Of the 4341 future expats who took part in our survey, 38.5% have had to reconsider their expat projects. 11.47% of to-be expats postpone their departure because of the rise in cost of living in their expat destination and 7.48 % have changed their expat destination altogether.
Of all future expats who participated in the survey, 36.38% said that the cost of living was important in choosing an expat destination. The majority of others said that the cost of living was very important (25.07%) and extremely important (15.43%).
While cost of living was important to extremely important for 76.88% of the respondents, only 38.5% have decided to change their expat plans because of the rise in cost of living. Most of the expats who decided to change their expat plans were intending to go to Canada, Portugal or Vietnam. They were also mainly employed, retired or entrepreneurs.
A retiree from the United Kingdom who was looking to move to Turkey decided to delay their departure and do more research and consider more options before leaving. “It is more important in the current situation to understand how to better save money”, they explained. Indeed, expats seem to be holding on to every penny amidst the sanitary and economic crisis. Another entrepreneur from the United Kingdom also delayed their departure to Cabo Verde. The entrepreneur who wanted to leave their home country in search of a better quality of life has decided to postpone their project in order to save more money. “I need to save money for the unexpected”, they say.
Of the 4341 future expats who took part in Expat.com's survey, 11.47% mentioned that they had postponed their departure because of the cost of living in their host country. The majority of these future expats had had plans to move to Canada and France but also Mauritius, Thailand and Vietnam amongst others. They were also mostly from the United States and South Africa and were mostly either in employment (41.82%) or entrepreneurs (23.64%).
In the same breath, 7.48% of future expats have decided to change their expat destination because of the rise in cost of living in their ideal expat destination. Again, most of them had been looking into France, but also into Portugal and Spain as the countries in which they had wanted to relocate. They were mostly from the United States, the United Kingdom and South Africa. Of the respondents who had changed their expat destination, 45.71% were employed, but this time retirees came second making up for 25.71% of future expats who have changed their expat destination. Most of them (36.23%) stated that the cost of living plays a very important role in their choice of destination, 30.41% said it played an extremely important role.
