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RE: The Makings of an Expat - Hard Road Edition
Thanks for sharing, Randy. Good stuff. You might enjoy this article that was posted here not too long ago.
https://steemit.com/liberty/@escapeamericanow/those-who-can-cannot-and-will-not-leave-the-us-or-europe
I'm sure you see this too. And the reactions of friends and family can be mixed. Some resent that you'd leave a sinking ship, even while being jealous. Others are happy for you. Still, others can't understand.
Good for you for making the leap. My situation is so similar and so different at the same time that it's really tough for me to escape. Still working on it though, with Chile in my sites.
Great piece, I have met so many of the different types you mention. I get many folks messaging me saying they also want to expatriate but the truth is 99% never follow through with it.
Then you have the ones who come down and just can't hack it. Believe me culture shock is a real thing. I bet if I went to Chile I would struggle for a while once I took off the rose colored glasses. This is exactly why I recommend people visit and spend a decent amount of time somewhere before making the move.
Recently the hot place has been Colombia. The cost of living is currently very cheap if you have a USD based income. I heard Chile is more expensive like you mentioned in your piece.
Connect the dots and get out of dodge ASAP.
Yeah, I think Colombia would be my first choice, today, because of opportunity. It's probably where Chile was about 15 years ago. It won't work because of my wife's health though. You cannot escape humidity in Colombia. :)
That's where my challenge lies. Wifey is not healthy. I have to make sure I have the means to do so, wherever we go. And it can't be too hot or too humid. So I work at it and try to find a way to make it happen so we can get out of here. She's not as motivated either, because this is her comfort zone. So I'm working on smoothing the path.
A couple years ago I owned the Chile portal of EscapeArtist. But debt shenanigans made them go through a change and the new owners wouldn't honor my contracts. Otherwise, we'd already be permanent residents.
If it was just me, I'd have been gone years ago. But it's not, so I need to take care of a whole lot of other details. I'm kinda in the third category in that article, but pushing to make it happen anyway.
Oh hell EscapeArtist is one of my nightmares as well. That was our last step with my former partners. We had Panama.escapeartist.com $70K lesson learned. We had that page rocking with content but zero support from them.
It looks like you best option is finding a way to earn online. Set up Paypal business before you head out and learn how to use Bitcoin.
I was banking nicely with BTC a couple years ago through LBC. But competition and the drop in price kinda put some hurt on the market. I still make a little, but not enough.
You worked with Debbie? I still keep in touch with her. We considered doing a new site, but she went on her own. I was the GE of EFAM for all of about a month too, before tshtf. The Chile portal was getting some really good traction too, and I was just starting to get the ambassadors working more cohesively, in spite of poor support.
I tried to build a replacement, but my tech skills aren't good enough to keep up. It's there and has potential, but I never found the right developer to work with. You can check it out at http://expatembassy.com/. I had it looking a little nicer, but a young guy wanted to help. I figured, no harm. So it sits waiting to actually do something. :)
Nah, Debbie was the poor soul who they swindled into buying it after we left. Building and maintaining websites is a difficult task. I do my own now but really dislike building for others because people really do not know what they want.
We literally built our business on Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter. The websites were not built until about two years in. Steemit and other blogging platforms can really change the game!