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It's more than just a ticket. 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. Today in the show, we're going to talk about the cost of living versus quality of life with an international flair.

I received today's show topic when I was recently trolling about on Twitter asking listeners what they would like to hear me talk about, and one listener wrote to me and said, basically, talk about the cost of living versus the quality of life in an international context. And I thought this a useful and interesting topic, partly because it is something that I am living, am in the middle of considering and working my way through in different things, but it's something that I've also thought a lot about, and I think it has application even outside of an international context.

Because in many ways, these factors, comparing the cost of living versus the quality of life, these are factors that we all have to consider in our own unique context. Even if you're considering, should I live in downtown Atlanta or in the suburbs? Well, you're going to talk about the cost of living versus the quality of life.

Should I live in Kansas or should I live in California? You're going to talk about the cost of living versus the quality of life. And these factors are sometimes difficult to talk about because they're very subjective. Both of these are very subjective. Obviously, the quality of life is more subjective than cost of living because we can put dollars and cents to the costs, but even the costs are subjective because we all value different things.

We all spend money on different things. We all have different things that are appropriate in our life stage. And so we're going to have, even if we consider the same factors, we're going to weigh factors a little bit differently. So as I go through these ideas, I'm going to talk to you about them in a fairly general way and give you my thoughts on the international context versus primarily where I have the most experience, a US-American context.

You should recognize that you have to do this no matter where you live and that your appreciation of different factors will probably change at different times. For example, having a small house versus a large house. How much you value a small house versus a large house will probably change depending on what life stage you're in.

For me, my opinion, if I were a single man living alone, I would value having a small house. I would not want to have a big house because the big house adds work, more work to keep up with, more work to clean, more work to furnish. It adds more hassle to my life.

It adds more things I have to care for. It adds more costs, more square feet that I have to heat, that I have to cool, et cetera. And so as a single man, I would value having a smaller house more than I would have value having a larger house.

And it's not just about the cost. It's not just that I can save money. Yes, that could help me. But frankly, I think if you gave me a house twice as big and a house half as big and they were the same cost and I liked them equally, I would probably choose the smaller one because it would free up my time more than the other, especially if I didn't have a use for it.

I weren't entertaining or having big parties, things like that. What's the point of having three bedrooms that sit empty all the time if I can't use them? Now, on the flip side, at the stage of life that I'm at right now where I have children and they need places to be and we do all kinds of things from our house, I work from my house, we do school at our house, my children play in our house, we entertain in our house, et cetera.

I'm at a phase of life right now where having a smaller house or a very small house would really be a burden and it would really substantially reduce the quality of life. Ask me how I know? Well, I lived in an RV last year for six months. And the great thing about the RV was that we could constantly move the location, but it certainly convinced me that although it might look nice on a TV show or might look nice on a YouTube video, living in a small RV with many young children is not great for the long term.

So I'm at a phase of life where a bigger house is more valuable. The point is these things will change as time goes on. I expect that there will be a point in time where I'll go back to valuing a smaller house. Now, what about where that house is located?

There is a time in most of our lives, especially when we're young, that we really want to be in the middle of the action. Most young people, especially if they're single, want to be in the middle of the city. And so there, a small apartment in the middle of a city has a very high quality of life appeal for many people.

Whereas you get a little bit older, you have children and all of a sudden now you don't really feel like going out and partying on Thursday night and you'd rather be where it's quieter, you'd rather be where you have some space. These are natural cycles that people go through.

You choose what you like, but they change over time. If you have to choose between cost of living and quality of life, I think your optimal choice should prioritize quality of life because you can always adjust for costs. As we talk about the costs here in a moment, and I go through all of the different categories that I think people think about or should think about when they're considering an international relocation, what you'll see is that it's really a mixed bag.

There are different costs that are high at different times of life. So you might pay more to live in the middle of the city. But if you like being in the middle of the city, perhaps there are so many interesting events available, free events, cultural things, shows, expeditions, all kinds of things available for you just at your fingertips that you make up what you spend in rent payments with savings on entertainment.

Whereas if you lived out in the country, you're always driving into town, etc. Now if you like being in the country, your entertainment might be hanging out in the woods and that's much cheaper for you than buying $12 martinis and buying tickets to the latest greatest show, etc. So if you prioritize the things that are important to you, your quality of life, you can figure out how to adjust the costs in almost any budget to fit what you were looking for at a certain phase of your life.

The point here of my introduction is you will have to make these assessments in your life even if you're going to live in the place where you were born and raised. You make these assessments in terms of city versus suburbs versus country. You make these assessments in terms of which part of the state do you live in, which side of the highway do you live on, which side of the river do you live in, what elevation do you choose to live at, which state do you live in.

These are all things that we face and we have to consider them from a personal perspective. Now from here on out, I'm going to focus on the international bent because I think that is something that many people do consider. Let's talk first about the costs. Actually, let's start with the costs.

I think that living internationally in many ways is a mixed bag of costs. I think one of the oversold concepts in personal finance is if you want to save money, you should move to a country that is cheap. I think that can work in some cases, but it probably won't work in most cases because although you might reduce costs in one area, you'll often raise them in another.

So let's talk through some different factors of costs and I'll try to tackle these in order of biggest cost to littlest as far as for the most of us, for our average budgets. The first biggest expense that most of us have is tax, most importantly income tax and by extent employment tax.

That is for most of us the single biggest category of our expenditures. It may not be for you if you don't earn very much money, but if you earn anything above the median income, which in the United States is something like $60,000 per year, in that range anything north of $60,000 a year and that is by far the majority of the radical personal finance listening audiences and far in excess of six figures, very often multi six figures, your single biggest cost is tax, income tax.

The way that you can know if this is true for you or not is to actually calculate the number. I did this with a consulting client recently, husband, wife, both well employed professional workers, each earning a six figure salary and I had them sit down and calculate their cost of tax.

And the way you do it, pull out your federal income tax return for the most recent calendar year, pull out your state income tax return for the most recent calendar year and calculate your employment taxes, which you can perhaps find on your W-2 or you can just simply calculate them.

If you are an employee, you will be 7.65% up to the social security wage base. That is your contribution to the employment taxes in the United States or 15.3% up to the social security wage base, which is ish $120,000 ish. So if you calculate that on your income, you'll know what your total cost of tax is.

If you live in a city that imposes city income taxes, do that as well. But if you total those three together, federal income taxes, state income taxes, employment taxes, and I guess if you pay city taxes, which is not common, if you pay city income taxes, calculate that as well.

If you total those together, then you'll know your total cost of tax. And it is my bet that that number for you, as long as you're earning above the median income, that number for you will be the single largest category expense in your household budget. Don't forget about your Medicare surcharge tax, etc.

on higher numbers, but let's just stick with those simple ones. Can you affect taxes by moving abroad? Absolutely. In my opinion, that, taxes, is one of the biggest potential savings of moving abroad. If you are moving to a tax-efficient location, if you're moving from being a full-time resident of the United States to being a full-time resident of France, you're not going to save on taxes.

If you're moving from Great Britain to Canada, you're not going to save on taxes. But if you are moving in a tax-optimized way, to a tax haven, or if you are structuring your life in a way that you move to a place that's very tax-efficient for you, you can save dramatic amounts of money by moving thoughtfully and carefully.

And that can be a huge, huge benefit, especially a benefit at different points of your life. Now, where is this more important? Here's where there's a big difference between talking to a Brit versus talking to a US American. For an American, the biggest savings on taxes by moving abroad is on income taxes, on your earned income.

So if you're in a period of time where you're going to have high earned income, you can make dramatic improvements in your life and your lifestyle and your cost of living by moving thoughtfully. Whereas if you're in a phase where you're earning a lot of investment income, it's a little bit more difficult.

Now, if you're going to be experiencing large capital gains in your life, you can adjust for that. There are different ways that you can do it. And we've talked about that in various internationalization shows. My point is that moving internationally, moving abroad, can make a major difference in your costs of living.

Now, how does your cost of living affect your quality of life? Depends on what's important to you. Give you an example. Let's say that you want to work in the financial space and you want to be a banker and you're considering taking a job working as a banker in New York City or you're taking considering taking a job working as a banker in London or you're considering taking a job working as a banker in Dubai.

How is your cost of living going to change in those scenarios? Well, in many ways, New York City and London are very similar. You're going to have a very high cost of housing. You're going to have high built-in costs for food, etc., because of living in the city. And you're going to have very high costs of taxation.

Now, you could probably live in London a little bit more efficiently than in New York City, depending on how you're structuring things. But in both cases, you're going to pay a lot of income tax, especially if you're having earned income as a banker. New York City, US federal income taxes, New York State and New York City income taxes.

London, same thing. Dubai, no income taxes. No income taxes, too. Dubai doesn't tax income. So if you're going to earn a salary of three, four, five hundred thousand dollars per year, and you can structure things so that you either pay income taxes on three, four, five hundred thousand dollars a year, or you don't pay income taxes on three or four or five hundred thousand dollars per year, there's major benefits for you in choosing Dubai over New York City or London.

What about quality of life? Is your quality of life substantially different in any of those locations? They all, you can get along great with English. They're all bustling modern cities. You can make an argument that Dubai is nicer, more modern than some of the others. You have certainly interesting cultural mixes, all of them very cosmopolitan, cultural melting pots of cultures.

Your lifestyle in all of them is going to be substantially similar. You're going to go to big city parties. You're going to have, it's going to be about the same quality of life is the point. You're probably going to send your children to private schools in any of those contexts, especially if you're a banker.

In one case, choosing an international school versus just a Tony local private school that doesn't bill itself as an international school. But in many ways, just about everything in your life will look the same. The weather might be a little bit different, that is clear, but you're a banker.

You're spending most of your time indoors anyway. So how does that impact you? So you can have the same virtually, the same quality of life with a much lower cost of living by living and choosing to live in Dubai instead of choosing to live in New York City, unless it affects something else.

For example, let's say that all of your family is on Long Island and that's where all your heritage is. Well, it's a little more difficult for you now to justify living in Dubai when it's an expensive international airplane ticket for you to get to Long Island instead of just a little time driving out.

So that's where other things have to come into account. But I think taxes are probably one of the major things, especially this audience does need to consider. If you live and work in a tax haven, you can do very well and you can achieve your goals much more quickly than if you live and work in a place that imposes high levels of taxation.

That assumes, of course, that you can be as well employed living and working in the tax haven as you can living and working elsewhere. For example, you could live and work in New York City and do very well because there are massive career options available for you. You could live and work in Vanuatu.

Your career options are much more limited in Vanuatu than they are in New York City. So now your cost of living, then you have to count in your opportunity cost. If you live in the tax haven but you don't have career options available for you, it might not work out so well.

Next biggest expense category is usually for most people, housing. In my opinion, the cost of housing can really be a mixed bag in terms of how it compares internationally. The biggest cost of housing will largely be based upon are you living in an urban context or a non-urban context.

It costs more to live in the city center than it does to live outside of the city center. It also costs more to be in a major city center than it does to be in a minor city center. So if you're looking to live in a little bit of the downtown environment, you like the nightlife, you like the cultural activities, etc.

But you don't have to live in downtown Hong Kong. You can save money by not living in downtown Hong Kong but just by simply living in another city that still has that urban environment but is not quite so expensive. Perhaps you enjoy living in downtown Prague and that gives you what you're looking for without having the astronomical costs of downtown Hong Kong or downtown Singapore, etc.

So the cost of housing can change based upon location. But a lot of times when people talk about saving money on housing, they're often looking to save money on housing by going to a country where things are perceived to be cheaper. Again, it is true that things are cheaper in some big cities than others.

But a lot of times I think the savings on housing are often oversold. In my opinion, a lot of times the biggest difference in the cost of housing comes to the quality of the housing. For example, in the United States, there are certain things that are considered standard that almost every house or apartment, including the cheapest of the houses and apartments, will have.

Things like hot water in the house. The whole house will be plumbed for hot water. Or perhaps central heating or central air conditioning. Those things are more and more considered to be standard in the United States. But if you go to a place where housing is cheaper, you'll find that they're usually not standard.

Your hot water might be limited to a shower head. Your shower might have an electric hot water heater in it that heats the water for your shower, but your whole house doesn't have hot water. And central heating, central cooling, etc. is not standard. Rather, if you have any air conditioning at all, you have just a small window unit in your bedroom.

Things like that. Those account for a large portion of the savings. I think that yes, you can save money on housing. You can save money on rent by going abroad. And you might like that. But a lot of times the savings on housing come to accepting lower standards of housing.

And if you are willing to accept lower standards of housing, you could live equally inexpensively in the United States than going abroad, for example. Very few of us choose to live in pre-manufactured housing or a mobile home or an RV, etc. But in many ways, you could argue that a nice single wide modern trailer living in is more comfortable and is better built than a beachside shack in Belize.

The beachside shack in Belize might be inexpensive, but at the end of the day, it's kind of a hovel. Whereas you can have a modern single wide trailer for a few hundred dollars a month on your loan payment or you can rent one for a few hundred dollars a month and have just as comfortable of housing.

It doesn't have the same romance. It's a lot easier for you to say, "Okay, well, I'm willing to lower my standards because I'm living in Belize." It's very hard for somebody to be willing to move from the big city in the United States and downsize and downgrade their lifestyle in the United States because their friends all see that, etc.

They can move to the beachside shack in Belize and say, "Look, I'm living in Belize. This is what's available." And that might be one consideration. But housing, you don't necessarily have to move abroad to save money on housing. You can move to Mississippi. You can move to a trailer.

And you can save a lot of money on housing in these contexts. It might not provide you with what you want. For example, if you want to be on the Caribbean, Belize might be what you're looking for. But it might be cheaper than Fort Myers. But it is available in the United States.

It's just most people don't see it. So yes, can you save money on housing? Probably. But it's probably because of a downgrade of basic standards than necessarily a major difference in the location. Obviously, there can be exceptions to that. Obviously, places do sell for cheaper in some places than another.

What I would recommend to you if you're interested in kind of getting a sense of the cost of different places, in my opinion, Airbnb is the single best tool for you to get a sense of what different locations actually cost. What I like to do if I'm trying to figure out the cost of one place versus another is I like to use Airbnb.

And I like to look for monthly rentals. Because when you rent, you can, of course, find local rentals in a newspaper. You can find local real estate things, et cetera. But those are hard to find. And they're a little bit inefficient. But if you use the Airbnb website, and you look for a monthly rental, and you search different locations, you'll find things that are ready to go.

You'll find things that you can actually rent right there. A couple of clicks, put in your credit card, bada bing, bada bam. Why am I saying that ridiculous cliche, bada bing, bada bam, bada boom? I don't know why that came out of my mouth. You can click, and you can reserve something right there, right now.

Whereas searching through real estate listings, you don't know what the true cost is of the utilities. You don't know what the true cost is of the taxes or what your deposit is, et cetera. Airbnb is really good. And what you'll see when you do that is, yes, there is a distinction of different places.

Renting a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Asuncion is a lot cheaper than renting a three-bedroom apartment in downtown Miami. It is. But you can find three-bedrooms places in Florida, and just go up into North Florida or Central Florida. You can find places that are not that much more than downtown Asuncion.

So hopefully that helps you to get the point of what I'm saying is, yes, they are out there, and you can save money on housing. So if you want to live the downtown lifestyle, consider it, and use Airbnb as your best, truest representation of what market rates actually are.

Super competitive marketplace, really good to help you understand the costs of housing. Next big category for some people is insurance. And usually this is health insurance. And so I'm going to pair together insurance or health care. The insurance can include health insurance, can include car insurance, other kinds of insurance, but a lot of times it's health insurance.

Now here's where there's going to be a big difference for you based upon the place that you choose to be and what your income level is. If your income is low and you can buy inexpensive health insurance, whether it's subsidized in the United States or whether it's some kind of government run system in another country, then you can save a lot of money on insurance by moving somewhere else.

So if you want to live in a place where insurance and health care is provided by the government instead of paying it for yourself, you can do that and you can save money there. It probably won't work out for you well if your income is high. If your income is high, you're probably better off just simply paying for it out of pocket.

But here's where I do think people who consider moving outside of the United States can sometimes get a better deal. If you're a low income earner, then sometimes moving to a place that has government run health insurance programs, etc., can allow you to access medical care without so much money coming out of pocket.

And because you're a low income earner, all of the high income earners that do pay taxes in that place are subsidizing your individual situation. I recently spoke with a retiree who had moved outside of the United States and we were talking about their budget and I was trying to get it.

They'd moved from Wisconsin to a low cost place. And I was talking with them outside of the United States. I was talking about what they missed, what they liked, etc. And basically this came out as their number one cost savings. It was their number one thing, was health care.

And in their case, they were using doctors and then they were also looking forward to benefiting from things like long term care providers. I've seen a number of interesting new resorts and retirement communities that have been opening up throughout Asia. And one of the big selling points is they're basically like a continuing care retirement community in the United States, but just in an Asian context.

And when you get into the world of long term care or continuing care retirement community, one of your biggest expenses is labor costs. And one place where you can save massive amounts of money is if you're dealing with something that involves labor costs by moving outside the United States.

So you can buy a membership in Thailand and in a continuing care retirement community basically in Thailand, all inclusive resort, everything's there. But they promise 24 hour nursing care as you age and if you need health care. And it is far, far cheaper than buying the same thing in the United States because the labor costs are much, much lower.

Labor costs in the United States, of course, being extremely high. So for certain people, the cost savings on insurance and health care can be really substantial. But you may not necessarily benefit from those if you're not in a phase of life where you need much insurance or need much medical care.

And so you would have to judge accordingly. You should also remember, of course, that you can access some of the lower cost health care regard without actually moving to a place just by engaging in medical tourism. I think medical tourism is going to be one of the great growth industries of the future.

People just simply choosing to go to another place to have their medical procedures done. So whether you're going to Costa Rica to have dental care done or whether you're going to Brazil to have plastic surgery or whether you're going to Mexico to have cancer treatment or whatever it is, you can save massive amounts of money by engaging in medical tourism.

What about transportation? Well transportation could be a mixed bag. First, you can move to many countries outside of the United States where transportation is cheaper. But of course, you can move to places where it's more expensive. I know that doesn't help you, but for me just to say that.

But bus tickets, many places have just better built out transportation options where you can get by on the public transportation system. And by working on the public transportation system, you can eliminate the need for owning a car in and of itself. You can't do that in many cities in the United States.

You know, Hot Springs, Arkansas is a nice place, but the public transportation system is not as efficient as the public transportation system in Bogota. So judge for yourself. Do you save and lower your cost of living by moving to a place where there is a lower cost of transportation by having a local infrastructure of public transportation?

That might be something to consider. If you're talking about transportation in terms of private transportation, I really don't think there's any place in the world that's cheaper to own an automobile than in the United States. And that's where I think there's a major benefit for the United States. If you want to buy a car, own a car, operate a car, I haven't done any research, but I've never personally been to a place where it's cheaper than doing it in the United States.

And there are a few reasons for this. So first, it's easy to buy cheap quality automobiles in the United States. Because there's so many people with high incomes who are constantly purchasing new automobiles, the used automobile marketplace in the United States is stronger and better than the used automobile marketplace in any place that I've ever been.

You can find awesome vehicles, three years old, four years old, 10 years old, all day long, every day at every single dealership. They're great cars, they've cut in half, they've dropped a third or 50% off of their new car price, and they're available and they'll serve you for a decade or more.

And they're cheap to buy. Because the new market is so competitive, and because there's so many cars, it creates this really robust used market. That doesn't exist in many corners of the world. In many corners of the world, the new market is not nearly so strong, and thus the used market is not nearly so strong.

And so you can't apply all of the same analysis that you would apply in the United States to, should I buy a new or used car, to your situation in many other places. So cars are cheap to buy in the United States. Cars are cheap to run in the United States.

Gas prices are very low compared to many places in the world. They're not as low as they could be, but they're very low compared to many places in the world. Not everywhere, but many places in the world. In addition to that, all the other costs, costs of insurance, relatively low.

Now that'll vary a lot depending on where you live. For example, cost of car insurance in downtown Miami, brutally high. Cost of car insurance in Orlando, way, way lower. So you consider things like that when you're trying to choose between Miami and Orlando. Cost of registering a vehicle. In the United States, there are extremely low taxes generally.

Yes, you have to deal with some sales tax with your local state, but you can dramatically reduce your sales tax by buying a cheaper car and/or living in a state that doesn't impose sales tax, but buying a cheaper car. And then the cost of registering it, getting your license plate, things like that, very, very cheap.

Cost of owning a car, cost of tires, cost of oil, all that stuff in the United States is cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap compared to most places in the world. So if your ideal living involves a lot of transportation or a lot of transportation costs, you're not going to save money on that.

So if you want to go and be able to live on the bus and ride the bus and take the tuk-tuk and travel around with whatever's available and you don't mind riding a tap-tap instead of actually having your own vehicle, then fine. But if it's important to you to drive your own vehicle and that's a big deal for you, you're going to pay a lot more in almost every place I've been than the United States.

What about food? Food is an interesting mix because everywhere in the world you can find and buy basic staples relatively inexpensively. I don't see how a country can stay out of political and civil unrest if food prices are not modest. And so for basic staples, I mean the cost of rice, the cost of wheat, the cost of basic vegetables, those things are basically low all over the world.

When you start to get into packaged goods, in my experience packaged goods are a lot cheaper in the United States than almost anywhere else. Part of that is due to lower taxations, no VAT tax, modest sales taxes, and part of it is just due to competition with things like packaged foods.

The United States lives on packaged foods. And so you can buy all of that packaged stuff much more cheaply in the United States than almost anywhere else in the world. So you can eat inexpensively on food prices if you're cooking your own anywhere in the world. But when it comes to packaged foods, I think the United States has a much cheaper cost of living than again almost any place that I have been.

Now when you move to restaurants and restaurant food, that is where you can have a dramatic difference in cost. Restaurant prices in the United States are modest. They're not nearly as high as many regions of the world, but they're much, much higher than some of the well-known cheaper regions of the world.

There are places in the world where it just makes more sense for many people to go out to eat for most of their meals instead of cooking themselves. That is not the case in the United States. It is the case in even in some expensive places, Hong Kong or Asia, many parts of Asia.

And that partly then goes back to the cost of labor. Cost of labor, high in the United States. Cost of labor, low in some corners of Asia. And so you can, if you want to eat out a lot, you can gain substantially by going to an inexpensive corner of the world where you can get a great meal for a few dollars.

Whether that's taco stand in Mexico or a noodle shop in Bangkok, wherever you wind up, there are ways that you can save massively on the cost of dining out. Other things associated with food, it's really a mixed bag. Things like alcohol varies in region. So you'd have to judge from there.

What about cost of things like domestic help? Hiring housekeepers, maids, cooks, nannies, things like that. This is an area where I think moving abroad brings a lot of value. A lot of value by being able to hire domestic help much more cheaply, to hire servants to work for you much more cheaply.

In the United States, with the relatively high labor costs, hiring full-time servants is basically a rich man's game. It's an unusual middle class person who has a full-time housekeeper, who has a full-time nanny. That's basically a rich man's game in the United States. Now to compensate for that, you can find all kinds of people who do great work for you on a contractual basis.

You can find someone who will come and clean your house two hours a week. Most people don't need more than that. In addition, you can also find lots of great electric servants who will work for you. There's a reason why washing machines and robot vacuums and all those kinds of things can make a big difference.

But if your life would be improved by having a lot of domestic help, you can have major savings by living in other places. This is, I think, one of those things that most Americans don't really think about until they start to experience it. If you live in Fiji, as a middle class person, you can afford to hire a full-time housekeeper.

You can afford to hire a cook, the housekeeper cooks often for you. I find this one of the major benefits of living outside of the United States, especially at the phase that my wife and I are in with many young children. It's extremely helpful for her and me not to have to do anything.

Sorry, not to have to do everything. We still do plenty, trust me. But not to have to do everything. So that can be a major benefit for you at some phases of your life. Now, on the other hand, there can be a phase of your life you don't need somebody to clean your house.

If you have a little apartment, why do you need someone to come out and be there full-time working for you? And so in that case, just save the money and get a Roomba. And that may be all that you need. What about other things, purchases, things like furniture, electronics, etc.?

My experience, those things are far cheaper in the United States than almost anywhere else. In the United States, you can get great, well, first, back to the markets, you can get great stuff for free all day, every day in the United States, just off the side of the road.

Because the new market is so healthy, and there's so many people buying new things, it creates this really robust throwaway market, and there's really robust used market in the United States. You can furnish your house for a few dollars and furnish it very well. You can equip your house with plenty of working great electronics off the side of the road, or for a few dollars from any of the secondhand shops or yard sales, Craigslist, etc.

And so you can buy those things in the United States far cheaper than anywhere that I personally have been. Back again, no VAT tax, relatively modest sales taxes, keep those costs extremely low in the United States. My experience, many corners of the world, they're much, much more expensive. You look at a nice living room set in the United States, be much cheaper than a nice living room set in Panama City.

It's just a big, big difference there. Things like education should be considered. Now your cost of education would vary. Is it talking about your education, in which case a decent internet connection is available, really in most parts of the world at this point in time, many parts of the world at this point in time.

Cost of books, it doesn't get any cheaper to buy used books than Amazon in the United States. One of the best things about the United States is used books on Amazon, you go on there, boom, $2, $3, $4, you can get almost any book shipped right to your house ready to go for you.

So that can be a major, major savings. Now on the flip side, what if you're trying to figure out how to pay for something like university education? Well, there are many ways to do it very inexpensively in the United States, lots of great ways, but not really at the higher end, not at the prestigious schools, et cetera, the prestigious private schools.

But you can, any American can move to Germany and go to school in Germany at the German public universities and not pay a dime out of pocket for the cost of tuition. And so perhaps there, moving to Germany is much better idea for you to go to the government universities in Germany and not pay anything than trying to figure out how to come up with $40,000 to pay for private school tuition in Connecticut.

So those would be some examples of the cost of living. All in all, I think that, hope that what you heard is it's really a mixed bag and that there are some categories that are much cheaper in the United States and there are some categories that are much more expensive in the United States.

And a lot of this depends on where you are in your life. For me right now, at the phase of life that I'm in, I'm enjoying lower taxes by living abroad, which because I'm in years of high earned income, that's a major benefit to me as having lower taxes.

And I'm enjoying lower cost of domestic help. That's a major benefit for me because it helps my wife and me to be able to keep our household in order to provide the things that we need for our children, et cetera, so that I can be free and she can be free to do the things that we need to do.

Those are big benefits. A lot of the other things come out in the wash. Housing, I save a little bit of money on housing, but not much. A lot of other things are more expensive. Now fast forward to a different phase in life. Let's say I go into a phase of life where I'm not having high earned income.

Well, now the tax savings on earned income are not nearly so compelling, in which case, and let's say that I'm also at a phase where I just don't really need any domestic help. I don't want household servants in my house when my children are of an age where they are capable of doing the household work.

I would view that as being a negative thing for them to not learn how to work. And so now at a different phase of life, there could be a different region of the world would make a big, big difference. If I were a retiree, it's hard to imagine that I would just jump to move outside the United States.

Knowing what I know, I would find a high quality of life in the United States in many cases. So let's pivot now to discussion of quality of life. Your quality of life will be subject to your individual circumstances. There are a lot of things that people don't really think about and they really should.

For example, something like sunshine. I'm used to growing up. I grew up in the sunshine state. And so I don't think a lot about sunshine, but from moving around and talking to people, I have learned that this is a big deal and your quality of life can be dramatically improved by living in a place where there is a lot of sunshine.

So if you're living in Toronto or you're living in Seattle, one of the biggest quality of life improvements for you of moving to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico might just simply be the exposure to sunshine. And yes, you pay a little bit less in housing. Yes, that's nice. And you don't really worry too much about the income taxes are high in Mexico, but at least you get access to a lot of sunshine.

That's really, really useful. And so that could be a major quality of life improvement that would be unique to you and it's worth your considering. Other major improvements of quality of life, things like traffic. Some places have horrendous traffic and if you just simply move from a place that has horrendous traffic to a place that doesn't have horrendous traffic, that can be a major quality of life improvement.

You should consider that. But then we get to things like culture. Do you like the culture that you live in? And I think here you should be very slow to move outside of your home culture unless you really don't like your home culture or unless you really are more comfortable in another place.

The cultural stuff is a big deal. Now you can find a lot of cultural sense of belonging, a sense of fitting in, in expat communities all around the world. You'll find expat communities of people from your home country and you'll be able to share many things together. I recently celebrated a 4th of July Independence Day celebration with a bunch of expat Americans.

But the culture stuff makes a big, big difference. There's a big difference between being part of a small group of people from your home culture than being in your home culture. And I think a lot about this. I try to understand what things do I like about the US American culture and different expressions of US American culture versus what things do I not like, what things do I like more about other cultures.

And that's going to be an intensely subjective process for you. It's going to be an intensely personal thing, depending again on what you like and what you don't like. But your quality of life might be dramatically improved by moving abroad or it might be dramatically made, dramatically worse. I think there are other things.

For example, a sense of adventure, a sense of adventure. You might enjoy the challenge of living in a new place. It's kind of fun to have the challenge of figuring out how do I get the lights turned on and how do I get something delivered from the internet and how do I figure out how to do this thing with the immigration department.

It adds to a sense of adventure and that can be really, really, really fun. So you'll have to think about your things in terms of your quality of life. I believe that depending on what we're talking about, there could be dramatic improvements for some people outside of their home country, but it's probably not the first place to start.

I think in general that sense of cultural belonging is a big deal and it's hard to ever really feel quite so much at home in a place that's not where you grew up. I don't know if it can be overcome. I interview a lot of expats. I ask them.

I kind of think about this stuff and you have to like the culture I think that you're going into. For some people, it'll work out. Some people, they'd prefer to be at home. I don't mean for this entire show to sound wishy-washy, to not give a clear answer that, "Well, it's just far better in Panama than it is anywhere else." No, it's not.

It's a mixed bag. So I think that you will have to consider what are the things that you are looking for. I don't know how long I'll be outside of the United States. A lot of that will depend on what happens in the United States in the next few years.

I didn't leave intending to be out forever. We'll see what happens in the next few years in the United States, whether I stay out for the long term or whether I come back. I miss the United States. Last year, 4th of July last year, I was in Wamego, Kansas.

Wamego or Wamego? Little itty-bitty town in Kansas, a couple hours west of Kansas City. And it has the longest running, I think their claim to fame is it's the longest running 4th of July Independence Day parade in the United States since something like the 1850s. And it was the perfect quintessential small town Independence Day experience.

And I was so thrilled to be able to take my children, let them see the Independence Day parade and do the whole thing. And I loved every minute of it. Well, that was 4th of July, 2018. 4th of July, 2019, I was with a group of small group of American expats shooting off fireworks outside of the United States.

And it just made me miss Wamego, Kansas. Wamego, I should look it up whether it's Wamego or Wamega. It made me miss Wamego, Kansas, because there's something really special about that small town flair. Now, I thought about living in Wamego, Kansas, but it doesn't seem to really fit me.

It's not quite what I'm looking for. And so these things are hard to grapple with. Right now, most of what I, most of the reasons that I'm outside the United States have a lot to do with what happens five years from now, 10 years from now, and 35 years from now.

Most of what I've been doing is intended to help my children in the long run. And it was a convenient time in my life to do some of this stuff. And I don't know, I don't know what happens. But I do know this, I have grown pretty frustrated with a lot of things in the United States over the past years.

But yet, I can appreciate many things about the United States more, having been gone for a while now, than I did when I was living there. And it's really, there is no clear and easy answer. There might be a clear and easy answer for you, perhaps, if you're very, very strong in your thoughts.

But I think for most of us, there probably isn't a clear and easy answer. There probably is more of a sense of some things that are helpful at a certain phase, and then you live life with an openness about the future and see what happens. If you're an American, I think you should consider going abroad at certain times of your life.

For example, I think there are major benefits for a young person to go abroad while they're young, to travel first and foremost. But let's say you're starting a business, you're starting an internet business. Well, if you can get on an airplane and go to Thailand and be a part of the internet community in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where you can rent an inexpensive apartment for a few hundred dollars a month, you can eat all your meals out for a few dollars a day, and you can spend 80 hours a week working on your new business, your new online business, and you can simultaneously enjoy the benefits of limited taxation on your income, allows you to save a lot of money, and you can simultaneously enjoy the benefits of living in a beautiful tropical location and enjoying the beach and all of the adventure travel that comes with being there.

I think that's a really powerful proposition. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. If you're like me and you're at a phase of life where you're going through certain things and you can benefit from some of these factors, then I think you can do that. You don't have to break up with your home country completely.

You don't have to say, "Well, that's it. I'm going forever." A lot of people move abroad, find out they like it much better. A lot of people move abroad, find out they don't like it all that much. The answer of what's right or wrong will depend on you. I do think this.

I think the United States has a very, very strong value proposition. I think it's a wonderful place to live. The labor market is extremely powerful. If you're simply willing to learn and willing to work, you can make a lot of money in the United States. We take that for granted, those of us who were born and raised in that environment.

Every place I go, I look and say, "Well, how would I become a millionaire here?" It is so much easier for me to see how to do that in the United States than in almost anywhere else in the world. In many ways, the United States has very modest cost of taxation.

Even the taxation can be low as long as you don't earn a lot of wages. It's not low if you have high wages, but if you restructure your life to make your wages very, very modest, then your cost of overall taxation can be relatively modest. It's not the lowest tax place in the world, but it's certainly not the highest tax place in the world.

We'll see what the future holds. And then the cost of living in the United States can be dirt cheap. It really can be. Not if you're in the middle of some of the big cities. It's not. High cost of housing makes a big difference in those scenarios. But you can live inside the United States and get the benefits of lower cost of living by living outside the city center or in lower cost places to buy and build a house.

You can get some of those benefits by adjusting the standards of what you're willing to put up with. I could today go to many portions of parts of the United States and build a house that would fit my family for $30,000. I've worked out the numbers on it. I could do it.

Question is, do I want to? That's a different question, but I could do it. And I could build a nicer house for $30,000 than I could buy in many of the so-called cheaper places in the world. And when you get all the benefits of the cheap flow of goods and the resources just everywhere in the United States, the resources of the used market, et cetera, somebody who's thrifty, who's resourceful, who's willing to engage in that, there is so much just stuff everywhere that's not available in many other places in the rest of the world.

So I think the USA has a very, very strong value proposition. I have some personal reservations of things I'm concerned that might change. I think they might change in the United States, and if they change, I won't be there. But time will tell. None of those things are in force today.

So what's right for you? Obviously, think things through. Probably the only way you'll know is by trying it. I don't think that moving abroad is the answer to everything. I don't think that it automatically fits and lowers your cost of living and improves your quality of life necessarily. But I do think it is something that can and should be considered by most people as a way of improving your life and your lifestyle.

It is possible to lower your cost of living and improve your quality of life if you're clear on what your personal costs of living are and you're clear on the things that you personally value in a high-quality lifestyle. I guess as I close today's show, it'd be appropriate for me to take a moment and talk with you about my course, How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis.

That course has basically three major parts in my analysis. The third part involves international expatriation as being a reasonable and worthwhile way to plan to survive and thrive during an economic crisis. I'll give you two examples of that. One, it could be possible that your home country, your home culture could just simply collapse.

And that collapse could be caused by various factors, decline of energy prices or internal cultural strife or civil war, etc. This happens all around the world all the time. And if you are living in a place where your home country collapses, one of the best ways to simply continue on with your life is to not be living there when it collapses.

It's so blindingly obvious and yet so under-discussed that I feel the need to discuss it. The best way to avoid a crisis is not to be living where there's a crisis happening. And if you think about trying to figure out how to feed your family right now and living in Caracas, it's a whole lot easier to feed your family if you're living in London than it is if you're living in Caracas.

So this is a big deal. But then there's other aspect to it. Some things that are crises that could be longer term. So for example, I've stated here on this show that I don't think the US government will raise taxes very much on the US population. I don't think that it'll happen.

I think that in the long term, it's my opinion that all of the economic crises in the United States that are coming in the coming decades will be solved by a combination of inflationary policies on the money supply and will be solved by just defaulting on various programs in various ways.

I think that's probably the solution that will be moved to rather than increasing taxation. However, what if I'm wrong? What if I'm wrong about that? I assume and I anytime I make a decision, I say, "Okay, what if I'm wrong? And if I'm wrong, then what's my plan?" Well, people talk about my children are in a situation where they're going to have to pay for what my grandparents and my parents voted in.

Well, who says that my children have to do that? My parents and my grandparents may have voted in this gargantuan welfare state that will result in bankruptcy of the US government, but why should my children have to pay for something that they didn't do? Well, if my children are inextricably linked to the United States of America, such that they can't live without that little blue passport and without that US citizen status, then yeah, they might actually be forced by whoever the government goons wind up in office 20, 30 years from now.

My children might be forced to pay for the things that my parents and grandparents voted for, but I would prefer to make sure that they have another option. Why should I force that on my children? They didn't vote for that. They're not responsible for it, so why should they hang out and pay for it?

And so when you get into things like this, problems like these, international expatriation comes into play as a very reasonable solution, a way to put yourself in a situation where you can extricate yourself from onerous taxation, from declining societies, declining cultures, etc. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, I go through all the steps in my course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis, and it's helpful for you if you're worried about just simply losing a job, but it's also helpful for you if you, like I am, are concerned about, "Well, what do I do if 20 years from now somebody does actually try to make me and my children pay for the things that my parents and grandparents voted for?" Well, if somebody tries to do that and actually tries to enforce it, then I need to be prepared today so that we have an option 20 years from now.

And so if that piques your interest, I hope you'll check it out. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and sign up for my course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis. It's my very best solution for a practical, useful way that's inexpensive to put insurance policies in place on all these things.

And when you put it in the context of what we talked about today, you can have a lot of fun. You can do really well. And you can do well even if you never need that insurance policy, and you can just simply enjoy life today. I'm having fun. I'm enjoying my time of being outside the United States.

I'm saving money. I'm living well. I'm loving my wife, loving my children. Is life perfect? Of course not. Would it be any better anywhere else? I'm unconvinced. And so I hope that this show and that course would open up to you some ideas that you could then take and apply to your own life.

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