♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.com/palms to discover more. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Josh Rasheeds, I'm your host. Today on the show, I'm gonna talk to you about why you probably shouldn't leave your home country, why you should probably stay put where you are. In the most recent Friday Q&A episode, I dedicated the last 20 minutes of that podcast to simply sharing with you in a rather casual way some things that I really appreciate about the United States of America, where I currently am.

Haven't been back in a while, but here I am right now in Florida right now, and just, there are a lot of things that I appreciate about the United States of America broadly and Florida specifically. And so if you wanna hear some of those things, you can listen to them in the most recent Friday Q&A episode.

However, I did hear from a number of listeners how they appreciated those thoughts. And I realized in thinking about their responses that I probably haven't been as balanced as I would like to be when talking about the advisability of leaving. Anybody who's listened to Radical Personal Finance for any time has probably heard me talk about how leaving can often solve problems better than almost any other tool.

And this is true on the micro level and on the macro level. When I observe the problems that people get themselves into, I often see how if somebody would just train themselves to walk away, either quite literally or figuratively, at the first sign of danger or problems, they can avoid the vast majority of long-term problems by simply disciplining themselves to leave at the first sign of trouble.

And for me, while it was difficult when I was younger, because I had some of the youthful macho zeal to say, "No, I'm gonna solve my problems," I have since realized that there have been many times in my life where I have been fortunate that I didn't let that youthful macho zeal get out of control, and I simply have left problem situations and I've avoided situations that were rather difficult.

If you go through the day-to-day things that affect many of us, and you think about leaving as an option, you will realize very quickly that it can solve so many problems, whether it's the schoolyard bully. If you're being bullied in school, one of the things that you can do is simply leave.

You can leave. You can walk away from the pushing and shoving and shouting match. You can not go back to that school. You can quit the school, move to another school. You can homeschool. You can just simply leave. If you're in a, all of a sudden, there's an unfriendly altercation, your local restaurant or bar or a concert or something like that, you can always turn around and walk away, and if you discipline yourself to simply turn around and walk away, you can avoid the more painful results that can often come from violence.

Perhaps you're going to, I don't know, a protest of some kind, and all of a sudden, things start to get unruly. Well, if you just simply leave, you can avoid the majority of problems. I was just rereading recently the book by Wes Denham and, I forget his co-author's name, called Arrest Proof Yourself, to date, one of the top five most popular episodes of Radical Personal Finance ever made, and as I was rereading it, I was just struck again by how good this advice is.

For example, the author in that book called How to Arrest Proof Yourself talks about altercations, domestic violence altercations, and quite literally, he talks about how there are some people who often get involved in domestic violence complaints and some people who don't, but his advice very clearly is if you're involved in a situation, your loved one is yelling at you, there's raised voices, you must immediately assume that the police have been called, and you must immediately leave.

You must terminate contact and you must walk out the door. Don't get in the car, it's easier to find. Walk away, go somewhere else, and solve it from a distance. And while sometimes you recognize, hey, people yell at each other, when you think about people who get in trouble, right, with the police being called over some kind of allegations of violence, if they had simply followed that advice to leave, things would have been better, right?

For example, if I wanna stay faithful to my wife, what do I do? Well, I need to train myself that if I'm ever in a situation where I even have an inkling that something might be going in a direction that wouldn't result in my being faithful to my wife, I need to train myself to leave, to get up and just simply leave.

If you're involved in a company where something is going wrong, right, you're concerned, is there honesty here? Maybe I'm being mistreated in some way. Maybe there's something here where, you know, this probably isn't gonna work out for the long term. Whatever it is, oftentimes you can simply leave. And by the way, this protects you in the worst of situations, right?

Maybe you're going to be taken advantage of or mistreated in some way. Well, the best thing to do is avoid the mistreatment in the first place, right? Don't sit around and say, well, at least I can file a lawsuit. No, get out of there and leave. But even in the best of situations, right, sometimes people will be at a job and they just are looking around and, you know, nothing's wrong with it.

Nobody's committing any kind of criminal acts. No one is being abused in some way, but there's just, there's not a lot of positive things that can be said about the job. Well, one of the best things you can do is simply leave 'cause all of the time that you spend in that mediocre situation is time that you can't be then investing into a really positive situation.

And so I always try to include the option and the possibility of leaving as a choice that should be recognized and considered seriously as a way of solving problems. And if you're accustomed to thinking that way, you probably say, well, duh, Josh, well, we know that. Like, that's obvious, right?

But amazingly, you will find so many people that don't think about that. And often it's those who are in the most difficult of circumstances because there are all kinds of reasons why they can't leave or why they think they can't leave. Meanwhile, you watch your children being around people who are not a good influence on them.

You watch your family being surrounded by circumstances that are terrible for you. And you think, well, I can't leave because, because, because. Well, the answer is yes, you can. And of course, I've expanded this significantly to the county level, to the state level, and to the country level. If you don't like the way that you're being treated in the town that you live in, you should consider leaving and moving to a different town.

If you don't like the way that your state is treating you, you should consider leaving and moving to a different state. Why sit there in a place that's mistreating you and be abused when you have the choice to lawfully, peacefully, voluntarily pick up and go somewhere else? And you say, well, I'm gonna make it better.

I'm gonna fight, I'm gonna make it better, right? Whether that's fighting physically or fighting in a court of law. Yeah, maybe, right? There are some people who do it. But for every one person who paves the way with the legal victory, there are dozens of people who just simply had their lives slowly destroyed by the circumstances that they're in.

And so if you can do that, great. But why do it if that's not for you, right? You should be very thoughtful about what you actually do and the battles that you actually engage in. You need to be really careful. And people often don't think about leaving. So I have talked about leaving and finding things that are better.

And this is one of those things that you can continually do. Again, better job, better town, better house, better country. There are lots and lots of countries around the world that you can choose from. And for certain people, there will be things that are better in another place. On Friday, I talked about a simple example.

Let's say that you need 24-hour nursing care. Well, if you live in a place with high cost of nursing care, you might spend $150,000 a year to have that 24-hour nursing care and get a very poor quality product. Well, if you leave and you go to another country where you can hire qualified nurses for less, you may be able to get a better quality of care for yourself at $60,000 per year instead of $160,000 per year.

That can make a massive difference in your personal standard of living. I could go on for 20 minutes with good examples, but I'm going to stop and I'm gonna pivot. Because while leaving is something that can, in many circumstances, measurably improve your life, without question, leaving has costs. Anytime you leave and go from one place to another place, from one situation to another situation, you will face challenges.

Yes, the child who's being bullied in school might be able to end the current round of bullying by leaving one place and going somewhere else. But they'll have to learn a whole new school, a whole new social system, a whole new set of rules, a whole new group of friends.

It's not free. And the same thing applies when changing your country of residence. To do so can often be quite expensive. Now, I've tried to acknowledge this, and I've tried to talk about it in this way. It's one thing to actually choose to leave, and it's another thing to simply be prepared to leave.

I frequently find myself consulting with people, and in my courses that I teach on some of these subjects, I frequently find myself saying, if you will simply prepare yourself to leave, then you'll be most of the way there. And you don't actually have to leave unless you're sure that you want to.

In the most recent Friday episode, I shared that three years ago, I did not have the personal infrastructure in place where I was prepared to leave. I didn't have another country I could move to. I didn't have another country I could go and work in. I didn't have my money squared away to where I could get at it in another country.

I didn't have the infrastructure. I didn't have the paperwork. I didn't have the experience. And so I was stuck, quite literally, in the United States. Now, there are worse places in the world to be stuck, but I don't like to be stuck anywhere. And I was stuck, quite literally, in the United States.

And it took several years of hard work to put in place an appropriate infrastructure to where as now I can choose from a handful of places all around the world where I can go and I can live, I can work, I can do business, I can support my family, I can live.

And so now, three years later, I now look at the United States with a different attitude, knowing I can leave. And so now I can appreciate more easily the things that are good about the United States, the things that are good about Florida. And I think people often experience this on a smaller scale, right?

You might grow up, a friend of mine grew up in small town Indiana and lives in Miami, Florida now. And he is very much looking forward to going back to his small town in Indiana for the 4th of July. And when he was younger, all he wanted to do was get out of there.

And now he really appreciates it for what it is. Because he's not stuck in that small town in Indiana, he can appreciate the small town for what it is and what it offers. And so I often approach this and say, if you'll put in place the infrastructure so that you know you can leave at any point in time, and if you'll even make it so that you have good options elsewhere, if it's leaving countries, right?

I'll talk to someone, I'll say, listen, do you have a home in another country? Do you have the paperwork necessary to live in another country? Do you have a residence permit or a citizenship? Do you have a driver's license? Do you have a local bank account? Do you have a home that you could go to that you know, a place that you're familiar with and you're accustomed to and you can get around, you know how to live there.

If you have those things and you maintain those things, then you may or may not actually have to do it, but it'll give you that sense of peace, that sense of security. But should you actually go and leave? And I think in the majority of cases, the answer is probably not.

Probably not. Because leaving and actually going somewhere and committing to it can set you back significantly in life. And the older that you get, the bigger the cost is. The cost for, you know, a young man or woman, a teenager, someone in his or her early 20s, the cost for that person to leave and go somewhere new is probably modest.

Especially if they don't have a developed family network or friend network or something that they can tap into, it's probably modest. But for someone who's 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old, the cost of leaving and going to another place can be really, really substantial. Let's talk about those costs.

I think that by far the biggest cost is likely to be the human cost. And there are different components to it. The obvious human cost that I think most people are tuned into would simply be the cost on your social life, your family, your friends. Our family and our friends are the things that make our local living what it is.

None of us live where we live just because of a certain geographical feature. You can have great weather in many cities all around the world. You can have great surf in many places all around the world. You can have great skiing in many places all around the world. Those factors alone are not enough of a reason to pick up and go somewhere new.

At least, if not for everyone, I think the vast majority of people. I've never actually met someone who lives in a ski town who skis every day. Even the most ardent of skiers has a life outside of skiing. The same can be applied to almost any activity. And so, while I think you should consider those things, realistically, you can do those things in many places or you can fit them into your life in many ways.

There are many other factors, right? Certain freedoms to do certain things. I wanna, I don't know, shoot my rifle off my back porch. Okay, well, how much are you actually gonna do that? There are things that are very important to people, right? I wanna be able to homeschool my children with minimal interference.

That's a very fair thing. And each of us will have our own set of criteria. I want to live with progressive neighbors that match my political identification. Great. I want a certain kind of nightlife available to me at walking distance from my apartment front door. Fine. But at the end of the day, it's the people that are going to most significantly affect how you live.

And there can be different sides to this. So, on the one hand, you could say, I wanna be close to my mom and dad. And if you wanna be close to your mom and dad, you'll find that that makes a big difference in your lifestyle. For some other people, I need to get a little farther away from mom and dad.

Fair enough. Siblings, friends, the people that we like to be with make a big, big difference in our life. Now, here's what's difficult. I don't think anybody would say that you have to be near these specific people in order for you to have a fulfilling social life. You can build a fulfilling social life afresh in another place.

But there's something about those long-term relationships that lead to a real sense of fulfillment and satisfaction in life. When you have those friends that you can truly, genuinely be yourself around, when you can truly, genuinely feel comfortable, when you have those family relationships that tie your family together, potentially over the generations, that can be extremely valuable.

It's not only valuable to you, it's also potentially valuable to your children. Having your children have the context of a broad social network can make a tremendous difference in their life and in their sense of stability and sense of security. With my own experience growing up, I always thought that it would be really fun to be homeless.

I don't know why. Some people have, some people play golf. I think about what it would be like to be homeless, and I read books and stories about homeless people, quite literally, and I tell you, here's how I'd be a hobo, right? Here's how I live. And I think that's interesting.

The problem is that, obviously, there's a big difference between the interest of it and the actual doing of it. While it's fun to think about sleeping on the street, the actual experience of sleeping on the street is not so interesting. But my entire life, I knew that this is just kind of a far-fetched mental game, because I could never imagine not having a place to sleep tonight.

I could never imagine what it would be like to be someone who didn't know literally dozens of people where you could feel totally comfortable and safe showing up unannounced, knocking on their door, and saying, "I'm hungry and I'm cold," or, "I'm hungry and I'm hot, "and I don't have a place to sleep tonight.

"Can I stay here?" That's powerful in terms of a psychological profile that you can give to a child. Now, unfortunately, there are many people in the world who don't experience that kind of thing. But if you have that, and then you just have this knowing, this knowledge that you never had to go out and acquire, this just sense of knowing that, well, my uncle so-and-so lives here, aunt so-and-so lives there, my dad's friend blah, blah, blah lives over there, so-and-so that I knew from high school lives there, my friend here, that broad network is extraordinarily powerful.

And this is my second category, is this network. So the first category of people is friends, families, friends, but the network that you have in a place is usually what makes the biggest difference in your ability to navigate through it. You're arrested by the police, you're in prison. Who can you call who's going to start the appropriate processes working to get you out?

If you can make a call to one person, that person says, oh, I need to call so-and-so as an attorney, I know so-and-so is a judge, they'll give me advice on who I need to call. We don't have any money, but I know so-and-so has money, and that person will lend me money, so if necessary, I can pay a bail charge and we can get Joshua out of prison.

That kind of network is a big deal. Who could you call to be able to get work? My entire lifetime, I've never worried about not having a job, because if I needed money, I can pull out my phone and I can call quite literally hundreds of people who would know my name, would take my call, and would make phone calls for me if they didn't have something themselves.

They would say, well, Joshua, I don't have work for you right now, but let me call a few of my friends and see if we can get you work. Again, that's a powerful benefit of having stability, of having a network in a place. This goes even deeper if you're in cultures where the network is how you get things done.

Now, the United States is kind of a mixture of this type of society. The United States is very much a world in which the network makes the difference for you. The good old boys' network is pivotal to long-term success. You have to know how to tap into the appropriate network.

Who is the person with authority? Who is the person with power? Who is the person with connections? If you don't know that, you're gonna be out of luck. But there's also a sense in which you don't need that stuff to survive, because the United States is a very, it's a merit-focused society, a meritocracy, and because there's this concept that we should all be equal before the law, you don't need it to survive.

If you need to go and get a driver's license, you just go to the driver's license DMV and get it done. If you need a certain function done, if you wanna open a company, you just go to the website and open the company. You don't have to know somebody in government to get things done at that level.

That's very different in some other places. And so if you leave the place where you have the network and you go to a place where you don't, you can often find yourself incredibly stymied, just blocked. I wanna open my company, but I need this permission, and I've submitted the application four times to the government office, and nothing gets done.

And then all of a sudden, you connect with the right person, and they say, oh, well, hold on a second, let me call, and they call so-and-so, and so-and-so makes the proper introduction, and all of a sudden, your paper gets moved to the front of the line, and boom, you're done, stamped out the door, move on with life.

So you wanna be very careful before you give that up. So think carefully about the people. I think this is the single biggest cost to leaving a place. And this is a cost that grows over time. Again, if you talk to an average, you know, successful 50-year-old man or woman, and you ask them to really think about their life, to give up a place where you know people, where you have a network of contacts, that's a powerful cost.

It's on the big picture, right? Who do I call to bail me out of jail? And it's down to the little things of, oh, yeah, I have a trusted mechanic, or I know who I can call if I need a trusted plumber. The knowing who to call is a big, big deal.

And I've enjoyed learning this all afresh in my travels over the last couple of years, being in some new places. I've learned how utterly closed and unfriendly a society can be until you make the right connection. Now, you can make the right connection. I've done it. I've done it, and I can do it again.

I might do it again, who knows? But until you make that right connection, you're kind of lost. And then you start to figure out, ah, this is the person that's connected. Hey, will you please help me? You know, here's what I need, reach so-and-so, and then the network opens up for you.

But to give that up is a big, big deal. Humans and the network, biggest cost. I think the second biggest cost to leaving is a sense of simply knowing how things work, having a sense of just basic knowledge about how things are done, where I'm from. On almost every level, in almost every society, there is a culture of the way things are done.

In some places, you have a very direct culture. For example, I have a friend of mine that I was just talking to on the phone, was from a different culture, different country, different culture. And every time this guy and I talk, he's like, "Joshua, how are you today?" And I'm from kind of a business, I don't really ask people how they are much, although 'cause I'm from the United States, where when we ask people how they are, we don't actually care how they are, we just expect them to say fine and get to business.

And so then having spent so much of my life on the phone, I just learned to skip all that stuff. And so I say, "Howdy, you know, bump and go to business." And there's this like awkward thing where I realize I'm not fulfilling the cultural norm here. You know, I'm approaching this with the US American get to business mindset.

I don't wanna ask how you are, if you'll tell me if there's a problem, and I care how you are, but I don't wanna engage in these pleasantries. And he's coming from a culture where the pleasantries are important. And so there's a little clash. Well, take that and multiply it times 1,000.

And almost everything from how you greet somebody to not how you greet someone. And I mean, quite literally, right? What do you say to the baker at the shop where you get your bread? Do you even get your bread from a shop or do you get it from a plastic bag on the shelf?

How many times do you kiss someone on the cheek or not kiss them on the cheek? Do you, how hard do you press their hand when you have a handshake? These little things are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of understanding how things are done, understanding how you interact, understanding, well, what level of obsequiousness do I need to display to this government agent in order for me to get my document stamped so I can go and do my thing?

Am I being ripped off by this guy or not? Is this guy mistreating me? Like all of this stuff, it just builds. And it can be very, very inefficient if you don't know how it's done. And so you wanna make sure that you have an understanding of those things.

And this is where, if you're young and you're adapt, or young and or adaptable in your mindset, it's not that difficult to go to a new place and work your way through it. It's kind of a sense of adventure. But this will be very frustrating to you if you're old and successful and established, and all of a sudden you find that I'm going right back to the beginning, right?

I just don't know how things work here. And that can be quite frustrating to you, so be aware of it. Don't expect to easily go from where you know how everything's done, you know how it works, even if you don't like it, at least you know how it works, to a place where you don't and expect that to be easy.

Third major cost. The time. It's very, in my experience, difficult and time-consuming for you to learn these lessons. And there is a major, major element of time needed in order for you to get things set up. Now, time is not the perfect category 'cause it's time and permission. For example, if you are from the state of Pennsylvania and you decide to move to Indiana, you can accomplish that very, very quickly.

Everybody from Pennsylvania knows how to make things work in Indiana. You know that if I'm gonna move my stuff, I either need to fit it into my vehicle or I need to go and hire a U-Haul or a big yellow Ryder truck, or maybe a budget truck, right? There's three brands of big trucks.

That's what you're gonna do. Or you're gonna hire a mover who's gonna be a full-service mover. That's it, you know what that is. You know that when I move from Pennsylvania to Indiana, I'm gonna need to rent an apartment. You understand the apartment culture. You know what's gonna be asked of you.

It's gonna be a first, last, first month, last month security deposit. There are little regional variations, right? You might find a few regions of the country where appliances are not included. That's different, but it's not that big of a hard thing to do. Then you know I need to change my driver's license.

I need to change everything on the utilities. And so basically in say two to three days of administrative work, you can have everything done. You got your new driver's license in hand. You got all the utilities switched over. You're familiar with the whole process. You've got, you're done, right?

Two or three days, you're ready to go. You don't have to go and deal with a work permit. You know, hey, I'm a US citizen. I've got my, you know, my driver's license. This proves this. I'm ready to go. And so in a few days, you're ready to go.

You can start your business. You can get your new job, whatever it is. Things work pretty, pretty similar. Now I want you to imagine moving to Mexico. That's very different. What's the name of the DMV in Mexican Spanish? What is, who do I talk to? How do I get the power turned on?

Is it a government company or is it a local company? And what identification do I need? And it's very difficult, very difficult. Now you can work it out, right, with the right fixer. Maybe you have an attorney who tells you, oh, do this. You have a friend who does that.

But if you show up and you don't know anybody, that's very, very difficult. And then all of a sudden you find yourself waiting in lines all over the place. It can take, I mean, can take quite literally months. I worked my way through a residency process over the past few years that because of coronavirus wound up taking months, months and months and months.

And I had all of my T's crossed, all my I's dotted, and it still was months. And so by the time I had finished the whole deal, right, got my residency card, got my driver's license, just got everything lined up, like by the time I had done the whole thing, I had a huge amount of time invested into it.

I went back to the government offices countless times. In hindsight, I promised myself, I'm not doing that again. I will use an attorney from here on out, and I will just simply pay the money 'cause it wasn't worth the time. That time is a big deal. Time is quite literally money.

And so imagine doing that in a place of, in a time of duress, right? Imagine that you fled your country because of some war or something going on, and you had to get out. And all of a sudden you find yourself in this totally new place trying to set this stuff up.

That's incredibly stressful. So that's why I set it up in advance. But you probably shouldn't leave because you'll find the time is massive. What about the money? Okay, you are going to spend a lot more money if you move and leave and go elsewhere than you are if you stay put, at least in the beginning.

You're gonna spend a lot more money. I don't care how much cheaper the place is. Or you can say, but Joshua, listen, if I move from Pennsylvania to Mexico, I'm gonna cut my rent by 50% or more. That's true. But you're gonna spend more money on everything until you figure out how to go, how to go and do it.

You're gonna go buy a car. Well, you're gonna get the gringo pricing on the car. And you're not gonna know, am I getting the real price or not? You just don't know. You don't have that intuition that you have in other things. And can you get a car cheap?

Yeah, but you just don't know. When you, insurance, well, how do I get quotes on insurance? Who do I talk to? You're not familiar. You haven't watched all the things. Where do I go to get my kind of groceries that I want? Well, it takes time quite literally to figure out what are the grocery stores?

Where do I go to get this certain thing? Oh, we want new curtains. Where do I go to get new curtains for the house? Where do I go to get furniture? Where do I go to hire a painter? Where do I go if I wanna paint myself? I don't know.

And so you spend a lot of money figuring that stuff out. Now, in the fullness of time, right, you can learn pretty quickly. And after a few months, ah, I see. Well, for this one, I go to this store. For this, I go to the other store. These things are really expensive.

So we send these things to our friend, and then he brings them in with us when he flies in. You can figure it out, but it's really expensive in the beginning. And what I've had to learn to do is to not worry about being frugal in the beginning, right?

You go to a new place, you're gonna spend a lot more money getting everything set up. Cab fees, government costs, paying a fixer to help you solve something. Just you're gonna pay a lot more money in the beginning. Now, if you make good decisions, you genuinely can live in a place longer for a significant, for less.

But it's not longer in the short term. Sorry, it's not less in the short term. It's gonna be more in the short term. And so I think you gotta give yourself some permission to just recognize that that's gonna be the case, and then make sure you have some money saved.

Now, this is true with almost any move. Anybody moving from Pennsylvania to Indiana has experienced how expensive it winds up being because of all the costs that you didn't factor in. Moving is expensive. It's time consuming, and you gotta figure out where your new stores are in Indiana, just like you do in Mexico.

But these things are real factors. And it is a big, it does make a big difference. There are other costs as well. Big costs. Things like culture shock. Now, culture shock is a somewhat ambiguous term. I'll tell you how I have experienced culture shock. It's not for me a specific sense of being shocked of here's how things are done here.

I personally am not that surprised by most things. Like, okay, here, we don't have sit-on-them toilet seats. We have squatting toilets. Okay, no big deal. Been there, done that. That's not hard for me to deal. Here, we eat with our hands. Okay, fine, all good. Here, we put lots of hot sauce and everything is spicy.

All right, I can deal with that. Where how I've experienced a lot of culture shock is just a sense of not fitting in and a knowledge that I'll never fit in. Now, that's interesting because I've generally been somewhat of an iconoclast. I don't fit in in many circumstances. But when you recognize I'm the foreigner and I'll always be the foreigner.

This is one of the places where, in my opinion, the United States shines more than any place that I have been. Maybe there are better places. The United States is the most welcoming place I have ever been to foreigners and to foreign cultures. You can assimilate into the American culture so quickly and Americans will accept you no matter where you're from.

And it doesn't mean they'll ignore the fact that, ah, you're originally from Pakistan. But Americans don't hold it against you. There's not a culture, not a country, not an ethnicity, not a color of skin that is not easily accepted in the United States of America. And I wish more people noticed that, more people appreciated that, that you'll never find someone saying to you, oh, I'm an American citizen.

And you'll never find someone who's surprised at the color of your skin or how you speak or your accent or anything like that. The most accepting, welcoming country I've ever been to. My experience, it is not that way in many other regions of the world where ethnicity, cultural identity reigns supreme.

I find, in my experience, for example, and I find that Asia is the most racist region of the world I've ever been to. But it's kind of a weird, a weird thing. Because on the one hand, I'm very rarely mistreated. I'm often treated very well, right? You get extra benefits and privileges from being the wealthy white foreigner.

But you never fit in, right? I will never, no matter how perfect my Chinese, I'll never be accepted as Chinese. And this is similar in many countries in the world. That's a hard thing to swallow, right? It's hard to always be the outsider. It's hard to be the outcast.

It's hard to be the guy who will never fit in. And that's significant. Now, boo-hoo, right? Throughout all of humanity's history, people have wandered around, they've moved from here, moved to there, and they have not fit in, right? Boo-hoo. There's no point in crying about it. But it is something that you're gonna face and you're gonna experience.

And I think that you should be just thoughtful about it. I think it's a big deal to make sure that if you do go somewhere, that you go to a place where you feel like, maybe I'll never be perfectly accepted. Maybe I'll always be the foreigner. But at least I like this.

I think here, there's a good argument for places that are very foreigner-friendly, right? A Dubai, somewhere that's super international and virtually nobody is from here, but we're all here, right? Or you get into a bigger city, right? An international-level city where you don't get stared at all the time and everything is a little bit more easygoing.

But those things are costs and they can affect you over time and they're worth considering. In my course that I teach on, that includes a lot of internationalization, how to survive the coming economic crisis, I strongly advise against moving outside of your country. I think that if you're experiencing an economic crisis in Florida, it'll be easier for you to get in your car and drive to Maine or to Texas or to Alaska and try to make it there, than it will be for you to get in your car and drive to Mexico City and try to make it there.

Or get in a boat and go to the Bahamas and try to make it there, right? You probably, especially in a time of crisis, you should stay in your home country where you have the appropriate paperwork, the ability to, the right, the legal right to work, the simplicity of proving citizenship and belonging and all that stuff where you speak the language.

I didn't even talk about language difficulties if you're in a place with multiple, that's a different language than your home language. I think that you're better off staying in the majority of those circumstances. That's not to say you're better off staying in all circumstances. And even in that course, I talk through it.

What are the issues that could affect you, right? You can have genuinely national level issues. You could have a national political crisis, right? You could be somebody who is facing persecution. In a certain country, it can be political persecution, religious persecution, racial persecution, facing some kind of persecution. You could be facing some personal sense of, you know, you're accused of committing some crime.

And the only way you can get, you're accused falsely, you're not morally responsible for something, but you are in legal trouble, there's warrants out for you. Well, the only way you solve that is either by dealing with it head on or by leaving. And so that's a really good reason to leave.

You could be facing some kind of thing that just makes life really difficult, right? Maybe, I have a friend of mine recently got a DUI, right? Okay, well, you got a DUI, you can't drive, license is suspended. Well, why are you gonna sit here in the United States where you can't drive, and yet you live in a driving culture and pay thousands and thousands of dollars in Uber fees when you can hop on an airplane and go to London and live in London for a while and enjoy the public transportation system?

Why, why not, right? So your national level problem can be solved by you simply moving. Or there could be a massive economic crisis. There could be an economic crisis in the currency, right? The currency collapse of some kind. There could be currency control laws. Many things can happen on a national level.

And for those circumstances, I believe that an international relocation is your simplest and best tool to solve that. But the international relocation doesn't have to be permanent, right? It can go for a few years, and that'll solve many problems. And it'll be, and if you do choose it, you can choose it and be quite happy as long as you go in with your eyes open, right?

I don't know where I'm gonna live in the future. I do know that I could move back to the United States now much more contentedly than I could have a few years ago. And I'm very aware of these issues. I'm aware of the cost to my personal network. I'm aware of the cost to my children.

I'm aware of, I think a lot, right? Am I doing the right thing? Will my children have that same sense of security if I'm traveling a lot or if I'm not in my hometown? Will they have that same sense of security that I had? If not, am I setting them up to be unstable people?

Wish there were a handbook that told you all the answers, but unfortunately you find as a parent they're not, right? You're trying to judge and just think critically about them. So I could move back to the United States or I could quite happily continue to live in other places around the world, I think.

Time will tell. But don't let anyone tell you that moving and leaving your country is gonna be all good. When I say it like that, then you say, of course, I know, Joshua, it wouldn't be all good. But I wanna emphasize, don't let anyone tell you it's going to be all good.

Don't let anyone just focus on the rosy picture on how things are gonna be great. There will be some things that you will be able to enjoy about, look how amazing this new place is. Look at how this is so much better. That is so much better. I feel so much better here.

But there are also gonna be a whole set of things that you're gonna miss. So recognize that that'll be the case and then make sure that your reasons are strong enough for going. I hope that talking through some of these costs, some of these reasons not to go somewhere will help you to think about them.

And then my closing encouragement is this. Take advantage of the benefits of wherever you live. Doesn't matter where it is. Wherever you are now, make sure that if you recognize, hey, my network is gonna make a big difference to my future success. Am I actively and intentionally cultivating a network?

One of the things that I have done over the last couple of years for the very first time was start from scratch, not knowing anybody and saying, can I build a network of friends, connections, relationships? You can do it. Can you do it intentionally? Can you recognize that this network that I build of contacts in a new place is gonna make all the difference?

Because leaving is still gonna be a powerful tool, especially if you need to get away from something rough. Maybe you hung out with the wrong sort of crowd, got in trouble with the wrong people, and you want a fresh start. Brother, get in your car and drive. Go to a new town, get in with the right sort of crowd, get a fresh start.

Even if it's something as simple as, you know, you got your fat loser friends, you're gonna be fat and a loser like your friends. Then all of a sudden you start hanging out with some buff chads that you meet at the local park. Well, you're gonna look a little different if those guys are your buddies.

You ever notice just groups of friends always look the same? I was at the airport last week and these like 10 guys come in. They're all American guys. We were flying from Costa Rica to Florida. And these 10 guys come in and they'd all been on a buddy trip.

But they looked like spitting images of each other. They're all tall, all muscular to some extent, obviously differences, but none of them were fat. They looked all identical. And yet I'm listening to them and they're from all over the country, but this was their buddy group, right? And that's why I'm just thinking about how like you look like your friends.

You're gonna do the same kinds of things with your friends. Sometimes, best way to change your life is change your friends. So always recognize this as an option. Nothing is gonna come free. You can genuinely live better in another place, right? Go where you're treated best, as Andrew Henderson is wont to say.

But, recognize it's not gonna be free. So if you're looking for kind of a halfway measure, some people don't do well with halfway measures, some people do. But if you're looking for a halfway measure, go and just start spending time in a place. Takes time to figure out where am I gonna live.

Takes time to get your paperwork sorted out. Get your residency visas, get your driver's license squared away. Get your utilities in your name, et cetera. You don't have to go all at once. But then you'll get an accurate idea and you can count the cost more thoroughly. Hope that helps.

If you've got more specific questions, I'd love to talk to you on the next Q&A show. Call me up and we'll talk about that. If you're interested in information on that, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show on Patreon and that'll get you access to the next Q&A show.

Thanks so much, have a great day.