As of last week, Phoenix and I have our Dutch resident ID cards (good for two years), are officially registered with the city of Utrecht, and have our Burgerservicenummer’s (BSNs), which are the tax ids.
We still need domestic bank accounts (we were waiting on BSNs) so Phoenix can get paid, we can pay our rent in Euros, and we can get chip and pin debit cards, which a lot of kiosks and stores here basically require. Unfortunately, it looks like I may never be able to get one. The woman at the bank claimed that I could not open an account without an employment contract with a Dutch company. It seems like there’s probably a way around that, but in the meantime, we may only have one account between us.