Is moving for a cheaper life a realistic choice?

We have all heard more than enough about how life has gotten more expensive recently. There are plenty of reasons that this has been the case, but the simple truth is that a dollar, a pound, or a Euro doesn’t go as far in 2023 as it did in 2018. And it probably won’t shock you to hear that in the same time frame, the average wage has not risen as quickly. So there are a lot of us who are feeling the pinch of a cost of living crisis right now. It’s a situation without a lot of solutions.

If you’re the kind of person who can change things at short notice, it may have occurred to you that there is at least one possible solution to this issue. Things may be expensive where you are right now, but the cost of living isn’t fixed worldwide. You can easily find out with a quick spate of research that there are perfectly liveable countries where you can pay about half the rent you’re paying right now, spend less on food, and even have enough left over to save a little extra. If you’ve ever taken a look at Digital Nomad World, the idea of moving somewhere else (or a lot of somewhere elses) may have occurred to you. But is it a realistic solution to a cost of living crisis?

The initial move won’t be cheap

To get ready for a move into the (relative) unknown, you’ll need to prepare, and this is something that won’t just happen overnight. You’ll need to take care of travel documents including visas, invest in luggage that can serve as your wardrobe until you’re set up somewhere new, and deal with all of the belongings you have accumulated over the course of time. If you’re lucky, maybe you can get someone to move into your current home and look after it, but whatever the case, you’re not going to leave where you are right now for free. So figure out what you need to do, and what you need to pay, to make it happen.

Your move has to be practically possible

If your lifestyle is going to be nomadic, then you will usually be able to avoid having to register for certain taxes and licences that come with permanent emigration. But you do still have to have a plan for what you’re about to do. Where are you going? How long will you stay in one place? Do you need a particular visa to do a particular thing in a particular place? Will you rent, or camp, or will you move from vacation rental to vacation rental? Can you do your current job while you’re away? The whole plan may rest on this last question – because the whole idea is that while your current salary isn’t enough to pay your way in Brooklyn, it will be enough in Bucharest.

What more can you do to bring costs down?

The practicalities of this kind of change are infinitely stressful, but they need to be dealt with. For example, you could save money on both travel and accommodation if you’re able to drive a vehicle you can also live in. Maybe you could drive around Europe in an RV or campervan and see where life takes you. That’s something people do while working remotely – but you need to ensure that you can always be somewhere with a reliable internet connection when it matters, so that needs to feature in your research too.