Thought Experiment - Leave Your Current Country - Where do you go? What do you do for income?

Canuckistan for me. My brother currently lives on Vancouver Island, I have some familiarity with the area, and my family has history there. Perhaps my current job could use me there (we are sorely underrepresented north of the border, but still small enough it may not be a full-time gig) and if not, I'd leverage my experience to-date somehow.
 

I've always worked for small businesses, so all modesty aside, I have a reasonably diverse basis of experience, having done sales (retail and wholesale) managing people, mechanical work/repair, warehouse work, shipping/receiving, inventory management/ordering, and more. So far in life I've always landed on my feet when wanting for work thanks to my skill set.

Easy button would be to pull up roots  here in Canada and move to the USA since I am american citizen. 

Puerto Rico would be interesting to return to since I spent 10 years there as a kid.

Anywhere in South America can be spectacular and since I speak fluent spanish and english, there is always a job to be had. You really need to be working in the country to get the flavor of the place and its people.

First time I stepped out of the plane in australia, I knew I could live there. I could easily spend the year just criss-crossing the country in a mobile home of some sort.

In reply to NOHOME :

Dont' you mean in a Malvo?

Very timely topic. My wife's mom is being taken severe advantage of financially in Brasil by my wife's brother.  My wife was her curadora financeira (financial controller) but let her brother take over since we live here. The judge said come to Brasil & take back over.  We are retired & don't need an income there since we have rental income here, so looks like we are moving to Brasilia to live at the compound & make sure she isn't taken advantage of anymore.  It will be enjoyable to kick that POS out of her bank account for good.  Too bad we will still have to let him visit. 

My current job is done remotely, so in this fantasy I'd just keep doing what I'm doing.

I'm stuck as English-only, so need an English speaking country. The UK is too dreary. Canada is too flippin' cold for too much of the year. Australia is appealing, but even better would be New Zealand. Gorgeous scenery, temperate climate. 

So strange, everybody wants to work instead of explore. 

In reply to wawazat :

Liking how you think sir

RevRico said:

So strange, everybody wants to work instead of explore. 

Not mutually exclusive since working with locals is in fact a deep dive into the culture.

I worked in Nigeria for 5 years and assure you that no amount of larking around as a tourist would have given me the insights into the Nigerian psyche as working with them every day. Rubbing against the grain of your social comfort zone is part of how we grow from travel.

I kinda shudder a bit at the work-from-home-abroad thing. Like it or not, going to work with other people is a portal to mixing with the natives; something that can be difficult to do if you only come out of the house after work.

RevRico said:

So strange, everybody wants to work instead of explore. 

I thought a lot about what answer I'd give and work is involved, but it's so that I can explore more. If you take the question and its possibilities seriously, simply using it for a vacation would be wasting it. You can do that with an ordinary airline ticket.

Serious answer: I'd take advantage of the magical granting of citizenship etc. to any country of my choice to make myself a citizen of a western European country such as France or Spain or Germany so that I can get a job there (and other countries in the EU) so that I can get a better work/life balance, which will allow me to explore more. North American work/life balance and vacation time suck balls but the income:cost-of-living ratio is good, western European countries tend to have a similar income:COL ratio with a much better work/life balance and a multiple of the vacation time.

for one year? Canadia.

forever? somewhere with decent medical system and reasonable in/out via air.

i can fix E36 M3. i can learn a language. i can make people laugh with how stupid i am.

Canada seems like it would be the most similar in culture, language, and weather.

I'd also consider a warm island and some sort of beach bum, fishing boat work.

NOHOME said:

RevRico said:

So strange, everybody wants to work instead of explore. 

Not mutually exclusive since working with locals is in fact a deep dive into the culture.

I worked in Nigeria for 5 years and assure you that no amount of larking around as a tourist would have given me the insights into the Nigerian psyche as working with them every day. Rubbing against the grain of your social comfort zone is part of how we grow from travel.

I kinda shudder a bit at the work-from-home-abroad thing. Like it or not, going to work with other people is a portal to mixing with the natives; something that can be difficult to do if you only come out of the house after work.

dude.

badass. 

I'd love to know more about what you do and how you do it. Sounds like you've had a lot of interesting experiences. 10 year in Puertro Rico? 5 years in Nigeria? Rad. 

I'm sure answers in this thread would change if I would've said you needed to stay out of the country for 5 or 10 years. Then you can't just default to "travel", and often times, you might not want to rent either. 

I have some family friends who have been in Costa Rica for 5 years now. Even though property is cheap and they are now citizens, they still won't buy property. Why? Because renting is also cheap. They are renting a place the size of my house (1600sqft) for $350/month. 

I personally go to an Atlantic/carribean Island and open up a brewery/distillery.   Buy/build it so that it can operate totally off-grid/be hurricane-proof, build living quarters nearby, and call it a day. 

I miss Berlin.

If I could teach or do research at the institute where I was trained, I'd love that. Otherwise, Berlin isn't the best city for the type of brewer I am. Could probably really enjoy myself at a distillery in Scotland or a small brewery somewhere in the UK or Ireland.

golfduke said:

I personally go to an Atlantic/carribean Island and open up a brewery/distillery.   Buy/build it so that it can operate totally off-grid/be hurricane-proof, build living quarters nearby, and call it a day. 

I mean, if we *both* need to disappear from the U.S.....

RevRico said:

So strange, everybody wants to work instead of explore. 

Want to work? No but I don't have enough money stocked away or passive income yet that I could afford to live most places I might want to live for a year and afford to not work.

Duel US/British Citizen so the easy button would be to move back to the UK where I was born.  That would be an emergency only situation as the idiots who voted for Brexit making it much less attractive to go back to a shrinking economy.  Also I've no interest in being cold and wet all the time!  Let alone more CCTV's per person than anywhere else and a rapidly diminishing other rights.  Places that appeal, OZ and NZ but there's a mental block at heading south of the equator, both have quite strict immigration policies, but I believe I'd qualify.  Also language is a non issue.  Second tier would be France or Italy, relatively easy to move too, and I really should lean another language properly!  Probably my biggest issue would be finding a position in my 50's so it may become a retirement conversation if it had to happen.  Not sure what would drive me out of this country though.

The easy button for me would be Italy. Since my dad is from there, I can apply for dual citizenship fairly easily. And my dad's hometown is still full of our family and friends, and most that live here go back every year to visit. Property would be easy; houses there are cheap because most people are leaving the sleepy mountain villages (like my dad's) for the cities, so there's all sorts of cheap land there. It's absolutely beautiful country, and not too far from the ocean, and the weather is nice most of the year. And the food... oh man the food!

What would I do for work? Probably what I do now in some capacity. I can work from anywhere, and my company has a small presence in Italy. 

No idea what I would drive, but I know I probably don't fit in my cousin Luigi's 60's Fiat 500 anymore! 

In reply to pheller :

Child of traveling parents and just kept going.  PR was like move #11 at the age of 4. Then Canada then England, then USA then Nigeria, then round trip to Canada where business travel kept me moving. Now retired, settled, and done with the world.

pheller said:

I'm sure answers in this thread would change if I would've said you needed to stay out of the country for 5 or 10 years. Then you can't just default to "travel", and often times, you might not want to rent either. 

I'd be more picky about exactly which western European country I'm going to trap myself in for 5-10 years, and I'd carefully consider whether I'd want to go ahead with the plan at all, but I still think my answer is a good one.

Beer Baron said:

golfduke said:

I personally go to an Atlantic/carribean Island and open up a brewery/distillery.   Buy/build it so that it can operate totally off-grid/be hurricane-proof, build living quarters nearby, and call it a day. 

I mean, if we *both* need to disappear from the U.S.....

A brewer buddy of mine did this exact thing in Belize 3 years ago.  He's the only game in town, and let's just say his quality of life definitely does not suck...  Cheap-ish local labor with US craft pricing, no distro, all draft and on-premise sales.  He's basically legally printing money. 

Tony Sestito said:

The easy button for me would be Italy.

Property would be easy; houses there are cheap because most people are leaving the sleepy mountain villages (like my dad's) for the cities, so there's all sorts of cheap land there. It's absolutely beautiful country, and not too far from the ocean, and the weather is nice most of the year. And the food... oh man the food!

Are you busy this summer?  Wife and I would like to go and you can drive us around?

In reply to Datsun310Guy :

My dad's been trying to get me to go there this summer, but I can't swing it. I do want to go back! I haven't been since 1989, when I was just 7. 

I would join Hungary Bill's platoon in Ukraine. Tempted to do it now, would if I could afford the storage charges back home.