hey YouTube Alex here and in today's video I want to answer the question why did I leave America in this video I have 10 reasons as to why I left America they range in terms of severity I think
a lot of you could probably relate to these reasons be sure after you watch the video to let me know what you think down in the comments if any of these resonate with you if you disagree with any
of them the comment section always helps to generate interesting discussion crime crime is gotten out of control in the United States I want to share a little bit about what I ran into so I was living in the
San Francisco Bay Area before I came over here to Southeast Asia literally 2 weeks before I left my car window was smashed and many of you are probably familiar with the smash and grab burglaries around the Bay Area
I thought that if I paid a premium for parking and parked in a nice neighborhood one of the more expensive neighborhoods in the Bay Area that I would somehow evade these issues but that was not the case actually
I got a notification on my cell phone that my card was being used rapidly and quick succession and they tried to swipe it like five times and it finally locked down at a Ross's Dress for Less but the
first charge was at a liquor store and I don't drink and the subsequent charges were at other establishments I don't frequent and so I was notified that my card was being used to make unauthorized purchases and I immediately
knew what happened I thought okay that was a card that I kept in my car in case of emergencies if I'm not using that card then it would only be accessible to somebody that smashed the window and grabbed
the card and took it for a spin so that's what happened what's funny is they got a $20 power bank out of my car that's it they didn't get all these valuables they thought would be in there they
did leave their dirty stinky smelling wet sweatshirt in the front seat of my car and of course they left me the San Francisco snow the broken glass remnants in the back seat I ultimately had to pay about $180
to replace the rear panel window on the vehicle it was really frustrating to me cuz I was working hard in my tech job at the time for my money and I was trying to save it to get ahead
financially and so to have to spend several hundred to recoup from this after already paying a monthly parking fee was really frustrating another example of the crime factor is that I was at a public transit station in the
south of Berkeley and I'm just standing there checking my phone trying to fix figure out what I'm going to do and this gentleman doesn't like that I'm standing behind him and decides to tell me to leave I'm trying
to explain to him hey man I'm just trying to figure out where I'm going and he starts to threaten and stalk me he's following me and I go into the train station trying to find a police officer of
course in the Bay Area they've defunded the police and so there's no law enforcement present to handle this eventually he gave up because he realized how stupid it would be to go to jail over attacking some somebody for
standing behind you you also realized I didn't have any valuable so if he was going to try to like Mug me I mean you're going to get a cheap old cell phone and maybe 20 or 40 bucks I
carry in my wallet these quality of life issues didn't seem to get better in fact I felt like they were getting worse with time that more and more crime was happening and people would try to downplay it and
oh that's not really crime and they'd come up with these excuses excusing criminal Behavior trying to make up reasons as to why it's somebody else's fault but the crime was a really big factor in me wanting to leave
America some people will say oh well that wouldn't happen in my state maybe you live in a nice area okay maybe you're very blessed and you live in a really nice neighborhood with wonderful people that look out for
each other I was not so fortunate to have that luck I'd also hear from some people well that's what you get for living in California I moved to California to work I moved to California to better myself to
work in the tech industry and I got this sense from some people that there was this apologist attitude there was this anti- California attitude look nobody deserves to be the victim of crime I don't care where you live
in the United States I don't care if you live in San Francisco I don't care if you live in rural Kansas you don't deserve to be the victim of crime and there's this kind of victim blaming attitude coupled
with the crime that in my opinion makes it worse anytime somebody's a victim of a crime everybody is immediately trying to like apologize for the criminals or to blame the victim and I felt like it was just getting
really toxic and that I'd rather go live somewhere where crime is taken seriously put the name of any major city in the US into the Google News section and you will see plenty of reports of various crimes that
have been committed or are being committed it's really unfortunate to see I don't feel safe going out in most major US cities these days it used to not be that way but crime has really gotten out of hand
in the US cost of living cost of living in the US has become absurd I call it clown World pricing there always is charging the maximum of what they could possibly charge regardless of what it is services that
cost modest sums of money over here that don't cost that much to deliver are priced at the maximum of what they can absolutely charge and it's getting absurd I think it's really hurting the social cohesion of the United
States I think that people are deeply stressed out and in a rush often when I'm talking to people back home they seem to have this kind of manic stressed out energy this agitation like they're in a rush got
to go got to go got to go one of my friends who lives outside the US these days says people back home are in a hurry to go nowhere because most people cannot afford to hire out for basic
tasks they work hard at their day job and then they come home and rush around trying to get chores done before they have to go to bed to get up the next day and they spend their weekends trying
to recover from their heavy workload and also still get chores done I personally found that even though my income tended to go up over time that with the inflation my quality of life was actually going down even if
you have a high income if you want to live below your means and try to save money that often requires renting a cheaper apartment cooking at home more often doing free activities as opposed to paid activities and I
felt like quality of life just kept going down and I've talked to other expats here who said the same thing it was like every year they could enjoy less and less of the things that they used to enjoy
just to get a basic takeout meal in the US will easily cost you $15 to $20 and it may be made with cheap ingredients that aren't healthy for you even fast food has become quite expensive for most people
and it's really making life less and less convenient less and less frictionless because you're constantly having to find out when you go out to a restaurant for example can I even afford this let me check the menu and
let me order the cheaper thing because I'm on a budget one of my buddies here told me he had EG benedict for the first time here in the Philippines because he could never afford it back home it was
always 15 17 $19 plus tip you're looking at 20 25 bucks just for next Benedict but when he came here he found it was like six bucks within his budget basically I'd sometimes get this from people well you
just need to spend more money and live in a nicer neighborhood but before I left the US I was living in downtown Berkeley California where the average rent is like $2500 per month for a one-bedroom apartment and can
easily go up from there so it wasn't like I was living in a bad part of St Louis this is supposed to be a pretty nice area but even in this area there were crime issues it wasn't hard
to figure out when you walked out on the street that there were vagrants and homeless people people who were affiliated with organized crime types it was just really strange because on one hand the price is really high but
on the other hand quality of life was really low so it wasn't just that cost of living was through the roof it was like everything seemed to be going against people who need to work for a living to
benefit the people who own all the real estate I later found out many real estate owners in Berkeley actually lived elsewhere they lived in other cities they lived in perhaps even more affluent areas areas that were more Suburban
Berkeley is fairly Urban so that really threw me off as well that I'm paying all this money to people who are not part of my community that don't actually face these issues that we're facing here now I know
some people would say just move to a cheaper area but I found that the inflation in the United States is disproportionately impacted the cheaper parts of the country I found that it was negligibly cheaper to move back to
my hometown of Nashville Tennessee because Nashville has seen the highest increase in cost of living of any city in the United States even in small towns that were supposedly cheap rent is easily upwards of $1,000 per month that
doesn't include utilities or the necessity of having a car if you're in a small small town There's typically no public transportation you're paying a premium even if you live in an area without high-paying jobs just a basic hotel
room is easily $100 a night these days and it's not for a fancy place it's not for a place in a high-end area that's just a basic roadside Motel can run you 100 bucks a night and so you're
paying all this money for an experience that used to be much cheaper to the point where I don't want to vacation in the US anymore I don't want to pay these super high prices to experience the same old
same old I'd rather go to cheaper countries where I get a lot more value for my money when it comes to taking a vacation finally I think that you see with the side hustle culture everybody is trying to
get a second job or an additional income and work even more hours but there's limits on output when it comes to a number of jobs you can only work so much especially in knowledge work you can only put
out so much in a given time now I think some people work more efficiently than others I think some manage their time better than others they're diminishing returns when it comes to many different types of jobs the next
one is loneliness I think that the US has a generally lonely culture a lot of people feel atomized and isolated and I think that you see this with a lot of the mental well-being issues in the United States
where a lot of people feel like they don't have anybody they can trust or talk to some people go to bars some people join Community organizations some people join clubs but sometimes the people at these organizations seem to
have ulterior motives whether it be their egos maybe it's a financial incentive but there doesn't seem to be this hanging out for the sake of hanging out I think that social media has contributed to some of these feelings
because people feel like they're connected even when they're only digitally connected and it's not the same as being together in person or having that sense of community and shared values that I think could come from religious organizations for
example with the decline in religiosity and the responding to client and church attendance along with the elimination of third spaces places where people can go other than home and work it's no wonder that people are more lonely and
I realize that loneliness is not just something affecting me but also affecting a lot of would be expats I think a lot of people see things like the Blogger Community here in dumag Getti and they realize that there's
a lot of opportunity for them to establish a sense of community abroad that they might not be getting much of back home I'm not a big church guy and that probably works against me in some ways I think
loneliness will continue to be prevalent in the western democracies as people put up more and more barriers between them and the outside world whether it be a screen or a fence or whatever it may be people don't seem
to want to interact with each other in the same way that they used to I have seen studies on it and a lot of American adults have nobody to talk to I've even seen some people say that loneliness
is the new smoking that the negative impacts on health are going to be studied for decades to come and I can attest to that that loneliness has negatively impacted my well-being the next one is boredom the US is
boring because they've worked out all of the excitement and spontaneity in life there is no room for unpredictability because that goes against business interests so everything is regulated down to a te your movements your scheduling where you can
go what you can do what's open what's not open how things operate everything becomes very boring and repetitive and you just feel like everything is predictable you feel like you're in Groundhog Day where every day is the same
as the last you just keep repeating the same experience over and over again you go to the grocery store some people call it box life they live in the Box they go to the box they ride in the
Box to get to the other box and everything is so predictable that I think people get really bored and they feel checked out I felt that way a lot I have ADD so I tend toward seeking novelty and
interesting things and travel does that for me but back home it just felt like everything is set up to be streamlined to do business and it's so efficient that it gets boring you know when you go to the
store they're going to have all the same products you know when you go to work basically know what your work's going to look like for the next year it's not going to change that much it's not going to
be dynamic you're not going to have any surprises it's just this repetitive grind you keep doing the same thing over and over again I think a lot of people are stressed out in that kind of environment where in
that climate there's not much to look forward to people are doing the same thing over and over again and for some people that's awesome for some people they like boring they like repetitive but for a lot of us
we look forward to exciting experiences and we just feel like for a lot of people they may enjoy that boredom and that repetition and that predictability but I find that it also involves stress for a lot of people
I think that the boredom factor is an underrated one a lot of guys don't discuss I think a lot of people talk about dating they talk about cost of living but they don't often talk about just simple basic
boredom as to why so many of us are leaving the United States and other Western democracies I think some of it also has to do with the Aging population people who are older don't have the same energy that
they had when they were younger the next one is going to be the dating culture in the US I think the dating culture in the US is just not what it used to be and it's kind of tiring
I mean you feel like you're getting judged you feel like you're at a job interview you're getting sized up for what you can offer the first question you get asked when you're on a first date is what do
you do for a living what's your job what's your salary what's your income two-thirds of young men in the west are single and I don't think that's going to be changing anytime soon I think a lot of guys
have given up on dating they just feel like it's not worth it I'm falling into that category to be honest I don't date back home anymore it's just not worth it it's stressful you feel like you're never going
to measure up you feel like no matter what you do it's not sufficient for potential romantic Partners so you go overseas and you find a much better dating climate it's no big deal to ask a woman for her
number here in the Philippines it's no big deal to ask for her Facebook you can message her chat with her get to know her it's not like this pressure I think you feel sometimes in the west where women
may have the question if you ask them out you're going to ask them to marry you next week or something like that it's just such a formal culture back home in general and I think that that formality extends
to the dating Market where people can't just enjoy the company of the opposite sex without major implications to be fair to American women I think that these smart women settle down early with a good guy and that's why
a guy like me is single is that I skipped over a lot of great potential Partners there were some wonderful women I dated but I wasn't ready to settle down and I did miss out on some great women
that I should have settled down with one but I was just not thinking yeah it's definitely a regret of mine I myself have baggage so I totally get it if we're going to be together for a really long
time I want somebody who's going to be around for a long time who can help me to engage in healthy routines the beauty of the globalized world is that you have 4 billion potential Partners out there there's 8
billion people in the world so if you're a person looking to date and you're not satisfied by your options in your home country you've got many different options around the world to choose from we're very fortunate to live
in a time with so many people I find that culturally it's easier for me to relate to Asian women that's just what I'm used to culturally I find that there's less explanation to do when I am dating an
Asian woman we like some of the same Foods we can trace our culture back to Confucianism there's a lot of common ground and not as much explaining needed to do as when I've dated American women in the past
or perhaps women from Latin America that's a beautiful thing about dating is I couldn't find what I was looking for back home but I found much more of what I'm looking for overseas that doesn't even get into the
cost of dating you're talking about $230 per entree you may be paying for parking you may be paying for tickets to an event it adds up very quickly whereas here I could take a date out for 10 20
bucks we can have a great time and it's not this huge finan iial burden compared to back home the next one is political division political division has gotten way out of hand in the United States people and families
have quit talking to each other friendships have ended relationships have ended it's just getting way out of hand this red versus blue stuff people take it way too seriously and they get way too upset about it it's contributing
to a breakdown in Western Society because people no longer want to fix the issues they just want to make enough money so that the issues don't apply to them anymore that's one of the biggest issues a lot of
of expats have with back home is a lot of them feel disenfranchised by the politics they feel like they're being demonized they're looked at as a bad guy maybe even a traitor when I was a kid my friend's
parents may have had differ political beliefs but people generally got along they could have a civil conversation with one another toward the point now where half the country feels like the election results will be fraudulent regardless of who
wins that's what's happened the last couple of Elections that's what I anticipate will happen in the next one as well people are just really stressed out about American politics I look forward to when the election is over we
can move on and we can talk about other subjects cuz it's just getting really old it's not fun to talk about the stress that I see in people's eyes over something that they don't have control over is really
getting old and I missed the days when I was younger now it seems like people really hate each other over it back in the States it's really discouraging and really disappointing because at one time it seemed like we're
were going to be able to over some of these differences like maybe back in the 9s that people would overcome some of this stuff and now I'm not so sure that's going to happen some of that is certainly
due to the mass media in the US that Stokes the Flames of discontent and disagreement and division but I think it's more than just the media I think it's a little bit too simplistic to say it's just the
media I think there's more at play there I think a lot of Americans feel like they are losing these debates rather than either of the candidates winning winning I've seen numerous people who I believe to be otherwise totally
rational normal well-intentioned human beings to get sucked into angry political discourse and do so in such a way that's detrimental to their physical and mental well-being it's a culture of materialism I like my Creature Comforts as much as
anybody else but it seems like in the US these days it's taken to a whole new level where people's sole reason for moving forward in life is to go buy new stuff this cons consumism culture this idea that
you are your possessions and you have to strive to purchase a new this or a new that you need to go into debt to do so that gets old after a while I don't buy a lot of stuff
here in Southeast Asia that I don't need most of what I buy is for the business or what I absolutely need for survival like rental payments food transportation and that's mostly it and with the consumer culture then people
get stressed out because they owe all this money for all this stuff that they can't reasonably afford it's disheartening to see people stressed out trying to impress other people it's a famous line in Fight Club where they talk
about how we are buying things that we can't afford to impress people that we don't like that's just such a Common Thread I see it every day when I'm watching the news when I'm talking to people back home
I remember that every time I saw a friend I hadn't seen in a while they immediately wanted to show me some kind of purchase that they had made and more power to them I respect their initiative their hard
work to get to where they're at I didn't necessarily want that for myself I feel that experiences or what I'm really after in life and that all these purchases that I made cuz I had the same habits for
a while they were really exciting or fun initially but then the newness wore off and I got bored of them and then they became just another addition to the junk pile or cluttering up my apartment often I lived
in the city so I'd be in an apartment and then whenever I'd move I'd have to pack all that junk up in my car cart it to the next place today I still have a storage unit full of
stuff that I don't need anymore and it feels like a ball and chain that I can't get rid of because there are items with sentimental value there but they're mixed in with a bunch of other junk and yeah
some of that stuff in there is stuff that I don't want to get rid of stuff that is important to me but it's also mixed in with a bunch of stuff that isn't that important to me that I
had for a business that I had for my e-commerce store and really just need to I really need to dispose of a lot of that stuff but it's not easy to let go when you put all this time
into accumulating it to cleaning it up storing it number eight is estrangement and for those who haven't seen it I suggest you watch my video describing why I'm a strange for my family I don't have any family support
back home I don't talk to my family they're generally very toxic people there's a lot of narcissism in my family a lot of people who they are so narcissistic that they are not capable of working with other people
at all this is evidenced by the trajectories of their lives they often engage in bullying Behavior toward me and I know some people would say oh you're playing the victim it's almost like if I tolerate The Bullying to
be family oriented then I'm the victim but if I say no I don't want to deal with it anymore then I'm also playing the victim so I don't participate in that I tolerated it when I was a kid
and then when I turned 18 I came to the conclusion that I don't have to associate with any of these people unfortunately a lot of people are unhappy and it's better to avoid them if you can because they're
not going to be supportive of you in pursuing your best interests they're going to mostly be looking to leech and to take advantage of your time and your Goodwill that's a conclusion I came to based on my conversations
with other expats this is unfortunately not an common thread of expats not getting along with their families for me the space has been wonderful knowing they can't call me up and start harassing me or bothering me or asking
me for my limited time I think for a lot of us going Halfway Around The World is a great opportunity to start a new to get away from those toxic people to be around people that may not judge
you people like other expats that they get it right they come from toxic families they probably if you're halfway around the world part of what's gone wrong in your life back home is relationships for me I decided I'm
not going to put up with it when I have the agency of adulthood I'm just not going to tolerate it anymore and that's been a great decision that decision has been proven well I don't think a family is
people that are necessarily blood related to you I think it's the people who want the best for you and I think many of you want the best for me and I really appreciate that many of you have provided
a sharp contrast in the way that you treat me compared to my biological family the only thing more difficult than going through life without Family Support is going through life with family dragging you down the next point is
daylight winter in the US sucks for most of us that are not in California or Florida or some similar sunny weather State some of us are trapped indoors half the year and we don't get much sunlight I think
this is especially true for brown people like me who tend to need more sunlight I know plenty of people back home that spend half the year complaining about the weather and it got me thinking why don't I check
some other places out that have different weather so I found places in Latin America places in Southeast Asia that don't seem to have the same overcast weather much of the year now I know Lima Peru does have some
of that but it's not so cold and frigid there's a lot of different places in the world that if you're looking for sunlight you may find them outside of North America there are some sunny places there are some
warm places but they tend to be really pricey and high in demand and crowded because everybody else has figured out those places have nice weather places like Florida Southern California Arizona a bonus here is that I've been able
to simplify my wardrobe while living overseas I don't have to have heavy winter coats over here I don't have to have winter boots I can live with some fairly simple clothes wear the same thing every day it's not
a major issue I buy sneakers once again not a big deal because I don't have to prepare for extremely cold weather there are some things that I miss about back home but the weather is not one of them
one additional thought here is the daylight is fairly consistent because we're on the equator here in Southeast Asia or not too far from it the sun generally Rises and sets at the same time every day I do suspect
that many Americans suffer from Seasonal effective disorder the last Point here is that I felt like I saw it all I traveled to 36 of the 50 states I still need to get to Alaska and to Hawaii there's
limited new places for me to go to and it's become much more expensive to travel in the US these days so I just feel like why would I spend more money to see places I've already seen already spent
time there already been there I'd be paying a lot more today than I did yesterday to enjoy these places I'd prefer to go abroad where my limited resources go a lot farther as far as buying me time to
enjoy life see new things to do new things to meet new people there's just so much to see in the world outside of the United States and as I've traveled more I've discovered new places I've met other Travelers
and they're often asking me have you seen this have you done that and many of the places they're talking about aren't in the United States it's like with every new place I go outside of the country I discover
two new places to check out I feel that my time in the US rather than trying to see new places is better spent earning money or working on a plan to move overseas which has been a goal of
mine for a long time and so when I am back in the States I'm in Grind Mode I'm not in vacation mode I'm not in relax and enjoy mode I've skipped over a lot of awesome things because my
focus is outside the country and checking out some new destinations and new places as opposed to going back over some of the same things that I've already seen and you may not be in this position you may have
not traveled much in the US it's a beautiful country there's a lot to see but for me personally I felt like I'd seen most of what I wanted to see in the US and I needed to turn my
attention to other countries maybe it's just me but because of the high cost of living in the US it seems like a lot of people just try to rush through their vacations there there seems to be a lot
of what I call checkbox tourism where people rush through things to see every little thing and check the box off their list as opposed to really being able to immerse themselves in local culture have conversations get to know
people it's like okay did I get the Instagram picture okay did I eat at the nice restaurant did I see the natural sight okay now I'm off to the next thing or I'm back to work on Monday whereas
when I slow travel abroad I really take my time and I feel that after I go to a place there's often not much left for me to see or do I've met the people I get the culture and
I've really immersed myself and I don't feel like I've just gone through the motions so let me know what you think down in the comments below are you thinking about leaving America have you already left America did you
leave and Boomerang back like I may have to do for work are you interested in learning more about how to leave America feel free to send me an email email is in the description below if you want to
help the channel give us a thumbs up it really helps with the YouTube algorithm and finally subscribe to the channel down below if you want to see more content like this and we'll see you soon
