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international expat
Every year more and more people are starting to beyond the borders of the United States for new opportunities. While the unemployment rates in the U.S. are beginning to look like those in Spain or Greece with 20, 30 and even 50% in some cases, and an estimated 60% of the population living at or below the poverty line, people are seeking solutions. And many are finding it in the form of a life abroad as an expat.
Expats are individuals who live in countries other than their own, usually to take advantage of a lowered cost of living. A perfect example of this would be someone living in Mexico or Colombia where the cost of living for an upper middle class lifestyle is only around $10,000 per year. This is in comparison to the United States where it costs a minimum of $25,000 a year to cover your basic, bare bones lifestyle, and $30,000 to $35,000 for a middle class existence. For this reason, more and more expats each year are looking abroad to find answers.
In the past, it was mostly pensioners who took advantage of living abroad as an expat, but these days there are a growing number of digital nomads and location independent workers who are choosing to take their online jobs and work abroad rather than stay at home in one single location. For the savvy expat who is utilizing countries around the world to their advantage, there are numerous benefits to enjoy that go hand in hand with a lowered cost of living.
First and foremost is the simple fact that since your cost of living is so much cheaper than it is back in the U.S. you can feasibly consider an early retirement due to how much money you are putting away every year. When you can take your average American salary of $36,000 a year and apply that towards a country where the cost of living is only $10,000 a year, you can easily put away over $25,000 per year. This is the reality more and more expats every year are discovering.
Pensioners have been doing this for years, choosing to uproot from their home country and live abroad as an international expat rather than try to stay at home where their meager pension only covers about 25 to 30% of their actual cost of living and medical care. Plus, in countries like Mexico where universal healthcare exists, access to 100% free medicine only costs around $250 per year, rather than the tens of thousands per year it costs in the U.S. to have access to a co-pay system where you still have to pay for your medicine and doctor visits.
In short, as more and more countries around the world such as Chile and Brazil begin going through economic booms where jobs are plentiful, wages are high and the costs of living are still relatively low, the international expat can choose to go where they want, when they want in order to take advantage of a cheap cost of living to save for an early retirement.