About Vertrekklaar
Who's behind this
Vertrekklaar exists because a specialised agency asked well over nine thousand euros to get our paperwork in order. This is the whole story — and how you can tell whether what's written here can be trusted.
Auke
founder of Vertrekklaar
It started with Australia. We had serious plans to emigrate, and we did what everyone does: search. What we found was mostly contradictory. One says you start at A, another at B. Everywhere a different opinion, everywhere a different amount. And underneath, always the same unease: have we forgotten anything?
So we approached an agency that specialises in exactly this — working it out and filing. That felt like relief. Until we saw the price tag: well over nine thousand euros to get through the paper tiger. That's where we parked the plans.
Six months later the itch was still there, just different. We're selling our house and going travelling the world with the family, for an indefinite time. And there we ran into exactly the same thing: documents, appointments, forums full of half answers, costs you only discover afterwards. On those forums it also turned out we weren't the only ones — everyone runs into the same wall, and everyone works out the same things again on their own.
Then I thought: this can be done better. I'm not a migration adviser and I won't become one. What I can do is work things out and automate, and that's what I've gone into. So I picked it up as a project: everything we had to figure out, ordered properly once, so the next person doesn't have to do it again.
Those nine thousand euros, by the way, are where the price comes from. What we needed wasn't someone to take it over from us — it was the overview such a person has in their head. That overview doesn't cost nine thousand euros to make. It just hadn't been worth anyone's while to write it down.
And yes, this isn't theory for me. Our house is going and we're heading into the world with the family. Everything written here about leaving the Netherlands — deregistering, your health insurance, benefits, the tax return for your year of departure, your DigiD and your bank account — I go through myself. If something's wrong, I'm the first to notice.
The knowledge base and the cost indication are public and free, even if you never become a customer. Not as bait — as proof that we know what we're talking about.
Why you'd believe this
You don't have to take my word for it
A site about emigrating is so full of numbers that once came from somewhere. These are the three things we do differently — and you can check all three yourself.
01
Under every article are the sources
The official pages the facts rest on are listed underneath, by name and link. Checking is then clicking instead of working it out again. And when in doubt, the source is leading, not our article.
02
Every rate says when we looked
Official amounts — visa fees, an NIE application — carry a source and the date they were last checked. When that date runs out, our own check reports it and we look again.
03
An estimate is called an estimate here
What nobody publishes officially — a move, the first months — we call an estimate by name, and that deliberately gets no check date. Such a date suggests a precision that isn't there. Anyone who quotes you an exact amount for a container to Australia is making it up.
Honest
What Vertrekklaar is not
Better clear now than disappointed later. These are the limits, and they're drawn on purpose.
- No migration advice
- We organise and inform; we don't assess your application and give no judgement on your chances. For the substantive assessment we refer you to a registered migration adviser — for Australia a MARA agent.
- No tax advice
- We do name what's at play: the M form, the 183-day rule, your pension. The working-out is personal and you have that done by a tax specialist who knows both countries.
- We don't file anything for you
- The official application you do yourself, via the portal of the government in question. It's not allowed any other way. What we do is make sure you're there complete and on time.
- No guarantee on the outcome
- Whether your visa is granted is decided by the government of your destination country. We reduce the chance of it going wrong through something you could have prevented — no more, but that's exactly where most journeys strand.
Ready to begin?
Thirty-six journeys are fully ready — Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Canada, Panama, United States, Suriname, China, Dubai, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand, Turkey, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand: your step-by-step plan, your documents and your costs in one place, with the timing watched. Pay once, and it's yours.