The step-by-step plan for Bonaire

This step shows why moving to Bonaire is a real emigration, even though you stay within the Netherlands. Bonaire has been a special municipality of the Netherlands since 2010. Even so, its own rules apply.

The most important one is the admission law (WTU-BES). It explicitly also applies to Dutch citizens born outside the islands. You're "admitted by operation of law": the law gives you the right to live there. But only if you have housing and sufficient means to live on. The IND really does check that.

In other ways too, this is a real emigration:

• You deregister from the Dutch population register (BRP).
• Your Dutch health insurance stops.
• You pay in dollars.
• The taxes are a system of their own.

This step-by-step plan guards the chain of documents and registrations. Each step waits for the one before:

• The IND declaration, the document that confirms you're admitted.
• Within five days after that, your registration on the island.
• The sédula, the island's identity card.
• Health insurance on the island.
• A bank account.

This step shows which safety net you'll be missing on Bonaire, for unemployment and for your pension. This is the pitfall of this move, and that's why it comes before everything.

On Bonaire there's no unemployment insurance. The only safety net is the onderstand, the island's social assistance. You're only entitled to it if you're an "island child", or if you've lived on the island for five uninterrupted years.

So if you lose your job in the first year, you're entitled to nothing. Only in 2027 does a temporary provision arrive, for at most three months.

Your pension tells the same honest story:

• Your accrual for the AOW, the Dutch state pension, stops.
• The AOV, the state pension of the Caribbean Netherlands, starts at zero.
• For each missed year you get a two percent reduction.

So make sure you have a buffer of at least six months' fixed costs. And decide deliberately what to do about the pension gap: you close it, or you accept it.

This step shows what the move is going to cost you. The paperwork is manageable. The IND declaration costs 171 dollars, and the sédula, your identity card on the island, about ten.

The crossing itself isn't. The money mainly goes to three things:

• The container and the flights.
• The first months on the island. Rents there are in dollars and groceries cost import prices.
• The car is a sum of its own. Everything turns on the ownership requirement of twelve months: how long the car has been in your possession.

Work it out with your own choices in the calculator.

With this step you decide together whether it will be Bonaire. Bonaire feels like coming home in the sun, but a few things deserve an honest conversation before you decide.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, a week apart:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find on Bonaire? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4.

On those evenings, take these points along too:

• The price level. Wages are well below the Dutch level, while electricity, rent and groceries cost more than in the Netherlands. The minimum wage wasn't raised there by tens of percent in two years for nothing.
• The scale. There's one hospital and one secondary school.
• The distance. Family is a nine-hour flight away, with five to six hours' time difference.

Also discuss who earns the income in the first months. Without a safety net that question weighs heavier than ever.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Even though it stays the Netherlands, the SVB counts Bonaire as living outside the Netherlands. So whoever lives on Bonaire and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW, the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. On Bonaire you do build up the AOV, the state pension of the Caribbean Netherlands, but it starts at zero. You can insure yourself voluntarily for the AOW with the SVB. You have one year for that, counted from the moment you're no longer insured. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on large expenses.

Married, registered or living together? That can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. As a Dutch national you're admitted to Bonaire by operation of law. If your partner has another nationality, that doesn't apply to your partner, not even after a marriage. Your partner then needs a residence permit of their own from the IND. Check at the declaration of admission by operation of law and at your healthcare further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs the most. Agree how they keep in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

Bonaire has one secondary school. If your children want to study, that means leaving. How school works there otherwise is in the article about school with this step.

Who learns the language, and when? Papiamentu is the everyday language. Whoever learns it belongs sooner. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one without colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

Choose below the date on which you want to be standing on Bonaire. The step-by-step plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen — and says so honestly if it gets tight. A target date is yours: you can always move it, and moving it is a perfectly good outcome.