed.

Braun said: “We had a long time to get used to being with my family. “Which I think made the transition easier.”

When Braun and Sébastien moved to Zurich, they lived in temporary apartments – first in a 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment that they paid 3,880 francs or $4,253 USD and then a 2-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom apartment that they rented for 5,090 francs or $5,580, according to the documents. reviewed by CNBC Make It.

“I remember sitting on the bed in the makeshift house with our dog and thinking how is this? How are we in Switzerland? How did our dog make it here? How did it all happen?” Braun says.

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

That December, the family found a place to live. It was a 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath in the Enge area of ​​Zurich where the rent was 4,120 francs or $4,516.

The couple loved the house, but in January 2023, Braun found out she was pregnant. Living on the fourth floor of a building without an elevator became a big problem. The family was also told that their rent would be increased. They felt that it was the right time to find a place with more land.

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

In Switzerland, people pay a federal tax ranging from 0 to 11.5%, but this does not include local taxes, according to H&R Block. Cantons, which are similar to US states, and municipalities also pay taxes.

A downside? It was not easy to travel in their new town without a car. When Braun 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 was not friendly to remote work. He said: “I started to worry about balancing my life.”

There was a possibility that Braun would have been fired if he hadn’t returned to his office every time his break was over.

“If I was in the United States, I would ask my mother or someone I know well to take care of our son. We started to think that we need to fix the situation in the financial crisis.”

After Braun’s boss confirmed the worst, Sébastien began looking for a higher-paying job while considering his options. “I appreciated that (my boss) was honest with me, but it was difficult because I had to choose between my job and my family,” she says.

“I lost, but there are other bonuses to being home with our daughter. Being a stay-at-home mom is a different job.”

Last year, the couple and their daughter moved to a town on the outskirts of Fribourg, just over two hours from the center of Zurich, where the couple still live. They pay 2,630 francs, or $2,883, a month for their three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment.

“We were able to save a big chunk of change and Sébastien was making a lot of money. It didn’t really close the gap between me losing my money but it certainly helped from a financial point of view,” says Braun.

Also, since French is the first language in the area, Braun was happy to raise her daughter there, knowing that she would learn the language and be able to adapt on her own.

From being a stay-at-home mom, Braun says she appreciates the security that comes with living in Switzerland. She takes a lot of nature walks alone with her daughter and the family dog.

“The level of safety is so different here that honestly, as a woman, I just feel safe doing things that I might think twice about in the US,” says Mary. “It feels safe and secure while still being beautiful at the same time.”

Braun and Sébastien have lived in Switzerland for more than two years now, and although they miss the joys of America and the ease of access to them such as bringing Amazon and supermarkets that are open late at 6 pm, the results of the presidential election of 2024 mean. that, for them, going back is not off the table: “There is a lot of uncertainty in the US”

“I don’t want our daughter to feel like she’s not American and I want her to identify with America, especially the good parts,” Braun says. “It is also tempting because for me, it would be easier to return to work with my journalistic background, especially as a freelancer, which is not really a thing in Switzerland.”

However, “I think that on social media it wouldn’t make sense to us at this point,” he adds.

The couple thinks they will eventually move back closer to Sébastien’s family, but that won’t happen anytime soon. “Having the ability to have support and have someone to lean on and watch our daughter is amazing,” says Braun. “For him to grow in his culture, I think it would be good for us.”

Until then, Braun is focusing on learning French to increase his job prospects if he moves to Sébastien’s home country and is ready to return to work.

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