Moving Abroad: Why it is more possible than you think

Moving and living abroad, is it possible?

Absolutely, but not the way that you think.

I’ve lived abroad in some shape or form for over a decade since I was introduced to “backpacking” as a possibility for experiencing the world. In that time, I’ve been lucky enough to get a cultural and personal education in sides of the world most will never see, and I’ve been able to live out a more luxurious, adventurous, healthy, affordable, and fulfilling life than I otherwise would have been able to had I spent that same time in the US.

To quote myself after my first year living abroad, “I would happily exchange 1 year in my life abroad for 10 years of life in the US”. The experience was that amazing.

Because of this feeling and my personal experiences, I can’t recommend enough to any person, any couple, any family, or any retiree who feels fed up with the status quo, is just a little bored, or has always suffered from “wanderlust syndrome” – if you want to move abroad, then do it!

But this pitch often invites justified questions. Can the average person just move abroad? Also, how easy and sustainable is it in the long term to move abroad?

Both of those are good, valid questions with detailed answers unique to you. But simplified – yes, you can just move abroad, and for most people, it is easy to move abroad.

A more detailed answer is that the “easy” and “possible” approach looks different for everyone, and the possible approaches to the experience are scalable to every preference, budget, relationship situation, family situation, and dream.

The Sophomore at university, unsure of their major, can skip the internship and use the summer to explore China and Japan on the cheap.

The family of four can apply for a sabbatical and homeschool to live in Sardinia or a coastal city in Chile for a single year, using buses and trains to expand the experience to nearby countries.

The burnt-out corporate warrior contemplating their life can take the saved housing payment and move to Egypt’s Red Sea or Belize and take up diving for a year.

The adventurous retiree with a penchant for languages can take her meager retirement to the Croatian or French countryside, where she can restart life in an era that seemed past.

Or, like me, the amateur writer can take their savings and rent an apartment in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok for two years, allowing them a two-year playground to make a dream a reality.

Living abroad isn’t just about getting a job with a big company abroad and transferring your rat race to a different language. “Living abroad” presents an immense spectrum of opportunity to do what you need or want to do, limited only by your imagination.

Most “guides” to moving abroad address the logistics and steps to prudently take before uprooting and remaking (or not remaking) home in another country. They don’t address what that dream or vision looks like in reality for nomads, sovereign expats, traveling families, and expat retirees, until now.

In this article, I’ll address your dream and vision of living abroad, glancing over the logistics (which I’ll address in a different article). I’ll share how living abroad, even for a period and not permanently, is a realistic, viable dream, how people like you have made that dream a reality, and what that dream may look like for you. From there, I’ll share based on my own experience and the experiences of others, what you should do next to make it a reality.

Finally, I’ll answer your question of whether you can really move abroad, tell you how to make that inkling a reality that you’ll never want to wake up from, and point you to the follow-on article with all of the details you need to start planning.

Contents

• Traveling abroad doesn’t always look the way people expect, and neither does moving abroad.
• It’s simpler than you think: Passport, credit card, backpack, Airbnb
  • The Irreplaceable Support Crew for Indecisiveness: A storage unit
• Time spent, pace of travel, and why you live abroad vary by person and shape your possibilities
• Money abroad – how do people do it?
• The truth: The best experiences abroad are self-sustained financially, and don’t involve getting a job where you go
• The overlooked detail: It’s ok to make it temporary or seasonal, and it’s ok to come back
• The essential questions: Where to go, how long to stay, and the bare essentials to get started
• In closing: Just go, no one I’ve met regretted a one-way ticket

Traveling abroad doesn’t always look the way people expect, and neither does moving abroad

If I were to tell you my friend is “traveling” abroad to wander around the world, you may picture her with a backpack in tow, saying her last goodbyes in the airport as she boards a plane to Bangkok, Lisbon, or Brazil, right? While this may be accurate for some of my friends, traveling the world manifests in many different ways.

For instance…

One of my favorite recent travelers documenting their journey, Egyptian Omar Nok, traveled from Egypt all the way to Japan WITHOUT FLYING! From Egypt, through Iran, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, and countless other places on my travel bucket list. Along the way, he traveled by train, boat, bus, and on foot in a way once common but now uncommon

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DCSlCDHShs4/?igsh=MTc2ZHJ2djBsM2F0Nw==

Challenging Omar for “most unique wanderer” is Courtney Allen, who goes by the moniker “Hitchhiker Courtney” as she makes an adventure of hitching rides all the way from China to South Africa

**

Stranger, and more adventurous still, was my French friend in Greece, who decided to end his time there by literally buying a donkey for company and walking back to France. His logic: it’ll be a wonderful walk, and donkeys make good company. That’s hard to argue with.

The point is that even in this age of instant gratification, thanks to cookie-cutter, pre-packaged everything, with “travel” being one of the most over-glamorized and spoiled things on social media – real people are still finding real ways to have unique, accessible experiences for themselves. To boot, watch the reels of Omar, Courtney, and my buddy with his donkey, and you’ll notice a genuineness and “human-ness” missing from the travel influencer content and the “unique travel experiences” that they say everyone “must have.”

The first point of these stories I love telling is that the ways and opportunities to travel the world are beautifully varied and accessible, in a way the travel industry would rather you not keep top of mind. Buses and trains are cheap. Hitchhiking is free. And hosts are often most welcoming and happy to see you in the unvisited corners of the world.

The second point is that moving abroad, and the opportunities to do so, are as varied and unique as the ways to travel. If you are realistic about the situation in front of you, open-minded to what it could be, and creative about finding the approach that fits you.

The ways to move abroad: Forever or not, to one place or many, on a budget or a plan…

Whenever I talk to people about moving abroad, their first thought is “how do I get a job?” For many reasons, one being that getting a job abroad that allows deep experience of the place you want to live is tough, I think this is the wrong way to look at it.

I think asking, “Why do I want to move abroad?” is a much more insightful place to start, and leads to finding that “one thing” you’re hoping to find or experience.

Do you want to live the life of the Italian countryside like “Under the Tuscan Sun”?

Do you want to reconnect with your heritage by going to Africa, the Philippines, or Ireland?

Do you want to immerse yourself in the mountains – possibly in Albania, Patagonia, or Nepal – as a needed break from the concrete jungles, with a pace to counter that of the rat race?

The reason for this is that while traveling the world and aiming for 100 countries is well worth it, most people who want to live abroad want to do so for one simple reason. It may be for nature. It may be for connection. It may be for peace. It may be for pasta. Damn good pasta. And white wine.

If you really want to “move abroad” for that one thing, that you can treat yourself to satisfyingly in one finite period, why not do that? Along the way, you maximize how much of that thing that you get to experience, you minimize logistics and costs, and you don’t waste effort or energy on the extraneous stuff.

Take an extended period, find a location that immerses you in your “one thing” the way you honestly need, book and plan stability by booking long-term accommodation and planning a budget, pack light (and put everything in storage), and go.

So, what would this “simple approach” to moving abroad look like?

It’s simpler than you think: Passport, credit card, backpack, Airbnb

Despite what many articles, influencers, travel agencies, and service providers will tell you, going abroad is simple.

All you need is a passport, a visa (or visa waiver), credit cards or cash, a backpack, and clothes and items for one week. That’s it.

So with this minimalist setup, what does moving abroad look like, based on the “one thing”?

A graduate art student with Italian heritage (or interest) wants to dig deeply into both, so she books a three-month stay in an Airbnb room of a small town outside of Florence, commuting daily on public transportation for self-guided “study” of art at its source. She achieves the goal of immersing herself in things that she is passionate about, connects with, and sees herself in.

A 40-year-old lover of anime and all things similar applies for a six-month digital nomad visa to Japan, booking rooms for two months each in the north (Hokkaido), the busyness of it all (Saitama, outside of Tokyo, alternatively Kyoto), and the south (Hiroshima or Kyushu). Along the way, he too studies, interacts, practices broken Japanese, and spends late nights in the shockingly innocent neighborhoods and cafes that immerse anime lovers in all things manga. (https://abrotherabroad.com/japan-digital-nomad-visa/) He gets to experience, in person, a world that has been an uplifting distraction and the extended chance to make something he dreamt about a reality.

The burnt-out management consultant in New York with a palate for good wine and a distaste for the concrete jungle reserves an apartment in the “middle of nowhere” Mendoza, Argentina, with a goal to taste every bodega in the valley and volunteer, hopefully as a tour guide in the estancias, simply talking about what gets him excited. Then, he moves across the hills to Chile’s Casablanca valley for a few months of consultant style research into his passion (wine) examining why Chile’s wines are doing so well, to see if those biz school case studies were right (they weren’t) and see if there’s a meager possibility to push his life in that direction. If it fails, it will be a beautiful, irreplaceable experience. He achieves a period of his life exploring, without pressure or profit requirement, something that he enjoys.

The family with three teens is worried that their kids’ brains and lives are being sucked into a screen by social media, and that their youth is being stolen. They are receiving an increasingly unsafe, negatively stimulating, and socially stifling environment from their hometown/state/country instead of the “Stranger Things” experience of the 80s. They fix this by renting a house for a year in a mid-sized town in Ecuador, close to hot springs, jungle hikes, and volunteer preservation projects. On the weekends, they fly to Galapagos, Machu Picchu, and the Amazon to recalibrate their perspective on the world and people, beyond the algorithms and screens. They achieve the one goal of reconnecting the family with the “real” world, and arguably, each other.

The stifled LGBT’er in their 20s repressed from an upbringing in conservative America can book an apartment for 6 months in Bangkok to be immersed in a culture that accepts fluid sexuality without putting people on the spot. Or even Uruguay or Brazil, where the flamboyance of a “queen” is also accepted socially and legally, allowing them to live out and explore a stifled side of their self without fear.

“Moving abroad”, moving to a single place and settling in for a period, offers different potential than traveling abroad. It bears a potential richness of experience that promotes personal growth and can nourish parts of our lives that we’re starved of. And doing so doesn’t require staying forever. It does require planning and intention, though.

The Irreplaceable Support Crew for Indecisiveness: A storage unit

But what about everything at home?

Simply put, sublease the house and put your belongings in a storage unit.

If everything, outside of your desire to experience your single dream location, is up in the air, you can simplify it all by just putting life on pause.

Rent a storage unit and cram everything in there. Time it for the lease on your house to end or arrange a sublease. Get the credit card, pack the backpack, book the flight, and you’re ready to move abroad.

If, while abroad, the cash runs out or you reach a point of satisfaction, you can return, get another apartment, unpack the storage unit, and reminisce over your memories.

However, if the experience sucks you in and that time abroad becomes a little longer, you can always fly back home, sell everything in the storage unit, and close out the situation.

Time from work and life – how do you manage it?

For those who wish to move abroad or travel abroad, time and money are likely the most significant hurdles at the moment. So, let’s address how to find the time.

Transitions and pauses.

These are the best times to take your time abroad.

Whether you are a university student between undergrad and grad school, or soon to be between graduation and a job. Whether you are transitioning between jobs or getting laid off from one. Whether you are celebrating getting married (and planning a honeymoon) or celebrating a divorce and getting acquainted with the new you, these are all important and useful transitions. Asking an employer, partner, school, and yourself for time during these periods is as easy as it is going to be in life.

So, brainstorm, and if you have a transition lingering in the future, consider rolling that transition into a move abroad, whether temporarily or permanently.

Second, be on the lookout for an opportunity to hit the pause button on life.

University gap years and requesting a sabbatical from work are the most common pauses people take, and offer the benefit of having a life to walk back into. If you commit to coming back with a new skill or information, the sabbatical is a rather easy sell.

Switching the kids from normal school to homeschool for a brief “pause” is a tradeoff that could deliver some amazing benefits and experiences.

Look for transitions, opportunities, and pauses in your life, and you’ll find the time to move abroad, even if at least for some time and not forever.

Money abroad – how do people do it?

While I’ve surveyed hundreds of nomads (and now expats) to compile an honest list of the jobs that most people successfully do abroad (you can read that article here, I don’t recommend even planning seriously to get a remote job. Experiment with it, explore it, play with side hustles, but don’t plan on a remote job or job online to pay the bills. As I cited in my book Digital Nomad Nation, most online businesses and digital nomads don’t see consistent success, sustainable profits, and a reliably livable income for 2 to 3 years…longer than the time most people have abroad.

The truth: The best experiences abroad are self-sustained financially, and don’t involve getting a job where you go

As for the option of finding a job there, in your new country, you’re not going abroad to transfer your 9 to 5 rat race, and having a job is more likely to restrict you from experiencing “that one thing” that you’re moving abroad for.

So what’s the solution? Create a budget. Save the money.

On the side, dabble with online income and side hustles because 1) why not, and 2) it can lead to valuable, freedom-creating skills.

However, as the primary means of living abroad, figure out what six months to a year abroad will cost, make a goal to save that, put it in your bank account (plus some extra), and go enjoy your life abroad and sitting at cafes at 10 am while the locals wonder “wtf does that guy do?”

To figure out the budget you need, use booking platforms for accommodation and flight prices, trip reports from travelers and expats to estimate living expenses, and even wander Google Maps for restaurants’ menus and prices to estimate living costs. However, that “nerding out” is for the later stages of travel planning.

In the meantime, use this list of costs of living for countries and cities around the world, and add 50% because you’ll likely want to splurge and need some practice in being frugal abroad.

If logistically, this sounds like similar planning to traveling the world, but experiencing one place, it’s because it is

Much of this approach – the timing of departure, the planning, the saving – mirrors the experience of traveling around the world. However, thinking about what you want and making that the priority by giving yourself the chance to relax and enjoy one place punches FOMO in the face and gives the finger to all things anxiety-inducing “you’re gonna get left out” scarcity-based marketing. Instead, it takes you back to a lost, different way of experiencing life abroad…

All are “re-packaged” as just living abroad for a period.

No matter what it sounds like, I assure you the experience is awesome, because it is exactly what I’m doing right now, and I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.

The overlooked detail: It’s ok to make it temporary or seasonal, and it’s ok to come back

The not-so-nuanced point I am making in this article is that, in this approach to moving abroad, living abroad can be a temporary experience – intentionally and unintentionally – and that is not only ok, but it is part of what makes the experience accessible and low risk.

You could move to Berlin for six months as a musician (similar to what the Beatles did to become one of the best) to expand your horizons and explore the art scene, then realize that Germans are fun but a little too quirky for extended doses, and return home with amazing memories.

You could do six months in Japan exploring the best of everything, and ultimately come to realize that in some places, you may be a welcomed outsider, but you will always be an outsider, then return home to the warmth of people like you.

You may live the blue zone life in Sardinia for a year, repairing a €1 house, only to realize you have no business doing renovations and run out of money planned for the project. Then return home.

That is all ok. The risk of such happening shouldn’t discourage you from an adventure you want to have, and probably are meant to have.

The fact that you returned “home” also means that you can leave again to live abroad, in a different way. You’ve proved that’s possible.

The essential questions: Where to go, how long to stay, and the bare essentials to get started

Where to go

Where you should go depends heavily on, as we discussed, the “one thing” you want to move abroad for. Nature, art, food, language, experiences for your family, expression, etc., should be the basis of where. Use this to narrow down to the region and country.

For classical art buffs, Europe. For foodies, southern Europe, Thailand, and Japan. For mountain lovers, Patagonia, the Albanian Alps, and Nepal. For those in search of peace – Buddhist enclaves, ricefields, nature preserves, etc.

If you simply want to immerse yourself in a culture and place, then for larger, highly functioning countries, aim for second cities and neighborhoods on the outskirts of second cities. For Japan, Kyoto and Fukuoka. For Portugal, Porto and beyond. For Poland, Kraków and Gdansk. For Chile, Vina del Mar.

For smaller countries that don’t run at such a high pace or efficiency, aim for the bigger cities to settle, and transition to a second city that fits your tastes later. For example, in Ecuador, start with Quito, with the likelihood of ending up in Cuenca. For Brazil, start with Rio or Sao Paulo, knowing you’ll likely end up in Florianopolis or Fortaleza. Visit Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, knowing you’ll likely end up in Georgetown.

How long to stay

For budget planning, accommodation, and scheduling, plan for at least six months to a year abroad, and the time off, money, and “personal infrastructure” to handle as such.

One month abroad, in a single city, is a vacation. Around the third week, your mind will finally be disconnected from home, and you’ll be present.

At the end of one month, you’ll be familiar with the place.

At the end of three months, the place and the people will be familiar with you.

At the six-month mark, the language and culture will sink in.

By month seven, you will feel “at home.”

Months seven to twelve will reveal a completely different experience from the first month, thanks to your connections with the people and culture, and you will realize a truth in how living abroad is a very different adventure from travelling abroad. That truth and the reasoning behind it are hard to verbalize and…honestly, you just have to experience it.

The Bare Essentials for Getting Started

Credit card and cash for a few days.

Flight.

One month accommodation booking in your city of choice.

Awareness of why you want to experience living abroad, and the one thing you really need from the experience.

Bonus: An old-school, paper guidebook to your new home, like a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide, to get you started.

In closing: Just go, no one I’ve met regretted a one-way ticket

As simple as that.

You can move abroad. You can live abroad. The experience will be worth it. Find a way.

Are you sold on the possibilities of living abroad, even if just for a little while? I hope so.

So, let’s get you started on the journey with the next article Things to Do Before Moving Abroad.