Why don't you move abroad?

I've lived in 11 major cities around the world for the past 25 years, but in the end I moved back home to my rural hometown, in my home country. Remote work made that possible. I make probably 20% of what I could have done in high-COL areas like the Bay Area.

But I have a fantastic work-life balance. Make good money, relative to my peers. Clock in 9, clock out 4. Get to spend lots of time on my hobbies, never work any weekends. Live in a peaceful place with zero crime, everything is a 5 min walk from my home. Hiking trail is practically 50m from my doorstep. Family and friends live close by.

I did spend some time fighting FOMO of not living in a big city, which held me back from moving home - but COVID kind of accelerated that decision.

With that said, I always say to younger people that they should try to move out in their 20s-30s, see the world. I've never met anyone that regretted on "traveling too much".

And yet you eventually decided that it wasn't for you and you chose to go back home.

There are pros and cons to all possibilities, whether it is staying put, traveling as a tourist, or immigrating in a foreign country. People rarely grasp the true costs of immigrating until it is too late -- I've seen several remarkably similar examples.

Indeed, that is my point: their actions did not march their narrative. They eventually realized that it wasn't all that great and corrected course.

If being abroad was such a universally positive choice as they claim, they would have remained abroad.

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

In other words, I am trying to kindly offer a more nuanced take on what moving abroad entails. Not everybody is willing to admit that their past decisions had downsides -- we all want to make it look like we are successful and in charge of our lives. Our actions speak louder.

What happens most commonly is that after some time abroad you marry (usually a foreigner) and have children who belong where they were born. What now? I speak from experience.

I wish people would pause for a moment before universally recommending something that they either have not experienced, or they have gotten away from. Such as Terry Pratchett, who never even lived abroad!

i left when i was young and it was the greatest experience ever. i would not miss it for the world. but my motivation was not money, it was learning. when i stop learning where i am, then i move on.

eventually i may move back to where i am from, not because it's not working out or because it would have been a mistake, but because i have run out of places to go to and also because it's time to give back.

i am now old enough that i can use my experience to influence the next generation back home to open their mind more towards the world.

Moving abroad is often a choice. Moving back can be a lot harder once you have a spouse and children.

I beg your pardon? Let me quote the very first comment I made in this thread.

>>>> There are pros and cons to all possibilities, whether it is staying put, traveling as a tourist, or immigrating in a foreign country.

This is in contrast to some of the claims made by others in this thread, such as:

> I always say to younger people that they should try to move out in their 20s-30s, see the world

> in my opinion everyone should spend at least one year abroad somewhere just for the experience.

That said, I am glad things are working out for you. I am just trying to warn people that immigration also has its downsides in spite of popular memes.

Just for curiosity, did you marry abroad? Have children abroad? Did your parents die while you lived there?

i spent 11th grade as an exchange student, so when i got a job abroad years later, i knew what i was getting into.

in between i volunteered for IAESTE, an organization that helps students get internships abroad because i believed that it would be a valuable experience more students should be able to benefit from.

If they gave it a go and it didn't work out, then they know, and they would have plenty of time to course-correct. There wouldn't be any doubt.

1. traveling gives you experiences. You don't need to travel constantly to learn and gain from traveling.

2. Moving away from home (abroad or to a big city) gives you again a lot of new experiences. New insights, new world view.

If i move home today, i'm a complet different person than my friends which never left and while certain things might look the same from the outside, its not.

Of course I understand the upsides of traveling, and even moving abroad. I have done both myself. Here is the first comment I made on this thread:

>>> There are pros and cons to all possibilities, whether it is staying put, traveling as a tourist, or immigrating in a foreign country.

What most people who repeat these memes of "moving abroad gives you new experiences and perspectives" miss is all the negatives that can come with that. I have tried to inform people of some of the downsides that often come along with the positives, based on my experience and that of people I know.

If people want to stick to overly simplistic ideas about living abroad, they are free to do so. But I would feel I'm doing them a disservice if I did not warn of the downsides -- I wish somebody had told me about them before I left.

Not in the common scenario where they have married and had children abroad.

I do know of some people who left their country for 10+ years and returned. In all cases they had married somebody of the same nationality as theirs and moved while the children were still too young to care.

In other words, the people who can easily return typically do so. Those who don't return often want but can't for one reason or another (usually their new family).

(FWIW, I disagree: there is tremendous value in travelling, even if just as a tourist. The main issue is having the resources to do it, which I think is frequently underestimated. Where I personally call home is quite different from where I grew up, but unlike the OP I don't have any particular family ties to a single area, because my family is very spread around, having all settled elsewhere after travelling for work, study, or just for something different. I also have never found someone who regretted moving, even the case of two different people I know who went to the effort of moving the the US and then finding they really don't like it, and moving back within months, don't regret the experience, even if it was expensive)

This is how the thread went from my perspective:

> [Them] I used to do something and then stopped. My life is fantastic now. That said, I recommend everybody to do what I stopped doing; I have never met anybody who regretted doing it.

> [Me] If it is so great, why did you stop? There are pros and cons to both doing and not doing it

> [Others] But doing that thing is so great! Everybody should do it!

> [Me] Here are some of the common long-term downsides of doing that thing...

> [Others] Don't claim this happens to everybody! Doing that thing is so great! Everybody should do it!

I have traveled as lifestyle since my late teens and am now in my forties. (I went to uni in a country where lecture attendance isn't compulsory, so many students only come in for the exams, and then I began remote work already in the early millennium.) It is just who I am, and I wouldn't necessarily say I regret it. However, I and loads of people I know struggle with the negative consequences: inability to maintain romantic relationships since a partner will inevitably want to settle down; difficulties with connecting with the local people because conservative societies are suspicious of older men who don't have a conventional family life or focus on a career; and mutual frustration with your sedentary friends back home since your lives are now so different.

You don't see this discussed much on travel media, because the modern ad-supported internet wants positivity and rainbows. However, this is absolutely a frequent conversation topic whenever I meet up with other nomadic travelers.

but it also won't fix your life, and in many cases just punts the problems to be solved later -- while usually creating new ones.

Where did I refuse to acknowledge that, exactly?

Our choices indeed have consequences. And it is popular to paint "moving abroad" as a universally positive experience, so I want to counterbalance that with information about some of the common real-world consequences that come with that choice. How is adding some information and nuance a problem?

My wife and children are foreigners; "moving back" would mean uprooting them.

Also, I have lived abroad for so long that my country of origin feels foreign at this point, in what is called reverse culture shock.

You reach a point where you are a foreigner wherever you are.

I'm not saying that it's all been negative; far from it. But I can't universally recommend people to try living abroad after what I've seen both personally and in other immigrants I've known over the years.

I don't know it always seemed an obvious drawback of digital nomading. You can do this 2 years and then you need some stability. However the positivs of a 2 year DN stunt are great

ps. there's no reason for the pratchett quote to not apply to regular travelling, as pratchett must have done a little of since he apparently shot a documentary with a bunch of orangutans in borneo.

Sure. I may well have misinterpreted what they said. I hope they accept my apologies.

> This idea that someone should not recommend something if they are not actively doing the thing at this very moment is ridiculous

Is it possible you made a "not very charitable reading" of my post as well?

> They are, if anything by their own explicit example, vouching for the holistic experience of traveling a lot at one point in life and then settling down

...which is not always possible, as I have tried to warn people multiple times in these threads. Once you move to a foreign country, you often end up with professional, relationship, and cultural ties that it is not possible to "settle down" -- by which I think you mean "return to your country of origin", please correct me if I'm wrong.

And, in the meantime, you will progressively become estranged from friends, family, and your own cultural heritage. It creeps up on you and by the time you notice it's often too difficult to do anything about it, especially if you have built family ties in your new country.

Look, I am happy that things turned out great for the OP of this thread. I really am. But recommending it to everybody without caveats is a step too far for me.

YES, absolutely. It happened to my parents and their siblings as well. And it's not something that people get into with a good understanding of the tradeoffs they are making -- it's easy to fool ourselves thinking that videoconferencing and cheap flights will magically eliminate the problem. It doesn't work like that in practice, and I made that mistake myself.

> I wonder if being forced to study nearer home therefore meet a partner from nearer, may lead to higher ultimate happiness. When our kids grow up, I 100% wouldn't wanna "clip their wings" or be selfish. But, also kind of hope they don't permanently move far away

Yeah, that mirrors my sentiment as well. Raising children while away from your extended family is tough. Rather than spending 10 years with extreme childcare responsibilities, I wish we were closer to family so that we could (a) get some hands-on experience with caretaking before raising our own kids, (b) get a couple of hours a week off from taking care of our own kids, and (c) allowing our parents to spend some quality time with their grandchildren without having to travel across continents with small kids to make it happen.

It would have been a more gentle curve spread over more time, and a chance to spend time with our extended family. Now, I've also heard there's a flip side to that, where people get sick of their relatives being too involved in how to raise their kids, etc. It's all a tradeoff.

In the end you can never really go home, because home as you knew it isn't there anymore, and you yourself have changed.

It can be very detrimental in more practical ways too - things few people pause to consider.

Edit:

Beware of the dreaded Ds such as death, divorce, debt, disability, etc. It's easy if you are young and consider a short stay abroad - but growing old abroad is another thing entirely.

We'd show up at the office at 9-10AM and then work until 6-7PM then go home and work more and work weekends as well. It was very common from small seed stage to FAANG. PIPs, stack ranking, and backstabbing psychopaths wouldn't be commonplace in SV if it wasn't for all the H1B indentured servants.

I left the US in 2009 to move to Singapore. After 14 years in SG, I moved to Australia. During my time overseas, my accent has picked up hints of Australian. When I go back to the US, one of the hardest things for me is being asked "where are you from?" I get the same question in Australia. The lack of belonging is tough.

When was the choice to get married and have kids not an obvious choice with consequences. That happens when you get married and have kids in the city you grew up in all the same as it does if you find a partner abroad. It's not abroad that I read as your issue, its your marriage and family keeping you in a place. That's obvious.