Part of the reason we left the US. Our city had a terrorist attack (by a Muslim so instead of a mass office shooting it was deemed such), we had an acquaintance who was killed in the Las Vegas concert shooting, and our kids should was locked down 9 times that year for fear of gun violence.
Not the person you’re responding to but I did the same thing for in part the same reasons.
We had significant fiscal privilege in that we were old enough and willing to go into debt enough early in our lives to purchase a house before things got stupid, and each time we moved we sold the house for a profit. We are renting again in our new country (New Zealand) until we build back up and get at least permanent residency (can’t buy a house here unless you’re a PR). Buying a home was the most stressful and most impactful thing financially, but that’s not feasible now for most people.
We got lucky enough, and purposefully saved for escape for 10 years by living with things that weren’t comfortable (concrete floors for years rather than replace water damage, going above and beyond to keep electricity and gas prices low even at the cost of comfort, working too much to put money into savings and neglecting family, no eating out and limiting grocery budget for last two years, pulling out ALL investments like 401k to make the final push and starting from scratch in our new home, etc.).
I can tell you it was all worth it. Live below your means (while increasing your means incrementally), beans and rice rather than packaged foods (balanced with how much your time is worth), make every sacrifice with a clear goal in mind. Like I said, it takes years, and you’re operating at a disadvantage just because we did this starting 12-13 years ago when prices were significantly different, and average wages haven’t compensated. We have kids, so the other benefits were things like the child tax credit increase in 2021, which gave us unexpected increases.
I’ve seen people do all this just to have to go back to the US because they didn’t scope out their landing enough: make sure you know how much you need to survive in your new country, know the cost of visas, limits on what you can earn in your job, know what jobs you can even fill based on visa and qualification restrictions… and then plan for having 5-10% more in total liquidity than you think you need. Things change, accidents happen… in our case our kid had to have emergency surgery the week before our flight, that same day our car died so we couldn’t sell it for as much as we wanted, and a year after arriving they increased the cost of visa renewal by over 100%. Luckily we had planned for things going haywire so we were still able to escape.
It’s not easy. I wish you all the luck in the world. Sorry for the novel and basically saying “be born earlier and get lucky” 👀
Wow…just wow. But other countries have it rough too. In the last 50yrs I witnessed more than 2 power outages that took over 30mins, close to an hour to fix. We’re not perfect either 😁
Part of the reason we left the US. Our city had a terrorist attack (by a Muslim so instead of a mass office shooting it was deemed such), we had an acquaintance who was killed in the Las Vegas concert shooting, and our kids should was locked down 9 times that year for fear of gun violence.
It’s Koo Koo land.
It’s quite difficult to emigrate unless one has significant fiscal privilege or is already politically and culturally connected to another country.
If you’re willing then please share why you chose where and how you were able to effect it.
Not the person you’re responding to but I did the same thing for in part the same reasons.
We had significant fiscal privilege in that we were old enough and willing to go into debt enough early in our lives to purchase a house before things got stupid, and each time we moved we sold the house for a profit. We are renting again in our new country (New Zealand) until we build back up and get at least permanent residency (can’t buy a house here unless you’re a PR). Buying a home was the most stressful and most impactful thing financially, but that’s not feasible now for most people.
We got lucky enough, and purposefully saved for escape for 10 years by living with things that weren’t comfortable (concrete floors for years rather than replace water damage, going above and beyond to keep electricity and gas prices low even at the cost of comfort, working too much to put money into savings and neglecting family, no eating out and limiting grocery budget for last two years, pulling out ALL investments like 401k to make the final push and starting from scratch in our new home, etc.).
I can tell you it was all worth it. Live below your means (while increasing your means incrementally), beans and rice rather than packaged foods (balanced with how much your time is worth), make every sacrifice with a clear goal in mind. Like I said, it takes years, and you’re operating at a disadvantage just because we did this starting 12-13 years ago when prices were significantly different, and average wages haven’t compensated. We have kids, so the other benefits were things like the child tax credit increase in 2021, which gave us unexpected increases.
I’ve seen people do all this just to have to go back to the US because they didn’t scope out their landing enough: make sure you know how much you need to survive in your new country, know the cost of visas, limits on what you can earn in your job, know what jobs you can even fill based on visa and qualification restrictions… and then plan for having 5-10% more in total liquidity than you think you need. Things change, accidents happen… in our case our kid had to have emergency surgery the week before our flight, that same day our car died so we couldn’t sell it for as much as we wanted, and a year after arriving they increased the cost of visa renewal by over 100%. Luckily we had planned for things going haywire so we were still able to escape.
It’s not easy. I wish you all the luck in the world. Sorry for the novel and basically saying “be born earlier and get lucky” 👀
Wow…just wow. But other countries have it rough too. In the last 50yrs I witnessed more than 2 power outages that took over 30mins, close to an hour to fix. We’re not perfect either 😁
I mean, I get it. A drunk guy has been stealing our Christmas ornaments one at a time off our front store window…
…the fear is palpable
Oh jeez. How is one supposed to recover from that?
I had power out with a newborn for like 5 days in the winter once… 30min sounds nice.
Oh man,that is horrible. Where did that newborn come from? Must’ve been aweful to have one for 5 days.
Power company was giving them away. It was weird they all had a musky smell to them.
Oh man, no thanks. The dark I can live with, but some sudden surprise stinky newborn? I gotta draw a line there.