Budgets

The only honest answer is, we have no idea. And neither does anyone else. The only one who can answer that question is you.

Here’s the most important thing to understand about budgeting your new life overseas: You can spend as much or as little as you want to live almost anywhere. 

Some places are generally more affordable than others, and a handful of places are absolutely cheap. But globalization means you can enjoy more or less any standard of living more or less anywhere on earth, if you’re willing to pay for it.

The exceptions are some absolutely cheap locales such as Dumaguete, The Philippines, Santa Marta, Colombia, and Kotor, Montenegro.

In these places, your cost of living is artificially low because, frankly, there isn’t much for you to spend your money on. This is not to say that, in these places, you couldn’t enjoy a comfortable, interesting, exotic, even fun, exciting, and adventure-filled life. But you’d be living simply, because you’d have no option. The only life in these places is the simple life.

Most importantly, if cost of living is your primary motivation for thinking about moving to another country, we recommend you focus on these choices.

And, if you’re not looking to move on a super-fixed income (of, say, US$1,300 a month or less), you have many good options, and here’s what we strongly suggest:

Stop obsessing over this cost-of-living question. Yes, of course, you need to know that you’ll be able to afford to live in whatever country you decide to try on for size, but here are a few other things to remember, as well.

For example, your cost of living almost anywhere is controllable. It will not be the same as our cost of living in that same place or, necessarily, the cost of living in that place for anyone else you might speak with.

Most expense items–everything from housing to health care, from travel to entertainment, from your monthly grocery bill to your phone/cable/Internet package–are hugely variable and can be managed.