Moving to a cheaper country

Capo Dei Capi said:

100Mbps is the max bandwidth connection. Depending on the country it can drop down pretty fast with a high latency to whatever server you are uploading to. More time needed to do something will end up bleeding more money from a business such as IM, then higher costs.

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I understand , if your business revolves around heavy traffic, it must be considered.

SH-M said:

Where exactly in Balkans are we talking about?

I'd say living in Eastern and South Eastern Europe is quite good. With a minimal 4 figure monthly income you can live quite comfortably, which allows you to progress faster in IM without having to worry about spending a lot in necessities like food, clothing etc. It's true though that the technology is more or less the same in price, but it's also qualitative, so it's acceptable.

My origin is from one of these Balkans "slums", I've lived in the US for 3 months during University years... went to live again in the US for almost a year, lived in Austria in the 2000s as a kid, but nothing ever beats the home country, in every possible perspective, especially the financial one.

I'd suggest you stay where you are and continue what you're doing so far.

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Im not going anywhere yet, my point was exactly the same - you do not need to be that good internet marketeer to live from it in my country, greatly improving my chances to stay in that business and devote to it. In US, a lot of people just cant learn it fast enough to make $5000/month from start. And they must move on to real job , or keep it for long time. Not here

If someone has decided to move to a lower cost nation, remember be frugal don't be a cheap-ass. In some of the eastern euro nations, you can get property for super cheap out in the villages since the population has been dropping fast. But the city areas are still going to be lower costs than your current expenses in a Tier 1 nation.

When you live in remote areas, remember its going to take a much longer time for the ambulance to arrive and then bring you to the hospital. Its also going to take much longer for the fire service to arrive to put out the fire if one breaks out. I've seen some videos of houses in suburban america nearly burn all the way down by the time the fire service arrives.

Fragmaster said:

Im not going anywhere yet, my point was exactly the same - you do not need to be that good internet marketeer to live from it in my country, greatly improving my chances to stay in that business and devote to it. In US, a lot of people just cant learn it fast enough to make $5000/month from start. And they must move on to real job , or keep it for long time. Not here

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Yo quiero Tacobell

if you know what you are doing, you don't have to move

I too am interested in the idea of being able to drastically reduce my living costs to be able to commit myself to my IM career.

As mentioned previously though, it aint all rainbows and when something goes wrong - it can go really wrong.

Many countries with reduced costs also have minimum requirements before you would even be accepted for a visa that would be higher than $1,000/month earning.

Capo Dei Capi said:

Why do I need the government to pay for medical bills, when I can get insurance and it does the same thing. $100/month for private insurance is the same as $100/month in increased taxes, and If I can't afford healthcare i'll get it for free. Taking both those out of consideration, I'd rather have a high medical bill and be alive then no medical bill and die.

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Your wrong. A large % of American's who have insurance go bankrupt I heard it's 2000000 per year. The job of the insurance is to use the tons and nots of TOS they siged to F#@$@ them over and they do it so good! The poor shmuch who was paying for 20+ years and thought well i"m paying for the day I get sick then he needs a $120K surgery they say it's not covered . that happen every single day!

So if you think you are safe with insurance you are just living in lala land.

Good luck Americans with your health insurance, you better save up money. And for that reason over a million american's have become expats just because of medical they had conditions and not much money.

dys872 said:

Your wrong. A large % of American's who have insurance go bankrupt I heard it's 2000000 per year. The job of the insurance is to use the tons and nots of TOS they siged to F#@$@ them over and they do it so good! The poor shmuch who was paying for 20+ years and thought well i"m paying for the day I get sick then he needs a $120K surgery they say it's not covered . that happen every single day!

So if you think you are safe with insurance you are just living in lala land.

Good luck Americans with your health insurance, you better save up money. And for that reason over a million american's have become expats just because of medical they had conditions and not much money.

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And guess what, filing bankruptcy removes that large medical debt. Also you can see what is covered and what is not covered in an insurance policy. If a person didn't realize something wasn't covered in the policy its their own damn fault. Not everyone needs someone else to take care of them for "free" while making them pay via other ways.

Hmm... I went recently to Thailand for 2 weeks. I was on the island Koh Phangan, famous for the parties like full moon party. I was at the Jungle party, met some guy while I was in the bathroom and he ended up to be a quite famous techno DJ from Malaysia (DJ Kuma). He invited me to come backstage and watch him play.. enjoy the free drinks and other cool stuff While I was there, I met various people. All on a sudden, I met another guy from The Netherlands. He moved to Thailand 7 years ago. I was quite interested in the process how to move to Thailand and how to live as a foreigner.

Now he told.. just go IF you really want to go. You'll overcome the process of arranging stuff and getting licenses for whatever. It's like starting a new company, if you just do it you'll eventually see how things go.
The most problems he had were starting a company at his own name. He never asked for a Thai passport.. he just flies multiple times back to the Netherlands so it seems like he still lives in Europe (LOL). So his imaginary girlfriend owns the company (in fact it's himself under fake names and papers). All stuff like this... you need to be aware off and find creative options with lawyers how to deal with this.

But once you live in Thailand, life is beautiful I'd just rather go for holidays there, spend 2 weeks lot's of money, and go back to the Netherlands. Stuff is somehow better arranged here like health insurance etc.

There's a lot of generalization and inaccuracies being posted in this thread.

Moving to a "poorer" country does not mean you have to wait ages for ambulances and get crap service. I also live in Taiwan and many services are actually better than my native UK.
However, I did live in the Philippines as well. Great beaches but sketchy as fuck, bad services and poor internet and electricity supply. My point is you can't generalize too much...

It may surprise you to know that during a recent large expat survey, the USA wasn't even in the top 20 for "Quality of Life".

As for internet speed and general IM stuff, check out the nomad list. There the US does get two in the top ten. Mostly due to "Fun"...

If you live in the rural areas like some cheap-ass expats not being frugal expats you will wait a while. Ambulances in poorer countries aren't going to be as the same quality as ones in more wealthy nations that have a hire standard of training.

The Nomad List is also complete bullshit btw, it doesn't give accurate internet speeds information. Many of the American cities and European cities on the list have speeds of up to 100 Gbps you can get. Also they rank American cities lower on freedom of speech than European cities even though you can go to jail for saying many things in Europe these days.

"Ambulances in poorer countries aren't going to be as the same quality as ones in more wealthy nations that have a hire standard of training."

Another generalization. What about in the USA where is you don't have health insurance you're pretty much fucked? Or if you have to go to A & E (ER) on a Saturday night in the UK, you'll be given something to bleed on for a few hours.

It's true, I wasn't impressed with the hospital I was taken to after I tore my ACL on an island in Thailand. Or one in Manila. But again, there is still some damn good medical care in "Poorer countries", and really shitty service in "Wealthy countries".

The advice earlier on was great imho. Take extended holidays and get the lay of the land (ooh er missus )

Jesse Custer said:

"Ambulances in poorer countries aren't going to be as the same quality as ones in more wealthy nations that have a hire standard of training."

Another generalization. What about in the USA where is you don't have health insurance you're pretty much fucked? Or if you have to go to A & E (ER) on a Saturday night in the UK, you'll be given something to bleed on for a few hours.

It's true, I wasn't impressed with the hospital I was taken to after I tore my ACL on an island in Thailand. Or one in Manila. But again, there is still some damn good medical care in "Poorer countries"...

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They treat you if you have an emergency, and then bill you/insurance/govt later. If you are poor in America you can get insurance from the government.

That quality of life list ranked Ireland below Uganda. Tell me how Ireland is worse to be in than a place with low literacy rates, much higher HIV rates and just a few years ago was heavily considering the death penalty for gays.

Well I live in México, minutes away from the us, and here we have lots of Americans, usually a lot of retired people, is just cheaper they live in front of the beach with awosome houses, lets say that in the us they will be poor but in here they are rich, the cool think is that if they get homesick they just need to cross the border, two hours top,

Can easily imagine Uganda is way better than Ireland.

@Capo Dei Capi

How many countries have you visited outside of your own? Many foreigners were exalted after visiting our Exit festival in Serbia (hosted annually in Novi Sad) .Its like small tommorowland, and are recurring visitors for 10 years. Why would someone come 10 years straight to a shitty place?

I see that you are worried about health. If you are comfortable with your income, and are worried about health , you by all means should stay .We are talking about specific T1 country poor-average , becoming T2-T3 rich . T1 average-rich should only go on vacations, as it is common sense , why change something thats working.

I am in Africa since 7 years traveling around with my wife - so actually living here. I hope I never need to go back to Europe. Disadvantages here:
depending on the location: Electricity not permanently available (you need a little generator), Internet maximum 3G, sometimes for hours does not work fast, medical treatment is okay for standard things, sometimes even better, but for major things you have to go to the capital cities to get western standard treatment. Treatment is cheap, we pay everything cash. Roads are terrible. Nonetheless with 1000$ a month it is very difficult to survive even here, but with 2000$ you can live quite comfortable (2 people).
Advantages: cost of food is cheap, if you do not need Western food, that is expensive as imported, housing is cheap, people are very nice, crime rate is less than in US or EU. Climate is perfect. Public transport is cheap, taxi as well. To live really good here, you need also money!

Fragmaster said:

@Capo Dei Capi

How many countries have you visited outside of your own? Many foreigners were exalted after visiting our Exit festival in Serbia (hosted annually in Novi Sad) .Its like small tommorowland, and are recurring visitors for 10 years. Why would someone come 10 years straight to a shitty place?

I see that you are worried about health. If you are comfortable with your income, and are worried about health , you by all means should stay .We are talking about specific T1 country poor-average , becoming T2-T3 rich . T1 average-rich should only go on vacations, as it is common sense , why change something thats working.

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I've been to a few, but it doesn't make it impossible to know in depth as much as a local does for places that I haven't been to. Its a controversial thing since people everyone just aren't used to this concept. In same places the ability for someone far away to know just as much or more as they do, is even harder to grasp.