hey YouTube Alex here and in today's video I want to discuss five of the tragic common reasons that Americans become xats 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 I've been living in the Philippines
for several months now I spent about a month in being 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 number of different places 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 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 cost of living is much lower in some other countries and even though I have it prepared perfectly financially with my modest
means I can go to this other country where 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
I totally understand that 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 Los Vegas a lot of guys in the baby boomer generation did not anticipate that financial crisis and they
were caught off guard 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 was not unique
to him many many people and his generation experienced that crisis and that hard time and they were really set back financially 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 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 that 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 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 talk growing
up you need to save your money you need to save your money 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 as far as catastrophes go i' 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
for I got out of it without having to pay anything beyond lawyer fees but that really chewed up a lot of my time another would be unintended pregnancies some people get pregnant they engage in fun without going through
the right precautions and whereas they plan 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 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 there are some exceptions obviously you've got these billiona 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 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 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 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 a lot
of people do end up divorced in the United States I think at least half of marriages in the US end in divorc 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 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 I'm not saying that every divorce 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 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 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 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 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 real ity 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 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 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 take out 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 xats these days 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 may make
impulse purchases 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 guy the classic guy who's going
through the midlife crisis he goes out and buys a sports car he can't really afford 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 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 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 chob in 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 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 agism there that exists among some business entities they are often not looking to higher entry level people past a certain age now I think if you're a PhD in computer science a little bit different maybe
there's a little bit more forgiveness there 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 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 an Academia or they're in some other kind of job where it's it's acceptable to work at an older age 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 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 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 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 maybe I'm ere 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 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 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 the the council culture has gotten out of
control and that 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 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 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 and so it becomes this thing where people just say what will make money or what will keep their relationships and 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 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 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 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 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 afraid to drive down the street I'll get pulled over for some nonsensical reason 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 that anybody regardless of their station in life could Elevate themselves they could work hard they could move up the ladder I don't think that many Americans
feel that they have that same level of personal freedom that they used to have and so 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 and 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 I could
espouse values that are in line with the way that I want to live my life and 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 feel the same way that I do that they've dealt with some of the same issues I have and they missed the good old days there's this sense
that I feel when I'm in Thailand or in the Philippines that it's like a throwback to the 9s 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 a lot of guys that I've talked to have discussed how they just don't feel that
same level 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 and I
just don't think that that America exists anymore 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 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 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 is that lawsuits are so prevalent that there's all of these 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 take it away from you because you're more easily controlled and it's more profitable for you to be controlled
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 they'll come out if you're not so lucky well you know where I'm going with this I'm not going to go into details but 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 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 health care 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 and 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
res skill 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 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 and they worked hard 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 and 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 and 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 one of my friends says it well
he says when I went back home to visit a lot of people seem 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' Liv 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 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 a.m. there were days when I took meetings at 9:00 p.m. fortunately often that wasn't the same day but still could be very very demanding on my time 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 and 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 and 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
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