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I live in North America and I have no desire to move back to Brazil. I've toyed with the idea of going there once a year and spend 3 months working remotely but the reality is that, at least in my hometown, the quality of life is much worse except for food. I have a really good time in the first few weeks but then issues like pollution, traffic and general culture of Brazilians starts to get me by week 4. Maybe Brazil's south is different, I've heard good things.

Cost of living where I a, in NA is def higher but I also know that my kids will get a better education overall. In fact, you have to pay a fortune in tuition fees for your kids to have a similar education to public schools here in NA.

I am not sure what is your situation but if you have more than 1 child, things start to get dicey cost-wise. I don't think there is a lot of disposable income to go around, and that's for a relative low cost of living city in Brazil like Recife. I guess if you are childless things would be different and I can see the fun times outweighing the rest. But for me it is a solid "no way".

I feel the same way, after 1.5 yrs in Mexico.

Too much:

- Noise

- Lawless culture & government corruption

- Pollution & its related "who cares" culture around trash & toxic chemicals

To little:

- Infrastructure

- Education

- Respect for nature & concern for reducing the impact of pollution

- Enforcement of health & environmental regulation

That said, there are ardent environmentalists & industrious, educated people. They're just at a low concentration due to the human development itself-- it takes time for societies to develop to high levels of living standards and human achievement.

I'm a senior engineer and I moved to Latam (on my own, not for work). Unless you are prepared to give up a lot I don't see why anyone would consider this.

What's the incentive? Unless you are looking for an adventure there is no reason to give up your stable standard of living. Also take into consideration that all of Latam, even Mexico and Chile which are the most developed countries are much more dangerous. Education of your kids is worse. Pollution is worse. Political stability isn't guaranteed. Healthcare isn't the best.

I'm also not too sure about the cost of living argument. I'm originally from Europe where both rent and food are more affordable than here (talking about supermarkets, not restaurants where staff is underpaid).

What about Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay? Seems like a broad brush to paint an entire continent and a half.

On one hand, senior people who moved overseas have already established their life in the EU or US, have a family and children, etc.

Also, people who move away generally do so for reasons beyond money. Like you say, even a mid-senior role pays very well for Latam, but people end up moving for things like safety (most Latam cities are generally much less safe), education (quality education is difficult to come by in many countries), or career advancement (unfortunately most companies won't accept executive roles in Latam, or will do so at Latam salaries which are actually a step down).

In my personal experience, with a third of my friends having moved overseas, career advancement and getting away from difficult situations make up most of the reasons for not coming back. Friends who've experienced traumatic robberies or violent situations or who come from broken families generally want to get away from that and career advancement and money just end up being the excuse.

I stayed in London for three years, then moved back to Italy because with the pandemic I had gone to the office only twice in 18 months, and because my wife and daughter didn't like London a lot; I was able to keep my job as a hands on team leader (Rails+React) with the same company I was working for.

Now I'm looking for a new job, from Italy, and I'm finding that it's much more difficult to do that when you're already remote, compared to when I was in London. Lots of roles I could have applied before specify "fully remote from the UK". So, it's not so obvious that, if you move, you have as many opportunities.

PS if anybody is interested in hiring me, contacts are in my profile :)

Is that a Brexit thing?

Know there's been a lot of shuffle in regulations on the UK side, along with some as-yet-to-be-defined regulations, so I'd hazard it's UK companies hedging their risk by saying "We just don't want to deal with global-remote until we get regulatory clarity."

I'm not sure; that could be a reason for this. I've got a personal company so I can be paid B2B, which is very simple, but probably this could create some uncertainty and doubt, and could be a good reason not to take risks.

My social circle's experience is that it's easier and more convenient to find a remote position in a company based in Ireland.

Also tech salaries are higher because Ireland is a country with effectively two, very different economies and wages in the UK outside of London are surprisingly low.

Thank you for the suggestion, will take a look!

You can have the same with that income in the USA assuming you don't live in Seattle or SF. You can live in Indiana or Texas. Brazil doesn't exactly have a great reputation.

Neither does Texas

Louisiana is more fun

My wife's family is from Louisiana. I love visiting, the people are very warm and the food is great. But after 3 days I want to go back to Atlanta. Louisiana is a terrible place to live, unfortunately.

I find it not so bad compared to other places - Portland for example.

i can tell you that if you have a high enough salary, living in a big city like São Paulo can be as good (if not better) than living in a median US city like Seattle/SF -- specially given conversion rates of USDBRL and housing prices.

If you come from a decent Latam metropolis like Buenos Aires or Santiago and make use of the urban facilities (ie you like going out, being close to universities and airports and various activities), anything beyond top-tier US cities is a real step down in quality of life.

dfw has world class restaurants and one of the best airports. and a highly diverse housing stock. you can get a new house at 400k or you can live in a mansion or high rise condo or anywhere in between. recreation is the major downside and the heat but that’s what the airports are for. world class private and public schools, major universities, etc

you can also get a mortgage. good luck in buenos aires!

But driving and having to take flights for entertainment are precisely what people hate about American urbanism and one of the bigger reasons why people move back.

I wonder if a big reason is that it is very uncomfortable to move somewhere where you will be in the 1% elite of the local area. My kids would be singled out, our friends/peers would be few and far between. There would probably be few activities for the kid, and so on. This is what a high CoL area gets you.

My goal is to transition to Costa Rica the closer I get to retirement. I would still love to work there as well, but I'm dreaming of a part-time consultancy I can run from my beach house off of one the coasts.

Dealing with bureaucracy the biggest one for me. I'd love to move abroad, but almost all countries have limited tourist stays of 90 days. I don't want to be moving around every 3 months.

>If you are in such position, have you considered it?

Yes. I actually broke into software development while living in Mexico.

Prior to that, in a tent. I realized the cost of living would be cheaper in Mexico while I worked on a full stack app (the app's ultimate purpose was simply to demo my skill during interviews). Once the app was almost done, I moved back to the US, and a couple months later landed my first 100% programming job.

>If so, what is stopping you right now?

I've spent 1.5 years now, living in Mexico-- Playa Rosarito, Bucerias, Tepic, CDMX, Tulum.

I am strongly considering moving back to the Bucerias area to explore more of the West Coast-- Mazatlan to Huatulco, for example, by scooter, since I was recently laid off.

I'm on the fence about committing to Mexico or any of Latin America for the rest of my life.

Mainly due to:

- Inconveniences: Not having drinking water available in houses-- every few days, I'd estimate 90% of people in Mexico take water jugs to fill up at a public tap-- Much as you'd see in a textbook documentary about a refugee village in rural Africa. Though perhaps with a good filtration system it's possible to purify water at home.

- The culture around Noise: People advertise in the street by shouting or playing annoying loud announcements from loudspeakers

- The culture around Pollution: using chemicals without protection or with disregard about potential impact on human health. Examples: airbnb host using pesticide (RAID brand) indoors. construction worker friends applying pesticide outside without any protective gear and without warning anyone to close their windows for 15-30 mins to avoid inhaling the airborne pesticide mist. Plus lack of waste system infrastructure means you find a lot of trash in the urban and even rural environment (people dump trash into holes in the ground along rural roads, for example, due to no landfills or trash-pickup service existing in many areas).

- Low interest in education & industriousness (though I am sure this is changing). Especially if compared to the culture around achievement in South Asia & East Asia. It makes it a bit challenging to make friends with people at similar education & career attainment levels that I'd have if I stayed in the US.

- Crime & lack of justice: the vast majority of crime goes unpunished. Vigilante justice happens. There's a general sense of lawlessness, especially when police officers & judges can be bribed.

That said, I'm still on the fence.

I prefer a society which is quiet, industrious, conscientious and well educated.

Mexico isn't quite there yet, but hopefully it'll be significantly closer to the US levels of those things in the next 2-5 decades.

It does offer: A friendly culture. Great food. Adventures.