How did you decide to be expat?

Get experience from the past which make us perfect

Fascinating reading everyones stories. For me it was a joint decision with my wife. We had talked about it for a while and then finally decided to seriously consider it. We took our time and weighed our options and finally took the plunge after a few months of looking into everything involved. No regrets!

My company back in my homeland got a 6 months project with some telecom company here, after completing the project i got an offer from another good company here for a senior position. the pay and other benefits were good so i decided to live here for another one year. But the i fell in love with the life here and it has been 4 years now. I am single so i travel frequently to near countries once in a month making friend and experiencing new things. Life is good but yeah i miss my home back then som e time

My wife and I have talked about it for years but could never decide on a place until we visited Portugal. Now it's full-steam ahead! Although the politics in USA weren't the reason, it did make it easier for us to accept a mellower culture change.

It's something that was always in the back of my mind, then I got a steady job that allowed me to work remotely. I figured if I was going to give it a go, that was the time! No regrets.

How did I decide to be an expat?  By some definitions, I am not an expat.  I went to school in New York, went back home, and when the opportunity to return to the United States to another school came up, I took advantage.  Will I return home again?  Probably.  Will I go somewhere else after school?  Possibly.  Will I remain in the United States?  Doubtful.

I tend to vacation in the same places each year or two and my vacations kept getting longer and longer as I considered and envisioned myself living there. I finally talked myself into giving it a try.

Jared: Is your father, and not you, managing your life?!?

Coz i was casted on 90 days fiancée

Now I say that I decided to be an expat and I couldn't find something to realize it. Neither job nor education or investment etc. 😭

I married a Brazilian, whose family connections and career aspirations are all here.  I speak Portuguese as well as I speak English, and have been traveling between Brazil and the US my whole adult life, so it wasn't either a tough decision or a difficult transition.   It still wouldn't have happened, though, without romance. 😍

@Francesca LG.

English please as this is an Anglophone forum.

Found a Job offer, which I could not resist...

Enjoying the constant change of scenery. Made a list of countries in two categories: 1) to live in 2) visit only. Now I live in the first category countries and visit all the nearby category two countries until it's time to move to a new base in the middle of un-visited countries.

Adventurous investor and somewhat a brutally cruel fate fixed me up at the country I´m in. Not so lucky romances dotted the battlefield from far away lands and sent me fleeing
for refuge only to find myself at the laps of the vulture-like and torturous "gatas" of the south.

coin toss

I belong to Azad Kashmir part of Pakistan and life is to hard to survive there, so for my parents and siblings to full fill their need, I came to Saudi Arabia at 2003 and suck here but never get that enough pay to settle back in my home land, so sad I miss my parents and everyone, Wish to move any other country to work more hard and plan to migrate in any country if I can settle there & can have good future.

Sorry as to job... We are retired.

Just wanted to change my life. I got tired from most of the people around me, I don't have any real desire or strength to change it myself. That is why I decided to leave everything aside and move to a better place. Fortunately my family supported me with this decision.

A few years ago I gave a lot of thought as to how I ended up where I am today, and wrote a post in my personal online journal/blog. Not the actual decision to go overseas, but the incident that stopped me going back to my home country. I typed "event" there at first, but it wasn't an event, just a small incident, so I changed it. Here's a link to the post:-
https://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013 … point.html

I found it such fun, figuring out exactly what changed my life, that I wrote another one a bit later, identifying my son's "turning point", when his time came - and my wife's, earlier on. And indeed I recommend to everybody here to examine his or her personal history and try to identify their key incident. I'll be very interested to read them, and so will others. Ready, set... go!

I’m not the typical US (aspiring) expat, but I’m also not a typical American.  I can’t fit in with car culture as a visually impaired person. There are only a handful of US cities I can comfortably live in.  I have no ability, and less desire, to live in suburbia.  As a more minor corollary, I don’t fit in with the aspects of physical US culture: never taken a road trip, have no interest in sports, have to do white-collar work if I want to be moral and work at all.  But I’m not a retiree, not an employee being transferred to a branch abroad. 

I have always wanted to do something international, to live abroad. I love exploring other cultures.  I got myself the basic ability to work abroad, and from that I can build the life I want in teaching and writing and other things.

It’s a small irony that just as the pieces came together for me to move abroad, we are going to end a Republican administration in the US and get a (conservative) Democratic President.  One who even loves trains, something that would help make it possible for me to stay in the US.  But I’m not leaving out of anti-Trump disgust.  I would stay and fight the entire political movement behind him if I could. 

I just can’t.

Cccmedia,
I’d choose Boston, Philadelphia, DC, and perhaps Portland, Oregon as human-scaled, accessible places.  I’d like to settle in Philadelphia eventually.  But not now.

Irene. Portland Oregon is getting some extremely bad press these days. Is the danger being exaggerated?

Gordon,
Since my personal absolutely-non-negotiable requirement for a city to live in is, “can I walk and take some form of non-personal transit around it?”, Portland, Oregon seems to fit, among the very small number of US cities that do.  “Bad press” and the issues that produce it come and go.  Most cities in the world have seen far worse than Portland ever has.  Whether or not a city has been built in the vision of Robert Moses, cris-crossed with highways and thoroughfares and strip malls or is accessible at human scale is much more permanent.

No choice: For a mining and oil exploration specialist, there are simply no more jobs in these fields less than 2000 km away from France. Besides, I don't like to keep a home myself. I prefer to work more, earn more and spend little time with every day life problems. As an expatriate, I always had service for free. On oil rigs or at the mine mess. Often a spartan life, but no chores at all. That's better than any luxury for me.

I used to travel around the US with my family but after a while that didn't feel like it was enough, so I started exploring abroad and have never felt happier since.

Hi there

I'm Thandi, I love traveling and I'm currently living and loving Moçambique.

I lost my mum in 2019, I basically became a destitute before becoming an expat. To cut the long story short, after going through the most unbearable experiences I decided come Mozambique to try start afresh. I left my son home but we talk often, he's 21.

It's been a sweet and sour journey filled with cyclones/floods and it is teaching me new things I never thought I was capable of like teaching English as I learn Portuguese. I'm also loving the arts and culture of Mozambique.

decided to get a change. travel the world while working

Which country are you residing in now?

I decided to go back to my roots which is the United Kingdom; my name has been Lady-Diana since childbirth and I have always been associated with the UK and their peaceful form of governance and sustainable development.

The hospitability of the country has been my major attraction, thus, I have been moved to build a happy family there.

Long long time ago the company offered a job and I accepted it. Since then we have lived around the world and never regretted it. However, after more than 20 years one never really knows where "home" is. Probably wherever I lay my head.

Today I heard back from an American woman who was persuaded by me (and probably others) to retire to Mexico with her husband. They are both in their 70s, I would say - maybe a bit younger. What happened was that I wrote a comment in a financial web-forum and attached one of my blog-posts from years ago about "looking for bolt-holes", that had been written ten years or so ago but was still relevant. My wife had at the time been checking out places in Central America that would be suitable for us if our current home (Cayman, in the Caribbean) got too expensive. This woman emailed me, and we got to chatting, and I mentioned the place we ourselves had in mind - and she and her husband upped and sold their place in the US and headed south. Now they're happy as kings down there, and glad to be away from the mess that the US is turning into (her words, not mine).

So. That's my contribution to this topic today! Here's a general blog-post of mine from a few years ago, which might be worth a comment or two here. Who knows?
https://barlowscayman.blogspot.com/2013 … -mind.html

My story is probably is probably about the same as others. Years ago I retired after 20 years in IT as a Program Manager and years before in another completely different profession. While in IT, I was fortunate to work for a company with offices at one time in India and Singapore but I had traveled before and after throughout Southeast Asia. I decided to leave the day after I retired from my last company in Silicon Valley. I had spent 20 years doing IT infrastructure, data centers, critical programs for a few big guys and a few small. So I left. I lived for awhile in a few places like Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia. Traveled to Korea,Laos, Philippines,  Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan. I lived a few years in Hanoi Vietnam from about 2020 to 2021. Due to changes in visa laws I left but I had started the process of beginning a new digital transformation business there which was my idea. Unfortunately I could not finish that work so I had to stop working on the business before getting a LLC in Vietnam.  I left in 2021 and wandered around on Amtrak trains in for awhile in the US but ended up the last six months in Mexico both in Puerto Vallarta and now Merida. I like Mexico but its not for me. I will be traveling to live in Cambodia in March since now I can get the retirement extension there. Then I'll wait for Vietnam to open but meanwhile hobo around Cambodia to see retired and Khmer friends that live there. My main interest though is returning to Vietnam. I have many dear Vietnamese and expat friends there I would like to see again. I will not be going back to the US again. There is nothing for me there. No house, no property, no debt, no cars. My children are adults or trying to adult now :-).

For the longest time I wrote content in mostly blog and article or essay format and writing about the last years has helped me see just how important the years were I spent in Asia. So now I am going back. But it is not really back. I don't think we ever truly go back. Everything changes in a place and the people there as soon as we turn our heads. I'll fly out in March for Phnom Penh. I am very happy to be going back. I have written a series of blog posts about a gently fictionalized and non fictional account of the times. I've been working on this for almost a year writing, going through photos, and finding a blog platform that I could use for the type of writing this is.

If you are interested, let me know. I'll send you the blog link.

Take care all.

Sure I’m interested in reading that. Please send the link.
Thanks,
Patrick

Yes A zm interested