$80k can easily last you 4+ years of very comfortable living in much of the world. Enjoy the food, really try and learn some of the local language, and enjoy yourself.
You can do it, and there won't be another window.
"I need a 3 bedroom apartment with a full kitchen in the village center, with at least parking for one car, I have a budget of $300/mo".
"Here's at least three options"
It also bring up a kind of discomfort between us, as tech workers, and regular people. The quantity of money we can earn, even at the lower end in the U.S., is unfathomable. It makes us want to go places and spend somewhat frivolously to support local businesses.
We were recently in Portugal. There's a ton of trendy food spots with prices near what we'd pay in HCOL U.S., but there's a ton of really local, mom 'n pop places, with absolutely incredibly prices, and they're incredibly appreciative of your business.
One place we frequented was maybe a 30 second walk from a very trendy tourist district, but served local food at very local prices. Ubers were lined up to drop people to go overpay for mediocre food in the district, literally on the street next to where we were eating. If they would have just taken a moment, they could have come and had a great relaxed meal and support some locals for almost next to nothing.
I hear that - last time I was in Lisbon I got breakfast in one of those kind of places and had to ask the cashier if they made a mistake with the change and had given me back too much. Like literally, they could have charged double I would have accepted it as a fair price for a nice meal.
Got a name?
For a bit higher-end, we liked Cantinho do Sol near the Marques De Pombal circle. I think we spent maybe 20-25 euros a person there, were stuffed to the gills, and nearly drown in our drinks. Employees were lovely Brazilians in the front of house and the owner, a local I think, was the chef.
> For a bit higher-end
You've been to the TimeOut Market? Very busy, touristy, but good selection of local specialties. Same price range, more or less.
But what about healthcare? How do non-rich US citizens who retire abroad deal with that? There are actually two aspects to that--how do you get healthcare abroad, and if you later move back to the US are there problems getting on Medicare?
You should look into it. It very much depends on the country.
But typically you just start paying taxes or fees or whatnot into whatever the national system is in place. Most countries will require you to have proof of some type of outside insurance before immigrating.
There are overseas specific health insurance plans you can get on -- typically not very expensive because healthcare in the rest of the world isn't insane. [1]
Most countries also have a cash-only payment schedule. Unlike the U.S., fees for health services are typically known up front.
In any case, even paying cash, you're likely to find healthcare outside of the U.S. (in tier-1 countries like the EU, Japan, Korea, etc.) to be high quality and very low cost -- often cheaper than healthcare in the U.S. with insurance.
We came across more than a couple business owners who had side hustles as property speculators. One owner basically said that he's buying whatever he can get his hands on since there's a guaranteed return.
As tourists we're of course part of the problem, but we're also a lot of the economy. I think Lisbon is also somewhat in a problem like San Francisco, constrained geography, and paradise for the climate, all creating very high demand from people who have the money. People with money will simply outpay people with less to live in more desirable areas.
It doesn't help that Portugal also has very cheap/easy long-term/permanent visa programs which doesn't help. They're almost one of the easiest ones globally that also gets you into the EU. https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/portugal-residency-vi...
At the same time as we've completely failed to expand housing stock, we invented a new visa to allow wealthy foreigners to immigrate without a hitch. Then later a new visa to allow anyone who wanted to immigrate without a hitch (which about 600k people from developing economies took advantage of in the last five years).
There is nothing about our situation that has been worsened by tourism. It's the one economic sector driving the country forwards and I'm personally very grateful it has developed so much. A large part of my extended network can only make ends meet because of jobs created by tourism.
Also true: the amount of money needed to make ends meet doubled because of the large influx of people…
The real question is: did the majority of natives improved their life with it?
I finished college right at the beginning of the financial crisis. I can't overstate how bad of a state Portugal was in around 2010. There have been no jobs and no money for a long time. Since I can remember we have been the third world of the first world. Tourism and outside investment in real estate have been the one thing that's capitalised Portugal in a decade. There's been nothing else for decades.
Of course you're right that there have been economic losers from this recent large influx of people. The poorer segment especially has been betrayed by a government who opened the doors to functionally slave labour from Pakistan. There's no competing with half a million people who will pay to work if they're given a contract that allows them to stay in the EU. But that's not tourism's fault. We created our own reality.
The fact that I can buy a house in Thailand for something insanely cheap also means that I can make sure that the local school has whatever they need, for basically just a haircut.
You can take the local orphanage and make sure hundreds of kids are comfortable for hundreds of USD a month.
Btw, last decade has shown USA is not a global police anymore.
Yep, I was in Portugal back in June and was blown away by how nice it was. City life, the beach towns and overall prices of things. That was my first time going to the EU from the US.
I was on vacation so I ate out every day for all meals but I don't think I paid more than $5 for breakfasts and most sit down dinners were $12-15 all-in. I splurged one night in Lisbon and had the craziest plate of sushi I've ever seen and it was $18. That was from a 4.9 rated sushi bar with ~800 reviews.
My total food bill for 14 days of solo traveling was ~$475 and I wasn't purposely trying to budget. That includes randomly trying a lot of things that I normally wouldn't do like getting a fresh smoothie while walking around because why not. That food bill also includes 3 days in south western Spain because I moved around to a few cities (Seville, Spain -> Lagos, Portugal -> Lisbon, Portugal was the loop I took with day trips to a couple of places).
They flew her back to the US, where she’s from, to do filming there and have us friends come by to throw frisbees and talk about how much they’ll miss her. It was weird.
Obviously the OP has no children (and my brothers' kids are grown up) - if you have kids this changes the equation completely (though if they're very young then it can still work).
It was not good.
I cannot stress enough how bad of an idea this is unless your children are under 3. Children need structure and permanency. They need friends, not just acquaintances. My cousin did everything else right, but his kids still have issues with relationships because 5 of their very formative years were spent without actual friends. It's really sad to think about.
For him, it was a wildly selfish move that negatively impacted his children. Don't be that guy.
Also, it sounds like they were traveling for 5 years? Yeah, that does sound like a very long time - I imagine if it had been 1 year or so it might have been a very different story (?)
*Liking facebook photos does not count.
Then guess what: I moved.
Edit: my brother grew up into a child abusing POS by neglecting his kids, but let's looks at statistics VS anecdotes since individuals from all backgrounds can be garbage people.
Correlation != Causation. People are different and respond differently to various situations.
For me personally, having been in lots of places means I always have people to visit and in many cases a place to stay.
Sorry, but this is BS.
Structure, yes. Permanency, no.
And certainly not child abuse.
I know just as many examples of people with this experience, for whom it was amazingly positive and contributed to the successful people they are today.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4866579/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135382921...
For the layman:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/health/moving-childhood-d...
https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/moving-even-once-in-childh...
https://www.verywellmind.com/moving-depression-and-your-chil...
From the first link you provided:
> Firstly, increased risk for onset of mental disorders between mid-adolescence and early middle age could be a consequence of serious and enduring difficulties within families, rather than being a direct result of residential mobility. Relocation occurs more commonly amongst single parent and step families and those from lower socioeconomic background
Unfortunately, you took one single "could be" sentence out of an entire gamut of data confirming mobility-related mental health issues in children and completely ignored the conclusions section in that same paper, so I think you have already severely hardened your position and are unlikely to be convinced by anything I offer.
I would suggest simply talking to a practicing psychologist about this - you would probably be far more convinced than a HN commenter. Actually, this is where I first found out the same - I didn't know about this until a consultation with a psychologist.
(You can also ask your AI buddies - ChatGPT also confirmed it with several case studies offered.)
That is nothing like what we are discussing here.
"Even AFTER accounting for family background and achievement at the end of kindergarten, mobile students had significantly lower reading and math achievement tests scores in seventh grade."
"Frequent relocation was associated with higher rates of all measures of child dysfunction; 23% of children who moved frequently had repeated a grade vs 12% of children who never or infrequently moved. Eighteen percent of children who moved frequently had four or more behavioral problems vs 7% of children who never or infrequently moved. Use of logistic regression to control for potential confounding covariates demonstrated that children who moved frequently were 77% more likely to be reported to have four or more behavioral problems"
Diplomats travel with their families. Employees of multi-nationals travel. US military travel. At least that last group (i.e. their kids) I know does better than average.
It seems to me that their survey intermingles two very different groups – the larger group, those who moved due to extreme financial insecurity (who would do MUCH worse), and those who moved under "positive" circumstances.
A specific research paper isn't necessary in my opinion for this site and topic, but Wikipedia is a simple starting point to find some.
That they need permanency, sure but that's the parents and the living situation
You could argue more soundly that modern schools are child abuse if we follow the commenter’s line of reasoning.
I wouldn't say it's abuse, but it's certainly depriving the kids from learning how to develop socially. They aren't learning how to maintain friendships, and are being implicitly taught that such connections are disposable.
I've had the misfortune to see actual child abuse, from the story presented in the OP it doesn't rise even close to that level. Let's please reserve words/phrases like that for situations that warrant it.
It may not be an ideal parenting strategy, but claiming it's abuse cheapens the word. Are the children being fed properly? Are they being physically/sexually harmed? I've unfortunately had to intervene in a situation with my niece that involved the above 3.
The parenting method in the OP may not be ideal, but plenty of people have had childhoods like that My mom grew up moving every 5-8 months, her dad was a contractor for the TVA. There are still people who follow around contracting work. Please don't minimize that actual harm caused by child abuse by cheapening the term.
I happen to agree this probably doesn’t rise to the level of child abuse, but there’s a large range between there and unfed/physically/sexually harmed.
We shouldn’t cheapen it, but we shouldn’t make it too expensive either.
But it’s not abuse.
You’re correct that physical/sexual harm and malnutrition are not the only things that constitute abuse either, though.
RV culture is much more lonely and expects people to be more self-sufficient. If you need help, there may or may not be people to help you; for sure, the whole campsite won’t jump to help, unlike a marina.
At least, that was my experience.
We don’t actually live on a sailboat in the sense of this discussion, but a lot of our friends do.
There are more alternatives than the extreme you're describing.
We moved a lot as kids due to my dads jobs. It was nothing you can point at and call call crazy like living in a rv, just normal jobs like a million people have to deal with, yet has essentially the same effect as your nomad rv story. Some time in the air force followed by different electronics and computer engineering jobs that just resulted in a significant move every couple of years.
Depending on my mood I can say I didn't make a lot of friends or that I made exactly normal friends, and that any weirdness about me was caused by that, or was my own nature and that didn't change anything. I can think of argumants that sound reasonable both ways, and I can cite various facts (things about me, events and outcomes in my life, etc, and the same about others with different events and outcomes) that support both ways.
Which means what I choose to say or blame says more about me than anything else.
Every thing you can say about stability I can say something equal about conformity.
Our neighbors a few years back had spent years living on a boat with their child up until age 6, I think it was, and it was great. And their daughter had a very positive experience. But yeah, once she was older they moved onshore.
I don't think moving itself has a negative effect. If you stay long enough for your kids to establish friendships, sometimes those friendships can remain when you move. My 8 year old boy still plays almost daily online + FaceTime with his friend from 1st grade in another city even though they were only a year together they established a bond that is very strong years later and they haven't seen each other. They're still best friends.
The usual YMMV.
obviously i don't know your cousin, but before you blame him, consider that there may have been other factors that you can't see, that were beyond their control.
the worst thing in my experience is relatives who think they know what i am doing wrong as a parent, without understanding the whole picture. (friends too, but once friends do that, they are no longer friends). try not to be that person.
Glad someone said it! I’m disinclined to take any parenting advice from a peer group that’s been raising kids on tablets for the last 10 years. But ya, moving around is the concern hah. God forbid they see life outside the suburbs.
One thing I would point out is that military kids are in a far different scenario than the OP's cousins kids. Military kids will grow up moving from base to base, but the schools around bases are fundamentally different. Those are schools where teachers are used to student turnover, and the students are as well. OP talked about kids that were in a more nomadic situation, where they could only form brief <1mo friendships. The local culture of these communities is also used to and adapted somewhat to this.
That sounds like childhood trauma to me, the closest analog might not be military children but the foster care system. Not a 100% analog, since presumably the OP's cousins kids didn't have the pre-existing trauma that entry into that system necessitates, but that is the closest conventional analog I can think of. Moving around constantly into communities that aren't necessarily set up to deal with that is rough.
This may be different to your situation, but when i was younger I wanted people to like me, and if they didn't I'd blame myself for being weird. Now I'm older, I don't give a shit if people like me or not, and I've stopped thinking of myself as weird.
Edit: I realized I didn’t respond as directly as I’d like to. I think I do want people to like me, and that’s ok. I think it’s also ok to not care
I think the key point in all of this, which you and others highlighted, is weird vs not weird is very much a consequence of social conventions. It's also important, generally speaking, to fit into these conventions to facilitate social cohesion. There are obviously extremes, which are outside of my considerations here.
I should have put more effort into my original comment but I was in a rush at the time. This bit might not apply to you, I don't know you, these are just my own poor articulations. Feeling like you are weird, or don't fit in, or make people uncomfortable, basically comes down to peoples reflections of their judgement on you. This is inescapable and to judge is human nature. But being on the wrong side of it, for long enough, can lead to a very negative mental state. Having the ability to realise you are not responsible for other peoples feelings is important. And also realising these feelings are largely dictated by the society you find yourself in is also important. These things can be changed, social circles need not be permanent, and should probably be changed if leading to a negative mental state, brought about because you feel you don't fit in.
I stand by my original point that there is no such thing as weird or normal, anymore so than some cultures or societies can appear weird or normal, which is highly relative. Otherwise intelligent and conscientious people should not believe themselves to be less than they are because they are at odds with their current time and place. As Yuval Noah Harari would say, society is a fiction.
Simply because the sample of people we encounter socially is skewed towards the pro-social, and the ones we notice and remember, doubly so.
There's a lot more quiet, reserved, low-key people out there than we realise, and most of them aren't weird.
(Also plenty of pro-social, extrovert types who are weird AF, but that's a different topic.)
As a moderate introvert (handle social situations OK but need the down time to balance), I just find some people aren't worth the effort, and like to save my energy for those that are.
But the weird/normal axis, I'm a little less comfortable with (similarly "neurotypical"/"neurodivergent"). Fundamentally I dislike the idea of letting the most boring people claim normal, in a similar way to how LGBTQ and nonwhite folks don't like it when cishet or white people claim normal. Most of the people I most enjoy spending time with are ADD, ADHD or ASD, and all the better for it. It's not like these are even disabilities, they're just different ways of being.
I'm OK with the labels themselves as a broad, shorthand way of understanding personality types / ways of seeing the world, but I don't buy that no-label people are more normal.
You surely care about what your partner thinks about you. Your parents perhaps? Your friends? It's part of the emotional connection.
You can be laid back and easy going, but you're still going to care if your loved ones strongly go against your core beliefs and ways of living, right?
It turns out that this necessity never truly goes away. Aside from merely surviving (e.g. you need your doctor to at least tolerate you) interacting with other human is what makes life more than just surviving. At least it’s like that for most people.
Even hermits and sociopaths need to be liked by at least one person, which is their own selves. Since the number must be at least one, it might as well be 2 or 3.
Yep, and even a slight degradation of that trust that your parents that are necessary for your survival will protect you can have devastating, life-long psychological effects. And indeed everything can be traced back to that.
Perhaps controversial but I think this is the origin of most religion: baby is protected by infinitely powerful parents, child has shocking and painful revelation that their parents are not infinitely powerful and have all kinds of insecurities and weakness, therefore a forever infallible representative (e.g. God) is constructed to fill in that gap.
But I think that's just one way to fill the gap, and people engage in all kinds of strange, obsessive behaviours to try and reclaim that illusion of eternal protection and safety.
Also, whether we like it or not we depend on other people. If you want to get hired, reproduce, sell stuff, or just not be a hermit, it matters what people think of you.
Sometimes that means changing who you are. Sometimes it means finding people who are more like you (I know that I hate living in most rural areas based on the people I've met in them, for instance). Maybe a combination.
Good advice would be "be somebody else".
The self help books that teach various tricks... basically make one be someone else.
However, a lot of people, like the person I originally replied to, choose to remain alone, and that's often because they are scared of rejection or of being left alone. It's kind of ironic, like a contradiction. Longing for connection, but being so scared of rejection that you force the rejection to happen yourself, so that it doesn't happen to you involuntarily, but by forcing that rejection through self-isolation you basically guarantee your doom rather than opening the possibility for flourishing.
If everyone prefers not do deal with you, perhaps they are all toxic, terrible people. Or… there is a common element.
There’s a difference between defining yourself based on the expectations of others and being such an individual that nobody can relate.
Good for you that you learned to cope with that. After the ‘don’t give a shit’ stage there usually is ‘sit back and observe’ stage to understand what exactly you don’t give a shit about.
AirBnB’s and homes are located in areas and designed for living like normal social human beings.
RVs are parked in areas that are not designed to sustain long term living.
In many cases they simply dont have any friends at all. Or are always the incomers.
Of course you can live in a place with lots of kids of your own age and still be lonly, or the kids can be dicks, but in my opinion there is benefit in socialization at age 4-10. Kids could go out ans play together. The nomads cant.
IMO permanent group of friends and place, repetition, predictability are a foundation for growth. Then you can sprinkle one off things on top. Not a life of unpredictable mess when you are on your own.
Also if you dont speak the local language how can one even socialize
Same with the Adriatic. If you decide to stay in Dubrovnik or Split, for example, it'll be quite expensive, but there are other places to stay in Croatia that are non-touristy and inexpensive.
https://www.wired.com/story/a-rare-domestic-resurgence-of-ma...
be careful about what you eat and drink but it’s not like you catch these diseases just from walking around.
When I lived in Ireland I occasionally met people who would bounce between Ireland/UK and Schengen to reset their visa clocks (people from US, Canada, etc. can spend 3 months at a time, or 6 months a year, in Schengen, though eventually you might start getting tougher questions).
Also Portugal has the Digital Nomad visa for 1 year renewable. That requires employment in the US (or elsewhere outside the EU) so not the same as what my brother was doing but a good option as the min wage requirements are not high; could get by with what would be part time work on a US salary esp in tech.
I suspect that many of the housing problems in places like Lisbon’s old be solved if visas were enforced.
BAcK iN mY dAy a room in a house would cost $400-$500/mo in most places in the Montreal-Waterloo corridor. Now runways have basically been halved (0.3x'd?) as an extra allowance to the landed gentry.
They’re not the problem. You could not only ban all zoning/building restrictions but make it legal to shoot people who suggest or support them you’d barely begin to touch the problem.
Incentives regarding what to build (or when or if) are as big a piece of the puzzle. And the fact that the very simple and hugely microeconomic concept of marginal returns rarely (if ever) makes an appearance in this conversation is a serious indictment of the economic seriousness of its players when it comes to how supply gets built. Cost disease also matters in construction. There are lots of moving pieces.
Even when supplying isn’t socially restricted, there are market forces that contribute to rising costs.
What specific problem are you thinking of when you talk about market forces contributing to rising costs?
OK, density/character politics strike again, familiar story.
But, notably, you could fit at least 12 single family homes with lot sizes that are 100% entirely in character with the surrounding neighborhood. Quite probably 16. Possibly as many as 20.
What's going in? 6 big lots + mcmansions.
Not because the city made the developer do it. Not because the neighbors wouldn't allow matching density. The difference between 16 and 48 might be a land use restriction problem, but the difference between 6 and 16 doesn't seem to be. For some reason, this is what the developer would rather build.
The microeconomic detail of the developer's decision isn't public, but it's a very well known phenomenon in many markets that producers do not want to oversupply and often target production a bit short of demand. This may not be true when marginal cost per unit is small (you may as well try to saturate the market and then create new demand)... but that doesn't describe housing, does it? Per unit costs are always non-trivial. Trying to maximize per-unit profit by producing short of demand may not be the only strategy, but it's an uncontroversial and reasonably incentivized one.
And this wouldn't be the first time that I'd heard that mcmansions on big lots can be considerably more profitable per unit. So I'm willing to bet that when these 6 houses go to market, they will sell for 2-5x comparable surrounding homes. There's comparables within a mile on smaller lots with multipliers in that range. So they'll get the same return from the project on without having to build as many units. And that's just on this site. In the geographic area, they will be keeping supply constrained and therefore keeping the marginal return on additional units they build higher.
Phrases like "per unit profit" and "diminishing marginal returns" commonly show up in some popular economic discussion in other markets -- agriculture at least. But for some reason, they're rare when not entirely absent from popular discussion of real estate development and housing.
I suspect additional significant dynamics with materials costs, financing costs, and price signaling (as well as supply) are also in play, but I'm probably a damned fool for posting as much as I have in hopes of a better public conversation and policy more beneficial for all. Probably would be smarter to find ways to play the game myself, especially given that existing homeowners share many incentives with developers. Other holiday activities are more likely to bring emotional rewards. Still, maybe someone smarter than me will provide me with the opportunity to discover why I'm wrong and more optimism is appropriate. That'd be a fine Christmas gift.
Beautiful space, clear view of Mont Royal, right off the park, ideal location (IMO) in the plateau.
Granted, this was around 15 years ago -- I shudder to think what the now-likely Airbnb units in that building go for these days, probably $400/night.
One of the biggest beneficiaries of the recent tech boom happen to be the owners of land and buildings in and around the cities that tech companies prefer to be around.
Also a strong argument for remote-first companies.
I did that (sold everything, and went traveling), and now I own very little stuff. Apart from the mandatory laptop I need for work, and clothes, I couldn’t care less about everything else.
Before selling everything, I had a sick setup of dual monitors, and external DAC, speakers, headphones, keyboards, etc. Today, I need only laptop. I was considering getting one monitor, but can’t seem to justify the need.
It really teaches you how little material crap you need.
The bulk of what people own are things like furniture, artworks, plants, appliances, cookware… etc. Not particularly sexy, but essential for making a cozy place to live in the world.
Before selling everything, I’d constantly worry about whether I should get a third monitor, maybe try a curved one, get a new keyboard, upgrade the TV, get a new kitchen appliance, replace the sofa, etc. There’s always “newer and better” for everything.
Nowadays, I don’t care anymore. I bought a TV because we like watching movies, but I don’t care about the technology or the next shiny thing. Same with my computer, I work on a 14” laptop for the past two years, and I no longer feel like I should chase a better or newer setup.
I bet being able to spend time with the people I love the most is way more important that having the latest and greatest TV or fridge.
So, if you (somehow) don't have any friends, you won't be able to keep much anyway, except memories.
So yeah, the rent on the unit might be more than your crap is worth, but having it all back in a blink (essentially) when moving back someplace has some intangible value too.
I eventually emptied it but I made the mistake is discarding books and trinkets that were actually memorabilia. I didn't interact with the trinkets or pull the books off the shelves. I didn't realize that just seeing them would trigger memories of where I bought them, who I was with, what I was into then, what songs were popular then, etc... so I regret getting rid of that stuff. But that was probably no more than 10 "book boxes" of stuff
In the past months, my situation has gotten worse as I needed to tighten my belt due to my saving having almost completely melted. Hard but enriching times, I have now found a job after months of searching. The market in Europe isn't great these days. Back to hustling but without any regrets.
100% agree with OP, it was the experience of a lifetime for me. If I can give some additional advice, plan your finances. Even if you think a large sum will last you years and you're a bit lazy to plan it (as I was), don't be conservative with your forecast, plan large. Personally if I had to do it again, I'd try to keep half or one third aside for unexpected cases.
It's the same thing as in New York, just different currency.
Locals inheritted their apartments from parents or granparents, those with good jobs get a mortgage or burn their salaries on rent.
And the rest lives with roommates. Or spends hours ona bus or train to work.
Hence the fertility crisis in Central Europe: people dont want to have kids when they struggle with rent.
In Central Europe there is the saying that prices are western, but salaries are eastern.
Propert also gets bought by foreign investors like in Canada.
I’d assume that salaries in Prague are higher than in the Czech Republic as a whole.
Also, I'm 42 and retired :) It's really easy to retire here when making software money.
Back in the day, I had saved enough to take a nice 3 month leave of absence from work to do some travelling. Nudging my spreadsheet around, I tried replacing my rent, utilities etc. with the cost of a storage locker, and suddenly my “how long can I go for “ number shot up to over a year.
It changed my whole approach to life in my 30s, and it was a good 15 years before I committed to living in a single place long term again.
While working, I’d pick up a cheap room in a shared house for a few months.
These days I’d just stay remote. Maybe upgrade by a few dollars a night for A/C, reliable power and good internet.
God it must be nice to be in a position where you can afford to just be like “ok my partner and I are just going to travel for four years, and after that, idk, things will work out somehow.”
However, living beyond your means and buying luxuries you can't actually afford, and living a lavish lifestyle is entirely a personal decision. the problem with living paycheck to paycheck is that life happens. you get into an accident. there's a fire. your dog gets hurt. you get laid off, through no fault of your own. the company just decided to downsize. and now, because you don't have any savings, you can't absorb that loss, and then you're out on the street. homeless. hopefully not literally, there's a grace period before you're kicked out. but food and shelter aren't as solid as they were before. your life could become very difficult. all that hardship was an avoidable problem with an emergency fund because you weren't able to not doordash dinner.
At the time the job was so boring, going nowhere, pretty easy.. I would do anything to go back in time to that role tbh..
I loved every second of traveling, and met some cool people, but none of that helps me find work now.
If you're a shy introvert, and struggle with social situations.. and you currently have a job, I'd advise to keep the job, even if it's not great, and try get something else lined up before leaving.
I have so many mental issues now (low self esteem etc)... therapy would probably help, but now I have no money sooo... I'm stuck in a loop of unemployable, no help due to no money, no money due to no work etc.
.. don't be me
my strategy was to look for jobs in the places i wanted to go to or take remote job offers and then visit or move to the places of my employer.
that is what allowed me to spend a year in new zealand for example.
that's where i learned that new zealand is not a good job market. that's why i left again. i only got there because pike programmers like me were not easy to find.
what are your options now? are you looking for remote jobs? why do you think you are unemployable? can you use your time to improve your skills? feel free to reach out in private if you like to chat. email is in my profile
I'll give you an email later. Thanks!
At least have a plan first and make sure you understand visas. I have fiends who sold up everything and moved to Switzerland only to be turned back at the airport because they didn’t know they couldn’t just move their life there unemployed
I've heard some terrible things about how vulnerable those are to theft / squatters.