When Should You Move Back To India From USA?

When is the right time to return to India? Is there any particular age by which you should move back to India from the USA? I don’t think there is a right or wrong age to move back. However, the effort you will have to put in to make the move successful will vary depending on when you move back. From our research and talking to people, for working professionals – the most likely age for a successful move back to India with relatively less effort is between 30-40 years. In this post, I will dive deeper into what makes this the right age for returning to India.

I have made the following assumptions for the analysis. This is an average case scenario where a student goes for their master’s within two years of graduation in India and obtains his master’s degree. Right after the master’s degree, they start working, saving and investing. Within five years of working, decides to travel to the USA, take yearly vacations in India and maybe also get married. I have assumed the typical age to have kids to be between 30-35 since our generation is deciding to have kids much later in life.

If we think about the quality of our life, there are usually five factors that we seek the right balance for at all points in life.

Money

With an average salary in the US and a saving mindset, one can gather a good enough corpus to live a comfortable life in any tier 1 city in India within 6-10 years. With a decent lifestyle, you should be able to save about 25-30 lakhs a year at the beginning of your career in the USA. Your net worth will probably grow linearly up until about 4-5 years into your career after which it will start growing at a faster pace with career growth, potential for double income from spouse and investments starting to compound. This is when you enter the accumulation phase.

In this accumulation phase, you try to maximise your savings when you are a somewhat experienced professional, you don’t have liabilities of a home or kids and both you and your spouse can focus on careers. The duration of this phase is completely subjective and is highly dependent on the kind of lifestyle you aspire for. Personally, most of our wealth was generated in the last 3 years before we moved back when I was in a managerial position and my wife had also started working in the US. This really accelerated our savings rate and got us to our financial goals much faster. You can make this accumulation phase last as long as you want but after around 5 years or so, you will need to balance it with other factors listed below (kids growing up, your threshold for change, inertia of moving back etc.).

Career

With a lot of folks returning to India in the past few years, global experience is not all that uncommon. With that in mind, I don’t think you should return with a total of 3-4 years of experience. The value of global experience comes with being exposed to unique challenges across a spectrum of companies and that takes time. Try to get these perspectives in your field of expertise so you can truly show the value of this experience when you are looking for your next role in India. When I was interviewing for roles in India from the US, I felt that the companies had a strong bias towards mid to senior-level professionals with a proven track record. On the contrary, my wife had 2 years of experience in the US and was treated the same as someone who had 2 years of experience in India.

Kids

The average age of having a kid has been rising. Strictly from our peer circle, we have seen the average to be between 29-33 years. Assuming that you will have kids at that age, they will hit the age of 10 in your early forties. Kids start forming strong relationships and familiarity with their surroundings as they grow older. Even though kids are incredibly adaptive, it becomes harder to uproot them from their social structure after a point. What that point is, again depends on the kids and the support system you have in place. Talking to friends, the conclusion was that it is best that their primary schooling is not interrupted so anywhere between 6-8 years of age seems like the sweet spot where they are adaptable enough to adjust and are not still fully assimilated into the US way of life.

Stability / Threshold for change

As you get comfortable with the lifestyle in the US, you will start going back and forth in your mind with regards to moving back to India. At first, you will research all the pros and cons of the move and will genuinely try to make it work. You will try to convince your spouse, kids and parents. You will create spreadsheets upon spreadsheets to work out your finances. But due to a variety of reasons, you might push the decision to a later date.

Slowly, you will start getting used to the US lifestyle and your comfort zone which is not necessarily a bad thing – if you accept that returning is not an option and you are at peace with that decision. What will haunt you though is if the idea of moving back to India is still alive but it becomes too late for you to make the move.

Social Connections / Family in India

If we assume an average difference of 25-30 years between us and our parents, there is actually a very small window of time when you all will be able to enjoy time together in prime physical health. If you are 30, your parents are probably close to 55-60. They are still in decent health and can travel. Think of how many times you will be able to go on vacations together with your kid and your parents when you are 40 and your parents are nearing 70. Think of the joy they would feel to see their grandkids grow up with them. It is only when I look at my mother playing with my daughter that I realize what we might have missed out on had we not made the move. As much as we hate it to accept it, our time with them is limited and we should make the most of it. 

If you wait to earn a lot of money, you will have all the comforts in the world but with age not being on your side you will lose out on time with parents and make it harder for kids to move. If you move too early, you will maximise time with your parents but would likely have to compromise on the money aspect which again is as important to increase your chances of making the move successful. A lot of people move back to India for retirement when they have earned a ton of money and their kids are not dependent on them. But because they have lived outside of India for so long, it takes time to cultivate social connections again. As with all things in life, this decision involves tradeoffs and striking the right balance.

Age Framework To Move Back To India

The below table gives a summary of how good a time it is to return to India in each age bracket and the above factors. For example, being 30-35 years of age is a great time to move back with respect to kids but not so great when you are around 50 years of age. Similarly, you are more likely to do extremely well with respect to money and career post-40 but will lose out on the social connections and family aspect. Based on what you deem important, you can use this framework to decide what the right age to move back is for you.

When we were deciding when we should move back to India, we wanted to time our move in such a way that we balance the above factors as much as possible. We moved back when we both were 30 before having any kids. Of course, individual circumstances will vary, for example, it was very important to us to save enough money for a home in Mumbai but that may not apply to you if you already have a home or are not planning to buy a home. We also did not mind our kid not having US citizenship.

Remember that not making a choice is also a choice and the longer you wait and put off the decision, the harder it becomes to decide. It does not matter if the decision is to move back to stay. What matters is that you must always try to get closer to making a decision. No matter at what stage you are in life, I hope the above framework helps you prioritise what is truly important and gets you closer to making a decision.