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Appeal of the Expat Lifestyle
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Can you work in a rich country and save 100k$ and then go to a poor country and be rich?
philippetakes
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Yes. Well… sort of. First, 100 000 USD isn’t that much unless it’s short term. I’d bring 400 000. And only some poor countries will do. Zimbabwe, Zambia and Tanzania are surprisingly expensive as is any place where your car needs to be kept within view of hired goons or your train ticket always needs to be first class. Wherever the infrastructure is poor, the trade is insecure, and crime is high, you will have to pay a fortune for developed world goods. Good health and safety suffer under really poor conditions. Nevertheless there are some good offerings out there, and the main reason people don’t do it more often—other than family ties—is lack of awareness. Eastern Europe (within the EU or outside), Turkey, Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines can all be options. However, be aware that development and expense are inversely related. Eventually, the market catches up to undervalued countries and they become more expensive, often displacing those foreigners who initially found them cheap. There can also be problems if the destination country changes in the other way and becomes stagnant or poorer. My father in law bought an apartment in Alexandria, Egypt. He thought living in a cheap and warm place would be great for part of the year. He also thought it would go up in value… but then they had their revolution. Markets are inherently nervous, and investments are revolution-averse. He was right that Egypt would grow though—his one time view of the Mediterranean Sea is now obscured by a rising forest of concrete apartments. If a country has very cheap labour, you can get your own servants, which some people might view as a plus. Cheap medicine can also mean good cosmetic procedures—Poland, Hungary and Iran are good for those. If you have chronic back pain a cheap masseuse might be of regular assistance. If you’re looking for less wholesome stuff, that is also available, especially in Thailand. You might also want to avoid such places if you’re not, especially because people there will think you are. All in all, your biggest risks are running out of money and lacking proper health care later in life. It’s always possible that in twenty years you’ll come home to Expensiveland homeless and broke, discovering to your chagrin that some jerk that is now running your country has decided to punish (former) expatriates like you by making your financial outlook even worse. Case in point: Canada has decided that its famous health care system isn’t free to its own expatriate citizens until three months after they’ve returned as residents.
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Lots of people do and it is a great life hack. I was on a flight to Manila in 1998 when I was sat next to a guy on the Dubai Hong Kong leg and he told me about how he had done this. He had gone to the Philippines on business some years before and realized how cheap it was to live on some of the outlying islands of the country and had returned to England sold everything up and built a house and married a native and was living on his investments from the stock market. Now it did not really register with me until some years later and I had my real estate business in Poland. I started coming across many folks living in Poland and other former Eastern Bloc countries who were doing the same thing. OK for example the cost of real estate and living in most of these countries outside the big cities is about 25% of living in say London England. This is dependent on them not having the Euro by the way. Now what I found was the savvy people were renting out their property or keeping their businesses in England and living several orders of magnitude better off in places like Poland, Bulgaria or Romania. There is a proviso though, you would end up living in another country and probably having to learn another language and culture but you get a great uplift in your standard of living. A few years back I came across some Dutch guys living near to me in Poland. They were all retired Firemen. They had retired on a good pension of 3,000 Euros per month. Now in Polish zloty terms that is a fortune so they had Polish wives, each had a farm and were living very well as those Euros were worth about 4 times more here. They had a much better life than living in Holland. Sometimes it pays to think outside the box.