How To Budget Your Move Abroad
This blog post is a summary of our interview with WanderOnwards founder Vanessa Wachmeister during the Adventure Calls 2021 Global Relocation Conference.
Watch the interview here, or listen to the podcast here.
One of the biggest myths about moving abroad is this idea that you have to be rich to move abroad. Or have massive savings. Or a big job.
Let’s bust those myths!
You do not have to be rich to move abroad. You can move abroad regardless of your budget.
In reality, you don’t have to have much money at all to make your move to an international life! You can even be in debt.
As an American in your twenties, thirties or forties, the odds of you having student loan debt are very high. Debt follows you wherever you go anyway, right? Might as well earn your money abroad and pay it down that way.
So how can you move abroad if you are not wealthy or even in debt?
Enter Vanessa Wachmeister, founder of Wander Onwards..
Vanessa is an American travel tech professional based in Berlin who also runs a booming wealth and wanderlust platform, Wander Onwards, to help people build better lives outside the US through finance and career coaching.
She has improved her life incrementally, with each move, from China to the UK to Germany.
How does she do it? In our chat as part of the Adventure Calls 2021 Global Relocation Conference, Vanessa explains how to budget your move.
Jess Drucker: “Is it an absolute insane thing to move abroad with no savings?”
Vanessa: “I mean, it’s insane, yeah. But we both did, so…”
Jess Drucker: “It’s absolutely possible, no matter what.”
Step one: Consider these two factors
First, you have to consider two important factors:
Who is coming with you?
Where are you going?
Let’s start with question one: who is coming with you? Are you going solo, do you have a family? Small children? Pets? This helps to determine how much you need to both save money and prepare for life once abroad.
Step two: Where are you going?
Question two, where are you going, is an important aspect of budget planning. The amount of money you need to get started varies wildly from country to country.
In China, Vanessa needed about $500 to get started, whereas in Germany, she needed to come up with $7,000 just to move into her apartment!
Germans take their entire kitchens with them, and you have to buy one - counters, sinks, fridges and all, just to move in anywhere!
If you are going alone, to a relatively inexpensive country, you should have about $5000 or three months’ worth of budget available.
If you are going with a family, have up to $15,000 to get settled in abroad.
If you are moving to a very expensive country, like Japan, Norway, or Switzerland, for example, you need to get more exact on your budget planning.
You can drill further down by examining your essentials vs your nice-to-haves.
Step three: What are your nice-to-haves vs essentials
Essentials are rent (plus deposit), transportation, basic groceries, internet, utilities, medicines and health insurance.
Nice-to-haves are nice dinners, organic groceries, eating out, entertainment, new clothes, and then list goes on.
How do you figure out the cost of those essentials and nice-to-haves?
You can use a cost of living calculator like numbeo.com to determine how much the essentials will cost you for three months. You should have three months of essential expenses at least, plus an emergency fund for unanticipated costs, just in case.
There are other ways to determine cost of living, like looking at Zillow or local real estate websites to figure out the cost of monthly rent in neighborhoods you are considering as a home base. You can join groups on Facebook, find influencers who talk about the cost of living where you want to move, or work directly with a relocation specialist who can much more effectively give you concrete answers. Here’s a guide to connect you with specialists around the world.
Now that you have figured out your budget, what can you do about it?
Ways to move abroad regardless of budget
Option 1: Get a relocation package (best case scenario)
The best case scenario for financial independence abroad is by getting a relocation package. For example, employees of multinational corporations are enticed to move abroad by raises in annual salary, bonuses and other financial structuring of taking a position abroad. You can also get a relocation package for teaching English in China or Japan, meaning they pay for your flight and accommodation as well as your salary in exchange for your teaching services. Check out the JET program in Japan, to start.
Option 2: Work in a sought-after industry
Most people aren’t able to secure relocation packages, and if you are unable o line that up before you want to move, then consider shifting gears into an industry that is sought after. Make yourself competitive in the market. One great industry almost anywhere on the planet is technology.
Technology is going to open up the world for you everywhere you go. You don’t even have to be an engineer or a tech startup founder. You can be a creative with the experience in the tech industry that is desired at companies abroad. There are many countries with special visas for highly skilled workers, and tech is almost always included in these visas. Find out more about the French Tech Visa here.
Option 3: Create more income
If you really aren’t qualified for highly skilled jobs or a relocation packages, don’t let this stop you. If you current budget is small, you can create more income to expand your budget, through multiple streams of income from online businesses and side hustles. You can also truly go on a shoestring budget, and then immediately start tutoring on the side.
This last one really works if you move to a country that has a much cheaper cost of living. The less expensive your destination, the lower the financial risk over a three month period of time. You need less income to cover lower costs.
I recommend learning from Pat Flynn of Smart Passive Income to start this journey.
Yeah, but really… How much $$$ do i need to move abroad?
If you are still looking for a nice, clear, round number to work from, here it goes:
It is best to have at least $5000 as a single person and $15000 if you have a family, that should cover your first three months while you get settled.
But again, don’t let this stop you. The goal is to get abroad and figure it out from there.
“You would be shocked at how low the cost of living is outside of America.”
The average income in the UK, in London, is 33,000GBP per year, but that lower income shouldn’t scare you, because the cost of living is so low. People live fairly comfortably, definitely middle class, off of this amount of money. They buy groceries, they travel, they have families. In general, in most other countries abroad, there is no need to fear detrimental healthcare bills, complicated fines and fees, and there is less pressure to work longer hours for relatively less money.
In Berlin, Vanessa lives in a top floor apartment in a nice neighborhood, buys organic groceries, and spends roughly $1500.month. With her tech salary and low budget, she is able to grow her wealth in America with the earnings she doesn’t spend abroad due to the low cost of living.
A QUICK NOTE on Banking while abroad
Where to put your money once you move abroad aka issues with banking and investing abroad as an American.
There is a common catch-22 as an expat, which is that you can’t get a residence permit without a bank account, but you can’t get a bank account without a permanent home address, but without a residence permit, you can’t get a permanent home address.
This means that you are going to have to open an account the minute you land abroad, no matter what. But another solution is to open an online account at an online bank that doesn’t require your presence in person like an older, larger, more traditional bank.
In Germany, Vanessa’s home base, N26 is a good example of an online bank. Some other people use Revolut or Wise.
One major challenge Americans have with banking abroad is that banks are required by the US government to report when a US citizen opens an account, and as such, banks will often only let you open basic checking and savings accounts. If you desire to invest abroad, you can usually only do that in index funds, not company specific stocks.
That means that the only way to grow your investment portfolio is to keep your major investments back in the United States. You’ll send money back home and invest it, and just keep a large-ish lump sum in your expat accounts abroad.
However, becoming financially independent while abroad is important, and something that many expats don’t consider while away from home.
You have to save enough or invest enough for retirement, even if (or especially if) you are living abroad. The first thing to do is sit down and look at retirement accounts, income, spending, and use simple mathematical estimations on how much you actually need to retire abroad vs back at home. Look at current investments, what we can expect it to increase to, and create a down to earth plan that is rooted not in fear, but in math.
In addition to saving for retirement, there is a term in the expat finance world: Coast FIRE. FIRE means Financial Independence, Retire Early, and Coast FIRE refers to having contributed enough into your accounts that you can hit one million dollars by retirement, and no longer have to save for retirement.
If you found this information useful, you can reach out to Vanessa at WanderOnwards.co, DM her on Instagram and TikTok at @wanderonwards and you can listen and watch this live interview.