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Many Americans become expats not because they are failures, but due to financial catastrophes, divorce, career burnout, a desire for personal freedom, and stressful jobs that make life unsustainable in the US.
The video explores five common and often tragic reasons why Americans choose to become expats, challenging the notion that expats are simply 'losers back home.' The first major reason discussed is financial catastrophe, which can stem from bad investments, business deals, or the impact of high inflation that erodes purchasing power. The 2008 financial crisis is highlighted as an example of how unexpected economic events can devastate individuals, particularly older generations, forcing them to seek more affordable living conditions in other countries.
Divorce is presented as another significant driver for expat life, often leading to severe financial devastation through legal fees, asset division, and the need to maintain multiple households. The video also touches upon aging out of certain careers, especially in fields like tech, where ageism can make individuals unemployable in their home country, forcing them to find ways to stretch their savings in more affordable nations. This is compounded by the difficulty of reskilling or retraining at an older age.
Beyond financial and career-related issues, the desire for personal and social freedom is a key motivator. Many Americans feel their speech is policed, they are walking on eggshells, and that 'cancel culture' has stifled open expression. They seek countries where they can speak their minds more freely and feel a greater sense of liberty. Finally, career burnout from highly stressful jobs, where individuals feel trapped and unable to enjoy life, pushes them to seek a less demanding lifestyle and a better quality of life abroad, often by leveraging savings in countries with a lower cost of living.
Many Americans move abroad due to significant financial catastrophes, such as unexpected crises or high inflation, which make living in the US unsustainable. Divorce can also lead individuals to re-evaluate their lives and seek new opportunities overseas.
Yes, financial instability is a major driver for Americans becoming expats. Unexpected economic events, bad investments, and the erosive effects of inflation can force people to seek countries with a lower cost of living.
Divorce often leads to severe financial devastation through legal fees and asset division, prompting many to seek a fresh start abroad. The emotional and financial toll can be a significant catalyst for considering expat life.
Absolutely. Burnout from high-stress careers, where individuals feel trapped and unable to enjoy life, motivates many to seek a more balanced and less demanding lifestyle overseas. They look for better quality of life in more affordable nations.
Yes, a desire for personal and social freedom is a key motivator for many Americans to move abroad. They often feel restricted by perceived censorship or 'cancel culture' at home and seek societies where they can express themselves more freely.
Ageism in certain careers, particularly in fields like tech, can make individuals unemployable in their home country. This can push them to seek opportunities or simply a more affordable lifestyle abroad to stretch their savings.
People become expats for various reasons including financial catastrophe, divorce, ageism in careers, and a desire for greater personal and social freedom. Some seek to escape high-stress jobs and find a better quality of life in more affordable countries. Others feel their speech is policed in their home country and desire more open societies.
Divorce can be a significant financial and emotional drain, often leading individuals to re-evaluate their lives and consider expat opportunities. The costs associated with divorce, such as legal fees and asset division, can devastate finances, prompting a search for more affordable living conditions abroad.
Yes, ageism in certain careers, particularly in fields like tech, can make individuals feel unemployable in their home country. This can push them to seek opportunities or a less demanding lifestyle in more affordable nations where their savings can be stretched further.
Financial catastrophe, stemming from bad investments, business failures, or economic crises like 2008, can force individuals to seek lower costs of living abroad. High inflation can also erode purchasing power, making it necessary to find more affordable places to live.
Yes, concerns about perceived erosion of personal and social freedoms, including language policing and 'cancel culture,' drive some Americans to seek more open societies abroad. They desire countries where they can speak their minds more freely and feel a greater sense of liberty.
The video challenges the notion that expats are simply 'losers.' It highlights that many expats are driven by significant life events like financial ruin, divorce, career ageism, or a desire for greater freedom and a better quality of life, rather than being unable to cope at home.
Yes, many expats live off their savings, especially when they move to countries with a lower cost of living. This allows them to stretch their financial resources further and achieve a better quality of life than they might be able to afford in their home country.
0:01 Hey YouTube, Alex here. And in today's video, I want to discuss five of the tragic, common reasons that Americans become expats. Because sometimes we hear this phrase, 'loser back home,' like you're only living over there if you're a loser. And I thought I'd discuss some of the reasons why some of us made a misstep or made a mistake back home, and how that's pushed some of us to the developing world.
0:26 I've been living in the Philippines for several months now. I spent about a month in Vietnam before coming here, and about a year in Thailand before that. And I thought I'd discuss some of the reasons that I hear about when I talk to other expats here in the Philippines, in particular, but I've heard these stories in a number of different places.
0:44 The number one reason that I've run into is that guys run into financial catastrophes. They make a bad investment, they do a bad business deal, and they lose a lot of money. And so they're getting to an age where they can't work anymore, and they're not prepared financially to survive in their own country.
1:04 A lot of the Western world has seen historically high inflation in recent years, and it's priced out a lot of people who previously thought they would be prepared to live in their Western home country. When faced with choosing between paying rent and buying groceries, that's a hard decision a lot of us aren't used to making. And so they find out, wow, the cost of living is much lower in some other countries. And even though I haven't prepared perfectly financially, with my modest means, I can go to this other country where the cost of living is much less, my rent is less, my food is less, transportation is less, and I can live a much more comfortable life than I could back home.
1:42 I totally understand there's an element of personal responsibility in this, and that people need to prepare financially for their older ages. But some people are caught off guard. I talked to my good friend Paul, you know Paul from the Old Dog New Tricks channel, and he talked about being caught totally off guard in 2008 while living in Las Vegas. A lot of guys in the baby boomer generation did not anticipate that financial crisis, and they were caught off guard.
2:07 A lot of people lost their houses, a lot of people lost their jobs, a lot of people were really struggling during that time. He talked about being in his early to mid-50s when that happened, basically being put back on square zero with a great deal of uncertainty. He also was supporting a family, so it wasn't just him going through a tough time, it was his family. And in this instance, it was not unique to him; many, many people in his generation experienced that crisis and that hard time, and they were really set back financially.
2:37 Now, I know many of them have recovered, they've been able to work since then, they can collect Social Security. Now, that was a great deal of wealth generation that was wiped off the table. A lot of people took a big hit to their 401ks, their IRAs, the price of their house dropped dramatically. And as a result of that crisis, the government dropped the interest rates and started printing money, which has led to some of the inflation that's sticky that we experience today.
3:04 We know that prices are not coming down. We know that rents are not coming down in the United States. Food prices are not coming down in the United States. Transportation, cars, not coming down in the United States. So this inflation is permanent. A lot of people throw around this idea, 'Oh, well, inflation is over.' Inflation is over. It may not be continuing to spike in the same way, but it's not as though, 'Oh, well, now the prices are going to go back down.' Now the rents are going to... no, no, no, no. The prices are sticky, they're to stay elevated as far as we know.
3:32 And so this is a different kind of catastrophe. We normally think of people losing a lot of money through bad decisions. We don't often talk about people losing purchasing power as much as we talk about that which they're personally responsible for. As far as I know, none of us worked for the Federal Reserve. I was always taught growing up, you need to save your money. You need to save your money.
3:51 This is the middle-class trap a lot of people have fallen into, where they think, 'Oh, if I just save my money, I'll be ready for a rainy day.' When the US government is printing a lot of money, it devalues our currency. So you can save as much as you want, but if it buys less and less, you're really running on the hamster wheel. You're spending your wheels, you're not really getting ahead in the same way that you would if inflation wasn't destroying your purchasing power every year.
4:17 As far as catastrophes go, I'll throw legal problems in there as well. Maybe they have some kind of legal issue, they have to spend a lot of money on lawyers. I've been sued before in the United States. That's a story I'm not going to get into in this video, but that was expensive. I got out of it without having to pay anything beyond lawyer fees, but that really chewed up a lot of my time.
4:34 Another would be unintended pregnancies. Some people get pregnant, they engage in fun without going through the right precautions. And whereas they planned to save a certain amount or invest a certain amount, now they're having to divert a substantial portion of their income to raising a child. And so they get to an older age and they're not prepared. They spent what could have gone into investments on diapers, baby formula, other responsibilities.
5:05 They did the right thing, they did the responsible thing to look after their children, but it left them in a more precarious position. The wealthiest people I know in the United States tend to be DINKs, couples, dual income, no kids, as in there's a husband and a wife, each making an income, but they don't spend on children. So they really live these lives of luxury. And everybody else seems to fall below that.
5:27 There are some exceptions, obviously. You've got these billionaires that could afford a dozen kids, like Elon Musk. But most people don't fall into that category. Most people, maybe they could afford one kid or two kids in the past. Now, I think it's zero. Now, I think you've got dual income, no kids couples, even they are struggling. But yeah, plenty of people are struggling financially.
5:46 And I think you're only going to see more and more Americans become expats in the future. And that in the future, America will basically be rich people and immigrants and nothing else. That the people who are actually from America, who are not super wealthy, many of them will leave for greener pastures.
6:07 The number two reason is divorce. Now, fortunately, I've not been divorced, but a lot of the guys I meet here in the Philippines have been through a divorce. Some cases, they've been divorced twice, some cases, they've been divorced three times. I don't think they started their marriages anticipating divorce, but it inevitably happened because of probably financial reasons.
6:24 Financial reasons are the number one reason for divorce in the United States, but also it could be health, it could be mixed-up values. Maybe he's a conservative, maybe she's a liberal. Maybe she wants to live in California, he wants to live in Texas. There's all kinds of reasons people split up. Maybe he works a lot of hours and is never around. Maybe she works a lot of hours and is never around. A lot of people drift apart for whatever reason.
6:47 A lot of people do end up divorced in the United States. I think at least half of marriages in the US end in divorce. That doesn't include the people who are married but unhappily married. The majority of guys that I meet here in the Philippines over the age of 45 have been divorced at least once, and it really wiped them out financially.
7:05 They had to hire a lawyer, they had to divide assets, they had to downsize, like sell their house, move to an apartment where they weren't building equity. It really was devastating to them financially. In many cases, they're not in a position to recover from that. They may not have had the lucrative career, they may have had some hiccups, like getting laid off for a time. These things sort of combined to hurt people financially.
7:32 I'm not saying that every divorced guy is a victim. Certainly, some guys that have been through a divorce did some things wrong to ask for it. I'm not one of these guys that, 'Oh, all men are victims,' this and that. Maybe there were some infidelity issues. I can't speak for every different case, I'm just giving broad reasons here.
7:48 There's a lot of different reasons as to why a couple might get divorced, and one of the biggest consequences, aside from the obvious that both parties are now single, is that there's financial devastation that's often hard to recover from. And maybe in some cases, it's not so harsh. Maybe it's a mutual decision, maybe people are in agreement on it. I know some divorces are more acrimonious than others.
8:11 Some people are like, 'Hey, you could take what's yours and what's mine is mine.' Other people are saying, 'I'm going to get every penny out of the other person that I can get.' Now, you're seeing a reverse because there are so many successful women getting divorces. In many cases, it's just as financially devastating to the woman.
8:28 I know that there was a top lawyer who worked for Facebook, married to this YouTuber, and they split up. And actually, he came out ahead financially. He actually got a big chunk of her wealth that had come to her in the form of Facebook stock options. And so it's not just in this disadvantageous position from divorce.
8:46 I think you may see more expats in the future being women who lost out substantially in the case of a divorce. I'm not here to make light of divorce. I think it's really unfortunate that anybody has to go through that, but it's a reality of a lot of the people I talked to here that they've been through at least one. Some have children from the divorce, some do not. Either way, it can be quite costly.
9:06 But if they have children, typically they've paid out a lot of money in child support, which can lead to additional costs in terms of money that they're not able to put away for a rainy day.
9:17 They're not able to put away for a rainy day. This also doesn't get into people who are not divorced but they're separated, and so they're funding two households. They're paying rent on two places, they're making two car payments, buying two sets of groceries. They can't cook as often because they don't have somebody to share meals with, so both parties are getting takeout or dining out more often than they would if they were in a single household. So there's all kinds of destroyers of wealth that we should be mindful of when we're thinking about why so many people are becoming expats these days.
9:47 This also doesn't get into the psychological aspects of divorce where people are often beaten down emotionally. They're really stressed out, they may feel isolation, depression, anxiety from the result of their divorce. This may make impulse purchases, they may not be thinking clearly. They may want to take an expensive vacation to get their mind off of things. It can also lead to impulse purchases. You see it with the classic guy who's going through a midlife crisis, he goes out and buys a sports car he can't really afford.
10:16 So yeah, I think there's other things that happen to people when they go through a traumatic experience like this that are harmful to their finances beyond just the dividing of assets and creating multiple households. But all the ancillary things, maybe the guy wants to start dating again, maybe the gal wants to start dating again. Now they're funding dating, now they're going out to dinners more often, they're going to coffee shops more often, maybe they're trying to go to Starbucks to meet the right one again. So yeah, all kinds of costs come with people splitting up, unfortunately.
10:45 Number three is aging out of a career. There are a number of careers out there that are lucrative, but they're only lucrative for a small window of time. I've heard this about the tech industry, that a lot of people age out of tech, that they don't want to hire anybody 35 or older. When I got my tech job in the San Francisco area, I was told, I was in effect told, you're old at 29 years old. I was told that I was old to be getting into tech.
11:11 This doesn't make any sense to me because the average age in the Bay Area is like 40 years old. The average age of the tech industry is like 38 years old, but still there's this ageism there that exists among some business entities. They are often not looking to hire entry-level people past a certain age. Now, I think if you're a PhD in computer science, it's a little bit different, maybe there's a little bit more forgiveness there.
11:33 For most professions, there's an expectation that you're going to go straight from high school to college, straight from college to graduate school, and then straight from graduate school into the working world. There's not always a lot of patience for career switchers, people who try out different things. And so for some people, they find, wow, I'm 50 years old, nobody's going to give me a chance as an engineer anymore. I'm 55 years old, nobody's willing to hire me as an engineer anymore.
11:57 And so they may have spent their excess or disposable income on raising children, and they still need to earn money in that 50 to 60 age range, typical retirement age, 62 when you first start drawing Social Security. When you're first eligible for Social Security, you take a penalty or a reduction in payments. That withdraw at that age, but a lot of people do. And so they're in this time window where they're not collecting Social Security, but nobody will hire them unless they're maybe in academia or they're in some other kind of job where it's acceptable to work at an older age.
12:30 Then they may find themselves unemployable and not able to stay on top of the high cost of living in the West and needing to live somewhere. Right, you got to live somewhere. So they end up in Thailand, or they end up in the Philippines, or Colombia, where what money they do have, since they're not capable of adding to the pile, can be stretched a lot farther.
12:50 There's also not a lot of empathy for these people. If you talk to these people, then you'll hear a lot of people have told me, I should have saved more money. I should have lived below my means. And they're in a position in their life where they can't go back in time, they can't fix things. They don't have the same runway a person in their 20s or 30s has to pivot careers, maybe get additional training or start a business.
13:11 There's a lot of guys that if they haven't made it to management, maybe they're in the legal field, they haven't made partner. It's up or out in a lot of career fields. It's either you move up into management or you get pushed out.
13:23 And I felt this to some extent in my field. I've tried to get back on the horse, and I know the job market, tech is not good right now, but I've had a hard time even getting interviews. Now, I've gotten a few interviews, I've made it to the final round, but I haven't been made an offer yet. And I've heard some people say, well, you're 32, you're too old for an entry-level tech position. I may have to switch careers. I may not be welcome in certain industries anymore.
13:45 Maybe I'm exaggerating. Let me know what you think down in the comments. Were you a career switcher? Were you somebody that had to change careers and do something else midway through your life? I'm not sure if I'm the only person going through that, or if there's some other people out there. But I think that there are going to be a lot of people becoming expats that find, wow, I can't get a job anymore, but I'm not old enough to collect Social Security. So I've got this multi-year gap where I need to make my savings stretch.
14:10 Some people want to become expats for personal freedom. In recent years, it seems like the US is less and less economically free. But I think there's also some level of concern about social freedoms, and a lot of people feel that their language is being policed. They can't speak their mind, they can't talk about what they want to talk about without risk of offending somebody.
14:32 I can speak from personal experience. I police my language a lot in the United States. Now, some of it is because I want to be a decent person, I don't want to be a jerk. But other times, I'm just trying to not offend people. And so sometimes I've been accused in various settings of not having a personality. And it's like, no, I have a personality, I just can't say anything because it's so easy to upset people. You feel like you're walking on eggshells in the US, trying to not hurt people's feelings.
14:59 The cancel culture has gotten out of control, and a lot of Americans are seeking countries where they can speak their minds. Some guys, they may have religious leanings or religious beliefs, and they feel that, wow, I can't tell people Merry Christmas anymore. Other people may feel like, man, I don't agree with their faith, and I want to tell them to stop knocking on my door, but they're going to throw a fit about it if I tell them, hey, I really don't agree with your beliefs.
15:28 So it goes in both directions. A lot of people feel, though, that they don't have that freedom to speak their mind anymore in the US, and that everything that they say, they have to put through a filter to be palatable to an increasingly sensitive audience that doesn't seem to believe in the spirit of what people are trying to say.
15:49 I've told people back home that claim, oh, I love free speech, I love free speech, something that I thought was fairly mild, that if you could understand the spirit of what the person was trying to say, you wouldn't be trying to beat them up. Oh, no, no, no, you can't say that. And so even people that you think are free speech advocates back home, as soon as the free speech that you use is offensive to them, then all of a sudden it's unacceptable. All of a sudden, oh, you can't say that.
16:19 And so it becomes this thing where people just say what will make money or what will keep their relationships in good graces or their employment status in good positioning, and not what they actually believe, not what they actually think. And that was a hallmark of Western society, was this idea that we could speak our minds, and that we can think out loud, that we can critique ideas, that we can kind of have a battle of the minds and come up with the optimum solution.
16:48 That we can use reasoning and logic to overcome different kinds of debates or challenges, and that we could create mutually beneficial situations. But now, when people are so worried about offending other people, they bite their tongue, they don't speak up, they keep their mouth shut out of risk of offending somebody.
17:05 And like I said, I've seen this go in both directions. A lot of people will say, oh, that's this lean or this lean, it goes in both directions. Guys have had this experience, and in Tennessee, I've had this experience in California and everywhere in between. A lot of people just are so stressed out that they're looking to put out that energy of feeling trapped economically, like they don't have the same economic freedoms they used to have.
17:32 And so some of them jump on you if you express an idea that they can pick apart. They're not actively looking to understand your position, they're looking to just tear something down to sort of express this pent-up frustration that they feel about things not going the way they thought they would.
17:47 When I was growing up, nobody thought houses would cost half a million dollars. Nobody told me, you'll probably never be a homeowner. Be prepared to not speak your mind because you want to keep the money flowing. And yeah, I think there's a lot of that where people feel that, wow, my personal freedoms are eroded more and more every year. I'm afraid to drive down the street, I'll get pulled over for some nonsensical reason.
18:11 I've gotten pulled over for all kinds of nonsense reasons in the United States, especially in my home state of Tennessee. A lot of people just feel like, what happened to the country I grew up in? What happened to this place? This place used to be so free. We used to feel this sense of what I call Americanism.
18:26 I don't think that many Americans feel that they have that same level of personal freedom that they used to have. They see these other countries where people can talk about their faith and where people do feel more free, where people feel like they enjoy life a lot more. They can afford to go out to dinner, they can afford to go out to the movies, they can afford to date, they can rent a nice place, they can have this comfortable standard of living.
18:57 They're like, 'Wow, so I could stay here and deal with a declining standard of living in a place where I can speak my mind less and less, or I could go over there and espouse values that are in line with the way that I want to live my life.' I can live a comfortable life, I can live in a nice community, I can be around like-minded people. I really like that about living overseas, that I'm able to hang out with other expats who feel the same way that I do, that they've dealt with some of the same issues I have, and they miss the good old days.
19:29 There's this sense that I feel when I'm in Thailand or in the Philippines that it's like a throwback to the '90s. People still socialize, people still go out, people communicate with one another, and it's a far cry from what the US is today. I think a lot of Americans just don't feel super safe to go out in public like they did in the past.
19:46 A lot of guys that I've talked to have discussed how they just don't feel that same level of personal freedom as when they were a kid, especially the Baby Boomers. They'd get their muscle car, they'd tear off down rural roads, they'd be speeding a little bit, be having the time of their lives. I just don't think that that America exists anymore.
20:05 A friend of mine, Eric, who I recently interviewed on the channel, mentioned a story about how he accidentally walked onto a construction site here in the Philippines, and the worker just smiled and waved at him. That wouldn't be a thing in the US. If you walked onto a construction site in the US, somehow by accident, they'd be threatening you immediately. They'd be asking you who you are, where you're coming from, why you're there, are you authorized to be there? They'd probably threaten to call the cops, they might try to trespass you just because you accidentally walked onto the site.
20:33 Now, I know that they're often locked down and that they're worried about lawsuits, and that's part of what's impacted the personal freedom in the US. Lawsuits are so prevalent that there's all of these forces pushing on personal freedoms because your freedom creates risk for various entities in the United States. It's risky for you to have your freedom, and so they want to take it away from you because you're more easily controlled, and it's more profitable for you to be controlled.
21:05 We have in the United States freedom from, but we don't have freedom to. So what I mean by this is you don't have the active sense that you're free; it's kind of this passive sense of freedom. So, as an example, my home state, you think I'm so free, I'm just going to go out walking in a field. Wrong. You are probably walking on somebody's privately owned land. If you're lucky, they will come out and tell you to leave. If you're not so lucky, well, you know where I'm going with this.
21:36 There is this sense that you can't just do what you want in the same way that you could when America was more of a frontier. The fifth tragedy that a lot of people are moving to get away from is a stressful career. So if you're in the US and you have to work for a living, some of us find ourselves in more stressful careers than others.
21:53 You may have a job where you risk your physical safety, maybe you're working in inclement weather, maybe you deal with particularly difficult people in a healthcare setting. There could be many different reasons as to why your job is really stressful, and you're just burnt out on it, you can't do it anymore. I definitely encountered burnout in my own career in terms of sales and just feeling fed up at times.
22:19 I think there are plenty of people out there that they just can't do their career anymore, and they're at an age where they can't reasonably reskill or retrain, learn a new trade, learn a new profession. Maybe they can't afford to go back to higher education. You might say that this one relates to the earlier point about aging out of a career, but I think it's a little bit more nuanced.
22:38 Some people feel that they can keep working, but their body just can't take it anymore. They can't take the early mornings, they can't take the late nights, they can't take getting yelled at over and over again. They can't take the heat or the cold. Whatever the issue may be with their job, they just don't have it in them anymore to do it. They worked hard for many years, they trained hard, they paid attention and learned as much as they could, but they're in this position where they just can't do it anymore.
23:06 It's like they're running on a treadmill, and they're running out of energy. But to stay in the US would involve not jumping off the treadmill, but to continue to run even as they run out of energy, and they risk slipping on the treadmill. Then they hear about another country where they can live on a much lower amount of money, and they realize, 'Oh, I could just go over there and I won't be on the mill like I am here.'
23:31 One of my friends says it well. He says, 'When I went back home to visit, a lot of people seemed like they were in a hurry to go nowhere.' You see this in rush hour traffic with the person trying to weave in and out of traffic to get a few cars ahead. It's like, 'No dude, you're not in traffic, you are the traffic.' And so, some of us who are more self-aware, we realize, 'I don't have to be here if I'm set financially, if I live below my means and put away a lot of money into investments, I could take this money to another country and enjoy a much better life than I can here.'
24:02 Some people envy those in high-paid careers, and they don't realize how demanding those careers can be. For example, I worked in sales. Sales can be a very high-paid profession, one of the highest, but it's often extremely demanding of your time. There were days when I took meetings at 5:00 AM, there were days when I took meetings at 9:00 PM. Fortunately, often that wasn't the same day, but still, it could be very, very demanding on my time.
24:25 You're getting judged based on results that are somewhat out of your control. So taking that money I earned from that stressful career and coming over here, while it goes a lot farther, and I'm not under the pressure of a quota here, you definitely noticed that my anxiety was a lot higher living under such pressures. Not being under those pressures has really given me some room to breathe and to relax.
24:44 I do think it's tragic if you are dealing with stress from a career because you're often wondering, 'Is this all there is to life? Is this stress and pressure and difficulty all there is to life? Will I ever get to enjoy life? Will I ever get to pursue something more meaningful, spend my time in a way that I want to enjoy?'
25:03 I think that when more and more of us are faced with that, then we will consider living overseas. We will wonder, 'Can I pursue a more meaningful life overseas? Can I live in such a way where I'm not stressed out trying to deal with these deadlines?' Let me know what you think down in the comments below. Give us a thumbs up if you enjoyed this content, it helps with the YouTube algorithm. And subscribe to the channel down below if you want to see more content like this, and we will see you soon.
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