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Ask HN: Where can I live off 1k USD per month?
306 points by 41209 on Aug 26, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 533 comments
I'm planing on taking some serious time off to work on my side projects.

I'm open to any country in the world, I want to just work on my games. So with that in mind I'll need good internet access. From what I can see, this is very doable in Eastern Europe.

Eventually, I do plan on returning to the US, but I want to spend at least 6 months overseas.



I live in Korea. Some months my total expenses are as low as $400 while living comfortably. If I spent $1000 in a month, I spent a lot of money. I'd say my average monthly living expenses are $600-$800. My main expenses are food/entertainment, and I eat out a lot (50% of meals).

Housing is probably the biggest living expense. I take advantage of Korea's interesting rental system called Cheonsae:

Basically, if you put down a huge deposit (like $90,000: 50% to 90% of the value of the property), you don't pay any monthly rent and get the entire deposit back when you move out. My place has a $50 monthly management fee, but that includes high-speed internet. (So I joke that I get free housing with my internet.)

Of course, there is an opportunity cost because that deposit could have generated interest, but I figure the break-even point is 12% APY. (It is possible to lower the deposit by increasing monthly rent.) So it's advantageous to take out a bank loan at 2-4% interest to pay for the deposit.

There is a small risk you won't be able to get your deposit back if the owner mismanages their finances. I believe the Korean government actually guarantees housing deposits up to $50,0000 or so. In Korea, the tenants actually do background checks on the landlords! The minimum deposit is usually $10,000, so landlords usually don't scrutinize tenants.


Just for the record, I don't think that South Korea is particularly cheap. As OP demonstrates, one can live there for USD 1000/month, but that really holds for most countries. While the US is in the top 5% in terms of nominal GDP per capita, South Korea is in the top 15%. For cheap, yet comfortable and safe, I'd aim around the median, eg Indonesia or Georgia.

ETA: Nomadlist suggests €1,925/mo for Seoul, €1,530/mo for Jeju Island, South Korea; €1,047/mo for Tbilisi, Georgia; €627/mo for Bandung, Indonesia.

ETA: Nomadlist has a list of places below USD 1000/mo: https://nomadlist.com/places-on-a-budget


You don't have to live in the capital of Georgia (or Korea for that matter). Just a little outside the capital is already much more reasonable. You also don't have to maintain 100% "western" standard of living either, seeing that you aren't in the West. Very few people in Georgia make 1000+ euro, and they're doing OK with less. In rural Georgia you'd be living like royalty with that kind of monthly spend. It's also beautiful, and people are real nice. The only thing to watch out for is, of course, the internet.


If you're ok with Georgia, you should check out Batumi. It's a bustling coastal city that's seen impressive growth since independence. It's also pretty close to Turkey, so there are land routes to Trabzon (and flights from there to Istanbul).

Batumi is also known as Colchis, the destination for the Argonauts in Greek Mythology, so plenty of history & culture and great food.

The Grand Tour did a special driving through Georgia to Azerbaijan if you want to get a feel for what the region looks like:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6068920/


Nomadlist is often way off on their estimates. I'd suggest using it for inspiration only and then see prices on Numbeo


No one number can quantify a city. You can probably live for $1000 a month in Mnahattan if you are willing to live in a total dump.

But still the numbers are useful and mostly accurate within a range


This is a common misconception of nomadlist. The cost of living that it presents is factoring 2-3 month stays and you being a nomad tourist.


Off in one direction or just randomly?


In my experience of living in Shanghai, Nomadlist and Numbeo estimates are way too high. That's not to say that rich expats aren't actually paying those prices (someone must've entered them, right?) but if you're willing to shop around and learn the local language so you don't get ripped off like an ignorant foreigner, you should be able to get things much cheaper.


> but if you're willing to

Isn't this just capturing the difference between short(ish term vs long term relocation? Places like Nomadist are aimed at the first category, not "what's the cheapest you can live in city X", no?


I’m sure the numbers are skewed highly by expats who’s employers pay for them to live there. I still remember my parent’s rent when they lived in HK- 13k USD/mo.


What in the world? That's incredibly high!!


Not the poster you’re replying to, but it’s not atypical for expats being sent there by their company to live in luxury housing with staff etc. I think this is partly done to entice the expat to move his whole life and family for the company but also to hook the expat up with living way above the standard they could normally afford and so they’re more docile and less likely to quit or make waves.


Where do I send my CV to get that benefit?


I’m talking about multinationals sending people around the world, and at the manager level and up (not middle management)

If that’s your position, then I’d think any multinational sending you on a multi year stint abroad would offer that kind of package.


> so you don't get ripped off like an ignorant foreigner

Interesting framing


Too high. For example, for my home city there is a figure that would be the 90th percentile net salary


I always thought that's by design - that's the cost of a nomad living there for a short period of time


Since you seem to be informed here, how would one look for places like this that are explicitly not hot & humid, or nearly tropical locations? Effectively a climate and geography filter on this site with "has winters, mountains, summer highs typically < 90 degrees"


Guanajuato city, Mexico. I lived there for a while, <$1k no problem. Not humid, perfect climate. Adorable place. I ended up there because I did some analysis of climate data for all of Mexico and it came out on top.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_City

Edit: I lived there 5 years ago and USD$1k per month would have been plenty, but a nomad website I just looked up lists it at $1250. I'm surprised by that, I think you would be fine. In fact I know people who live there who don't earn anything near $15k USD per year.


Expat here. Reality is that there aren't a lot of "cheap" places, easily accessible to foreigners, that meet this criteria.


Both Korea and Georgia would fit the bill here, except maybe the midsummer months, which are pretty hot & sweaty in Seoul. You may be able to take the edge off by living at higher altitude or by the sea.


Seoul is great but it has huge variatuon in weather. It's like the east coast of the US where you get a nice month and a half of spring and a nice month and a half of fall and everything else is far to one extreme


No way the estimate is real for Tbilisi. For €1047/mo you'd be living like a king there. Especially with post-Covid prices.


Seoul & Jeju are probably the most expensive you could find.

If you want a big city you can still do Busan, daegu, ulsan etc


Are foreigners really going to live on Jeju? Jeju in the winter isn't much fun...I can't imagine living on jeju. Sokcho is super underrated imo.


I had a blast in Sokcho -- could definitely spend a couple years there. To be blunt, I was bored with Jeju by day 2.

The next time I move to Korea (which I do every couple years), I'm gonna try Busan. I've visited a few times, but haven't ever lived there.


Give Busan some consideration.


Just avoid the taking the train there. [1]

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5700672/


> Basically, if you put down a huge deposit (like $90,000: 50% to 90% of the value of the property), you don't pay any monthly rent and get the entire deposit back when you move out.

That's kind of a strange system. Any idea how it evolved there? Basically sounds like the landlord has to invest the money in such a way as to get a return that would be equivalent to rent but also safe enough so that they can return the deposit. I don't think I'd want to be a landlord there.


I believe the system started when there were double digit interest rates (in the 80's?).

Now interest rates are much lower, but Koreans got used to paying $0 rent and anything above that feels like they are being ripped off.

One reason landlords like the system is because they can daisy-chain the purchase of multiple properties. They take the first cheonsae deposit and use it to purchase another property, then use the cheonsae deposit from the 2nd property to purchase a 3rd property, and so on...

Even if landlords don't receive monthly rent, they expect to earn money on the increased value of the property. Cheonsae contracts are normally 2 years, then they can ask for more deposit or sell the property for a profit.

More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeonse


> One reason landlords like the system is because they can daisy-chain the purchase of multiple properties. They take the first cheonsae deposit and use it to purchase another property, then use the cheonsae deposit from the 2nd property to purchase a 3rd property, and so on...

That sounds like it’d be a disaster during a liquidity crunch.


It becomes a too-big-to-fail system, with the government stepping in as needed (implicit subsidy).


Korea is an economic experiment of monstrous proportions in many ways. There are a lot of risks that are specific to their system buy it feel like even if the whole thing massively blew up at this point that the average Korean would be better off than if they had never taken the risks.


How even would the government step in with it being landlord to landlord like that though? It's not centralized in any way.


Buying the assets for enough to cover the landlord's debts. then liquidate the assets for market value. The government could even just hold the assets themselves.


This is the natural outcome of building an economy based on usury/interest, which is exactly what this transaction is.


Maybe I'm missing something here, and I just read the Wikipedia article you linked. If the landlord takes the cash and buys the property, then the cash is gone and there is no cash to get interest on. Does the landlord just pocket the property appreciation?


In a way yes. But its also using leverage to amplify your gains.

Say I get $90,000 to go buy a house, I spend the $90,000 and have 1 door. I get a tenant in it and they make a $90,000 down payment. I then go buy another house and get another tenant in it and they make a $90,000 down payment. I now have two houses and still have the same amount of money I started with, I can continue this cycle and as long as property appreciates I don't just get the property appreciation from one house I get it from all of the houses so (% appreciation * property value * number of properties).

Say it is a $100,000 property and it appreciates 3%. If I had just bought one house and put the money in an interest yielding savings account I would get some low % return. If I instead chained it to acquire 10 houses I would get $30,000 return, which is 30%. But if the value of the house goes down it works against me!

Obviously this ignores transaction costs, interest costs etc.


> Say I get $90,000 to go buy a house, I spend the $90,000 and have 1 door. I get a tenant in it and they make a $90,000 down payment.

Why wouldn't the tenant spend $90,000 on the house themselves, cutting out the middleman?


Korea has a housing lottery where they give you first dibs on a new apartment at an extremely discounted price with financial assistance. Due to demand, this housing is difficult to get even at full price. However this lottery is only available to first-time homeowners. So my friend chose to do cheonsae instead of outright buying a place to save his housing lottery ticket.

Usually cheonsae deposit is less than 100% of the purchase price, so it costs less. Even if the difference is small (10%), you are guarded from drops in real estate value. If you put down $90,000 deposit you should get back exactly $90,000 even if the property value dropped below that.

And perhaps cheonsae loans are easier to get than house mortgages. I'm not sure about this, but the deposit may be better collateral than the property?


This feels like it should be illegal. Just by random chance there will be a point in time where enough tenants ask their deposit back at the same time, and you enter one big economic crisis. Of course, banks also have this risk of a bank run, but the difference is that big banks are tightly regulated and have a strict reserve rate they have to abide to (usually >5%). I wouldn't trust a big population of landlords who manage their own finances, and have a big incentive to cut corners.

If anyone knows a method to short Korean housing, please let me know!


What happens if two or more tenants want to move out at the same time? With the strategy you describe the landlord only has cash for one reimbursement.


Sell both properties and realise (perhaps pre-maturely) the capital gains?


> they can daisy-chain the purchase of multiple properties. They take the first cheonsae deposit and use it to purchase another property

And then they have to return the deposit eventually... how is this different from a Ponzi scheme? :P


With a ponzi scheme, there is no underlying investment. So the pool of capital never grows.

This Korean system should work in theory. People generally don't move very frequently. As long as there's a liquid market for investments in stocks & bonds, and the housing appreciates in value over the long term, it's not a bad system.

Seems pretty favorable to the landlords too. They get $90k up front for a $100k house. Which they could invest for an 8% or so return, which, in the first year is ~$550/mo in rent, compounded each year, minus maintenance. Yield wise, $7k on a $10k investment ($100k house - $90k from renter) is fucking amazing.

The fact that is has been around for so long suggests that it works in practice too. Yeah, maybe a black swan event causes a liquidity crunch. But so long as the government steps in to provide liqudity (low interest mortgages would work), then it shouldn't hurt too bad. Worst case, foreign investors step in to buy up the real estate.


> With a ponzi scheme, there is no underlying investment. So the pool of capital never grows.

The "pool of capital" never grows here, either. Landlords get more assets (houses), but also more liabilities (deposits).

A Ponzi scheme is perfectly capable of having underlying investments, by the way. I'm pretty sure Madoff bought houses with his money, too.

> Which they could invest for an 8% or so return

Where the heck do you get an 8% return with no risk? I want in.

> The fact that is has been around for so long

How many decades did Madoff's ponzi scheme last?


You ask jokingly, but the serious answer is that there's an actual scarce asset behind it. Sort of like Bitcoin ;) Whether the scheme artificially inflates the value of the asset remains to be seen of course. I feel the fact that the contracts usually only last 2 years or less really takes the sting out of the risk of collapse, but I'm no economist. Also if it's been going on since the 80's, that means it's been going strong through 30 years of turbulent economical climates.


This reads like a Ponzi scheme, if you consider the tenants as investors.


In a country with the third highest population density in the world and a solid advanced economy? (discounting city-states and low-population states)

There are worse places to make that bet.


If everyone makes the same bet, it can still lead to disaster (real estate must rise! Let's all speculate on real estate! --> eventual disaster).

Or let's put it this way: a rational bet is something like, this thing is worth $50 now, it will be worth at least $100 later. An irrational bet is one like "this thing will be worth more over and over again!" If everyone things like that, then the thing's price will keep rising until the bubble bursts.


That sounds like the reasoning used in the US before the big 2008 housing market crash.


The US is not #3 in population density. ;)


That doesn't matter, it's just a matter of time before it crashes imo.


The fundamental reason the US housing market crashed was that mortgages were written on properties that couldn't be sustained by income.

South Korea has two characteristics that directly impact that: scarcity of land (relative to population) and a solid, world-leading economy in many high margin industries.

It's not inconceivable property with such qualities could increase in value forever, and still be properly valued.

So saying "Just like 2008 US" is a pretty pithy distillation of a number of complicated factors.


But why couldn't the renter use the deposit to buy a house instead?


It makes zero sense to me that you would have 80% or even 50% of a property’s market value and not just buy the place as opposed to letting someone else.

Do they not do home mortgages in South Korea? Are properties expected to go down in price?


Whether properties are expected to go down in price or not doesn’t change the fact that their is always a risk that property drops in price.


It would affect whether or not someone feels like buying it.


Since you seem to get the whole deposit back, it seems like it'd be preferable to rent in many situations if the landlord still assumes liabilities (repairs, disasters, etc) and the costs associated with them. If it's "free" to live there either way, I'd rather someone else cough up 10k for a new AC, heater, etc.


Why would you not want to pay more rent and invest the rest of the savings yourself? The landlord (at least in the US) almost always has to pick up the tab for all those repairs anyway.

You also get to avoid the risk of the landlord not giving you a large sum of money back.


Someone mentioned this elsewhere, but they can't. Housing in scarce and distributed via a lottery system.


Maybe buying a house would be less liquid?


Risk… you are exposed to the risk of decreasing property values if you buy.


But as a renter, you are exposed to the risk that your landlord won't have your deposit when you are ready to move out. To me, that seems like a bigger risk.


You know they at least own the house that costs more than what they owe you, so in a court you can probably regain your money


I don't know much about the system... is there an escrow service? Insurance?


Sounds like a recipe for a housing market collapse...


> That's kind of a strange system. Any idea how it evolved there? Basically sounds like the landlord has to invest the money in such a way as to get a return that would be equivalent to rent but also safe enough so that they can return the deposit. I don't think I'd want to be a landlord there.

I was thinking the same, but here's another way of framing it: they're like real estate agents [1] in the US, except that instead of keeping a 2.5%–5% commission at every sale, they keep the capital gains. They may not need to invest deposits at all to make money.

To me renting under this system doesn't seem clearly better than buying. You're paying most of the money to buy the property, but it's not an investment. You can't come out ahead. But at least there's no risk or hassle of doing property maintenance.

[edit: no, I just saw yongjik's comment: "Under the 'jeonse' system, if the landlord becomes bankrupt, the renter is suddenly out of a large portion of their total wealth, and will be evicted by the new owner - without any money to find the next place. (There are insurances to protect renters but the risk is still there.)" I don't think I'd like to rent under this system at all.]

[1] and property managers who handle repairs and such, but that's probably not how they make their money at $50/month.


I believe the system was adopted in the old days with very high interest rates (~10% was common) - landlords could easily expect to make enough return.

It's actually greatly favorable to landlords. Just think about what happens when one side is out of money. Under the monthly rent system, landlords can't get any more money until they evict the renter (which is a lot of hassle, anywhere in the world). Under the "jeonse" system, if the landlord becomes bankrupt, the renter is suddenly out of a large portion of their total wealth, and will be evicted by the new owner - without any money to find the next place.

(There are insurances to protect renters but the risk is still there.)


The nice option world be to guarantee in law that renter gets the property as debt.


Would the new landlord inherit the liabilities of the house?


Not an expert, but I think there's a good chance the renter will lose money. When this happens, the landlord usually has more debt than the house is worth, so the renter has to compete with other lenders. (There's some legal protection, but I don't think it's bulletproof.)


Seems similar to a leasehold purchase which is common in commercial real estate.


If I'm putting 90% of the value, why don't I just add another 10% and buy the property outright? Are there restrictions on who can buy a house/apartment in Korea?


You perhaps missed that you get the whole deposit back. The landlord doesn't keep it. You could buy the property outright, or you could live somewhere for essentially free, as long as you don't value the interest on that cash more than you value the place you're staying.


Giving that much money to a landlord is absolutely terrifying to me given the history of landlords I’ve had. I’d much rather own the property and deal with any transaction costs associated with selling.


Basically, nobody wants to admit that their own country's long established and respected systems are ponzi schemes.

Many South Korean landlords are underwater on a bad investment and use the next renter's deposit to pay out the last. Citation not possible.

The point of the system was to spur investment in the south korean economy.


next question: how would one go about betting on Korean residential mortgage credit spreads as an American retail investor?


Thats not the good bet - based solely on this information - the landlords would be fine on their own property, they would have lost a portion or all of a prior renters deposit in some other speculate bet instead of just letting it sit in a bank account, new renters deposits are paying for the ability of the landlord to pay the prior renters

Of course that prior speculative bet could be in mortgage(s). You would need to look at other weakness in that economy to rationalize whatever bet you want.


Still, why not pay 10% more and own the building? You could still get the money back (and hopefully more) when you sell it again.


I'd imagine transaction costs on real estate are high...maybe even approaching 10%.


Or potentially a lot less. The idea that real estate always goes up doesn't match reality.


Transaction costs, taxes, maintenance, interest opportunity cost, etc. all of the same reasons that it might be cheaper to rent in the USA than buy.


Owner might not want to sell?


Didn’t miss it, just also noted that if the landlord loses the money or goes bankrupt or just skips town, in a foreign country without strong connections and shaky command of the language, you are likely screwed.


That sounds strange, what's in it for the landlord?


See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28319313


Opportunity cost. Landlord can use the money to invest elsewhere and make more than the minimum 12% APY. It is like 0% interest loan for the length of the tenant stay.


0 interest loan I guess


Interest income on the deposit.


No credit risk from the tenant.


Sounds like a too good to be true situation...


Who is responsible for repairs?


Not quite sure what the exact laws are, but generally the landlord fixes stuff. They will even replace lightbulbs, within reason. If there is a small thing I can fix on my own, I'll just do it myself.

Usually there is a monthly management fee that ranges from $50 to $100+ dollars that covers cleaning of common areas, repairs, etc.


Thank you! Now I understand rent fraud (as seen in "Stranger" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6461346/ ). I couldn't understand how rent fraud could end up costing someone all their life savings - but now I see.


That seems like a very very good idea.

I wouldn't do it unless I had a partner who is already a citizen , but I'll definitely keep this in mind.

How much is rent if I didn't want to deposit that much ?


The general formula to convert from housing deposit to monthly rent is $10,000 deposit equals $50 monthly rent. (Until recently it was $100 rent). It's possible to find lower, but $10,000 is usually the minimum deposit.

Housing costs will vary greatly depending on location. $90,000 is in Gimpo, just outside of Seoul. Busan is probably half the cost of Seoul, and outside any major metro areas it's probably even lower.

Also even within the same real estate market prices vary greatly depending on the neighborhood, type, and size of unit. Another major factor is distance to nearest public transportation (subway).

Another thing to note is since monthly rent is usually more profitable for landowners, there is a movement away from the cheonsae system. However, I was still able to find plenty of options exactly one year ago.


12% is pretty high yield for the modern/western world. South Korea central rate is %0.75 according to Google. Where does the 11.25% come from?


That is exactly my point. There is an opportunity cost in keeping a large deposit (lost interest/investment opportunities). However that opportunity earn a certain APY in order to be a better "investment" than the housing deposit (a penny saved is a penny earned):

- $10,000 additional deposit reduces monthly rent by $50.

- 50 * 12 = 600

- 600/10,000 = 6%

The monthly rent reduction used to be $100 per $10,000. So it used to be 12%. I guess the break-even point is 6%, now...

Concrete example: I could reduce the deposit from $90,000 to $10,000. But then my rent would go from $0/month to $400/month. So by keeping a large deposit, I save $4800/year in rent.


What do you additionally save by not paying taxes on the income that you would have used to pay rent?


True~ the "pennies saved" are earned, but not taxed.

I did not consider that!


11.25% is the imputed value of $0 rent after down payment.


in crypto 12% is quite low.


Korea is something I have on my mind for so long. I would love a detailed blog post regarding your experience living in Korea as an expat with breakdown of cost and how you ended up there. Seems like an interesting journey to know about.


It's been quite an interesting journey! The original plan was to study Korean language for just a year, then I kept extending the trip...

I haven't blogged in a long time, but here are the Korea-related blog posts:

http://blog.leftium.com/2007/06/my-life-prologue.html

http://blog.leftium.com/2007/06/past-month-in-review.html

http://blog.leftium.com/2007/06/my-life-chapter-i.html

http://blog.leftium.com/2010/08/dragon-flies-and-praying-man...

http://blog.leftium.com/2010/09/how-to-eat-korean-food.html

http://blog.leftium.com/2010/10/october-update-whats-good-in...


How do you stay there? Just in an education visa?


Oh, that's one thing that might make it harder for the OP. Forgot about that. Before COVID, people used to do "visa runs" to nearby countries so they could stay more than 90 days (tourist visa).

I have an F4 visa that allows me to stay in Korea for up to 3 years, and it's simple to extend without leaving Korea. Technically I have almost all the rights as a Korean citizen except for the right to vote for president. (In practice it's more limited. For example it's nearly impossible for me to get a loan.)

With the F4 visa, I can work or not work. The F4 visa is granted to people who have relatives who are Korean citizens.


Thank you. Reading it right now.


The maths behind this is similar to UK leasehold. With a leasehold (which is a truly terrible system) you pay as if you're buying the flat, but actually you only have a lease usually with a very small annual payment and some management charges. The catch is the lease only lasts usually 99 years and for various legal reasons you have to renew it before it drops below 80 years, and that costs a bunch of money.

Leaseholders are called "homeowners" but they don't really own the home in the normal sense and are closer to long term renters in their rights.


I disagree. The crucial difference is that you don't get your money back with a UK leasehold. It's basically renting with extra steps.

A freeholder is basically renting out a house for 99 years and the leaseholder has to pay all the rent upfront (+ renewal). On the upside, if the freeholder wants to sell the house he's required to offer it to the leaseholder first.


Usually 99 years? I bought a new leasehold in 2004 with a 999 year term, and I don't think that's unusual now. The government announced plans in January that leaseholders will have the right to renew leases for a standard term of 990 years, as well as capping ground rent. So I hope the worst abuses of UK leasehold are on their way out.


A 999 year term sounds like a long time, but time flies; before you know it, 980 years would have passed, and you would be wondering why you didn't buy a freehold instead...


If property returns around 5% per year, lending $90k for a stay would be around $4.5k per year and represent perhaps a $375 monthly apartment. Given that you are not even paying fully for the apartment, this makes it possibly even more valuable. This can be considered quite decent given that there is more or less no risk involved. An index fund may generate higher returns maybe even 7% but given the low risk the system may be generous. As an institution it may of course beg other questions if the money is well invested, if it creates a bubble etc.

Housing returns:https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w24112/w241... S&P : https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...


Also as someone pointed out: money "earned" by not paying rent is untaxed.


I’m guessing this is outside of Seoul. It’s been a decade since I visited Seoul and while I remember it being surprisingly affordable, I don’t remember it being that affordable in Seoul.

I can easily imagine somewhere outside Seoul/Jeju/Busan being surprisingly affordable


Correct: I'm in Gimpo, but it's not far from Seoul. Kind of like the Seoul metro area or a suburb. I can get to Seoul by public transportation (subway/bus) within an hour. And the fare is only $2-3.

And I was a little fast and loose with the KRW-USD conversion. I opted for the simple 1USD == 1000KRW, so the actual numbers are a little higher.


I always found that system super interesting!

What would the equivalent rent have been for the place you live in for free (with 90k deposit)?

In nominal terms the S&P500 would do 10% a year or so on average. Over the past decade it's been 14.7%, so that $90k would've returned 13k a year on average.

In general I feel South Korea has been a great value for money location, if you bring external capital. If I compare it to neighbouring Japan for example, prices seem so much more affordable. Of course the working culture is not easy, but for OP it'd be a great choice.


80,000/10,000*50 = $400 rent + $10,000 deposit.

The general rule is $50/rent per $10,000 deposit, however it's up to the landlord. I think my place was actually more like $80,000 deposit + $100 rent (vs. $50). I recall the different options with rent fit the formula, but there was a big drop in rent if it was all deposit and no monthly rent. Maybe the owner preferred avoiding the hassle of collecting monthly rent (still have to collect monthly management fee, though...)

When calculating the real estate commission, the formula is used to arrive at a total value for the transaction. So the real estate broker's cut is the same whether the rent is big or small. And I think the commission is the same whether it's a rental or purchase.


I also live in Korea, but the only places I could imagine being able to survive for $600/mo would be outside major cities and eating kimbap and ramyeon for your takeout meals and living in a goshitel... no offense! Of course, if you're putting down a large deposit, then your rent could even be free.

Personally, I wouldn't bother with jeonsae unless somebody else is paying for it (parents, employer, bank), keep your money in your favorite speculative investment instead.


Interesting. So it’s like buying a place with a guaranteed buyer on the other side but no upside n the value of the house increasing. I don’t think I would want to live in that situation. It’s not like houses are that hard to sell.


Good luck with any cheonsae, you are dealing with Koreans, and there is a chance that deposit won't be there waiting for you or that company just disappearing.


I thought most landlords won't even take those deposit based deals from foreigners?

If I was going to live in a Major city anywhere,Seoul would be in the top 2 along with Tokyo


Yeah, it may be harder if you're a foreigner. I'm a foreigner and I managed to do it, though. If you have the cash I don't think landlords would care.

For me, the biggest hurdle was saving up the deposit. Koreans have easy access to cheonsae loans at 2-4% interest rates. It's very difficult for foreigners to get a loan in Korea.


edit: the break-even point is 6% APY

$10,000 deposit used to be converted to $100 rent (to get 12%). It's now only $50 rent. (Although in my case I think it still was $100/12%).


> Basically, if you put down a huge deposit (like $90,000: 50% to 90% of the value of the property), you don't pay any monthly rent and get the entire deposit back when you move out.

So you're giving them a usurious loan basically.


How is a zero interest loan usurious?


Interest doesn't have to be money, it's any benefit received for giving a loan. In this case, the benefit received is staying in the apartment unit in exchange for the loan.


Poland is doable if you stay out of major cities. You can rent a studio for $300 (incl. all utilities). Food, if you cook, will cost you $200-$250 ($300-$400 if you don't cook and want to eat out only). Wired Internet and cell phone will be around $20. State-provided health insurance is about $120 per month (this is "socialized medicine", so it provides everything with no deducible, up to treating cancer etc.), but can possibly be gamed - there are loopholes that de facto allow you to pay insurance only once you need it (may be too hard to navigate for someone who's not a native speaker though). Btw the health insurance is "free" if you get any kind of job, even working couple hours a week.

Also, Poland should be a great place to actually run your game studio company from, as the tax on "IT innovation" (should not be hard to include games in this category) is only 6% - everything after that ends up in your pocket (i.e. no further dividend tax etc is required).

Assuming you won't be getting a car, public transit and Uber/taxis are affordable as well - a 5 km trip via Uber should perhaps be around $4.

I suspect other countries in the region should have similar numbers. Healthcare system and tax incentives should definitely be the biggest differentiator.


As a Pole myself, I’d add two things: it is generally a lovely country, lots of beautiful countryside etc. Less “spectacular”, more “cozy” etc. People are a bit uncertain of new things (eg foreigners in a new town) but generally warm and helpful eventually.

That said, I’d you’re not white and straight, small towns could be very unwelcoming, from people staring, to telling you to go, to physical violence. Rare but true.


Non-Pole here. Visited Poland in the past 10 years. Beautiful countryside for sure. Cities and roads were clean. Decent food.

During my last visit, wireless phone service was super in the major cities...even better than Canada's.

As a tourist, Poland was a pretty big bang on my money: Equivalent item from the west for 1/3 of the cost while enjoying modern amenities. But I can see non Polish speakers would have difficulties living there in the longer term. During my trips, I insisted on travelling with at least one native Polish speaker.


The locals did stare at us funny when we didn't put ketchup on our pizza, but then we stared back cause why would someone do such a thing.


As someone who has never done this before, *I'm* now wondering why someone *wouldn't* do such a thing :D that sounds awesome


non pole here, knew a guy who wasn't white or European, not living in biggest cities, loved it there. sure its safer than many places.


Well I love it, and many places and people will give non-white non-straight people no issues.

But hand on heart can I say to someone outside that narrow blueprint it’s definitely fine? Nope.


Haven't been, so I wonder how it compares with rural US, where, at least in some of the places I've been, people are quite intolerant in abstract, but almost universally friendly in person.


I think if people get to know you, they are indeed positively surprised that “despite” being foreign etc you’re actually nice etc. That wouldn’t be my concern so much.

It would rather be the odd skinhead on the bus or in the street. The current government is also quietly accepting such behaviours, as it is their voter base, so the few “bad apples” feel they can act with impunity.

I don’t want to overplay it, it’s not Nazi Germany, but for sure something to consider. Nice place one way or the other.


This is what I read in this response: "Is it safe to visit Poland? I hear you could get struck by lightening over there."

Also, the idea that the current government is quietly accepting skinhead violence is preposterous.


Is that true even for visiting? I am Indian and have wanted to visit Poland and the region for quite a while. I did find rural Germany quite ok except communication.


You’ll be fine for sure in touristy areas and big city centres.

There are Indian people living and working in Poland, so it can’t be too bad. Right wing media say nothing of racist attacks. Left wing media describe them all the time. There are vocal nationalists, most of whom never go past their grumblings.

I raise it as I’d be somewhat concerned sending a non-white or job-straight friend into rural Poland.

If you look at UK Foreign Office travel advice, the LGBT intolerance warrants a mention, but no other warning: https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/poland/local-laws-a... . I guess attitudes to non-white people could get a similar treatment.


Ok. Thank you so much for the advice.


What about fiber internet at 1Gbps+?


[flagged]


>very unwelcoming, physical violence

>"I think that sounds great!"

>"Oh no why do people think I'm an evil person"


@41209 look at this: https://pl.usembassy.gov/abct/

I live in Żary (Tier-3 City), which is near Żagań. Quick overview:

- small city is quite cheap. Prices said by @burntoutfire are right

- there are around 2000 US soldiers hanging around here. So you won't be alone :) if someone told you that small cities in eastern europe may be intolerant (or unsafe or unwelcoming) for travelers - it's not here. Here Everyone thinks that every American met is a soldier with combat training ;)

- internet is cheap and stable. mobile is cheap and stable (comparing to US or western Europe). In almost every place you can pay using credit card.

- ecommerce is working great here. Delivery takes 1 working day. Parcel lockers are on every corner of Poland already :)

- it's close to Germany (10 miles to border, 100 miles to Berlin) so you can get two cultures in one visit.

- people in Poland are... mentally somewhere between Russians and Germans ;)

- most of the people <40yo understand english. But many of them have no practice and are just afraid to speak. The younger people you meet the bigger chance to speak english you have.

- it's the region with a lot of forests (like 70% of area). So the air quality is decent comparing to any large city.

- covid is not an issue here right now. We had 6 new cases in last 24h per 1 million people. There is no "next wave" coming. You should wear a mask in closed space, but except visits at hospital/doctors no one cares.


It should be said that you will need to make some effort to learn the local language.

People will know enough English for you to get by, but it will feel very isolating. Learning just a little bit of Polish will make a world of difference, especially if you need to talk with a plumber or doctor (they're very unlikely to know much English).


Doctors?


Generally most people over ~35-40yo won't speak English as it wasn't added to school curriculum until after the fall of the Soviet block.


People over ~50-60yo maybe. 35-40 yo, spent not more than 10 years under Soviet control. Add to that, that Poles live quite often abroad and a lot of them spent years in Ireland/UK. We have even numbers to support that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-s... ... Poland in the top 20.


There's ability to speak English, and willingness to speak English in a professional setting - a doctor with no professional training might refuse to use English just in case they misunderstand something. Same with officials (who if they knew English well in the first place, would work in a corporation of some sort).


I'm an Australian in Krakow & I'd recommend it. Plenty of people understand English, and it's a small enough city that the vibe is fairly relaxed.

Places like this will help with a visa for a more extended stay so you can run your "startup":

https://twojstartup.pl/


That 6% tax is... complicated. Bug fixes are not innovation IIRC - I just end up paying 19%, which isn't that much anyways.


Exactly, its almost impossible to use the R&D tax relief. Also, starting with 2021, we will pay more than 19% in taxes but the gov cant make up their mind on the changes so we dont know the details yet.


I would also add that air pollution is something to consider regarding living in Poland long term:

https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/11/25/poland-has-eus-worst-...

https://www.sustainability-times.com/clean-cities/battling-t...

Also, if OP enjoys smoking pot, that might be an issue as per family who lives there it will be a big change vs coming from California.

Personally when traveling in Krakow and Warsaw I've found more racism against brown people lately vs 10 years ago... random cabbies and bartenders going on unprovoked rants against immigrants. Not sure if that's been one-off but that was surprising for me at least.


Would happily live there! Great country, people, and the 4 to 1 exchange range is amazing. Just outside of Krakow would be great. :)


Visit Poland before making a decision. As an American their social culture can come off as very cold and rude.


As far as working culture goes, it’s refreshing because there’s little tolerance for indirection and common corporate “colloquialisms”.

Certainly no song and dance to the way they do business.


That's because Europeans come across as cold and rude because Americans have a perpetual smile plastered on their faces. This causes Americans to come off as mentally deficient to Europeans.


Here in the US, radio stations treated citizens to decades of Tony Bennet singing the song "Put On a Happy Face". It was from a 1960 musical called 'Bye Bye Birdie'.

By some magical coincidence, just a year later the black-on-yellow 'Happy Face' (Smiley) was introduced by the 'Good Guys' on NYC radio and used on badges for an insurance company.

Because it's early in the morning, I also wonder if there are other countries where the phrase "wipe that smile off your face" means you're in danger.


Thanks for the chuckle!

Yep. European’s view the perpetual grin dimly, and doubly so in Poland where direct communication is how things are done. It’s honestly nice because in general people there mean business and don’t care to save face. don’t think you’ll be catching west coast vibes from anyone!


regarding that 6% tax for innovation in IT - be warned, our governing idiot party is about to introduce a bunch of new laws, including a de facto increase of that 19% to 28%.


> should not be hard to include games in this category

You better put aside the remaining 13% for 5 years, just in case the inevitable happens.


Is car ownership pretty affordable overall? (Insurance, fees, etc)


Yes, very affordable. Yearly mandatory insurance, without any discounts for crash-free driving (as I doubt they'd honor insurance histories from foreign countries), is perhaps about $300. Mandatory yearly checkups are $30. Cars themselves are a bit pricier than in US - mostly due to VAT being higher than US's sales tax I guess. But, maintenance is way cheaper - there's plenty of cheap and skilled mechanics who will improvise fixes using scavenged second-hard parts (which they themselves will provide). Rebuilding an engine will cost you perhaps under $400 in labor, while I suspect it's in thousands of dollars in US.

Gas is currently $5.5 per gallon. Most people drive cars with low fuel consumption, so they're easy to get on second-hand market. Also, if one is particularly stingy about fuel costs, it's popular to own cars fueled by LPG. LPG is currently $2.5 per gallon.


> if one is particularly stingy about fuel costs, it's popular to own cars fueled by LPG.

I’ll add that it’s been popular for the last decade, up to 15 years. So don’t think it’s going anywhere, anytime soon!


It is, but you don't really need a car. Public transport and Uber/Taxis work very well in most cities.

Most of my friends don't have cars, around half doesn't have a driver's license. They can afford a car easily, but just don't see a need.


Serbia offers a 180 degrees different culture than most of what you experienced in US plus is very dynamic, cheap and great for young people.

Couple of a links to get you started:

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/serbia-best-places-to...

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170822-belgrades-floati...

https://theculturetrip.com/europe/serbia/articles/an-expats-...

https://www.quora.com/What-is-life-like-for-American-expats-...

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-so-many-foreigners-moving-to-B...

https://yankee-in-belgrade.blogspot.com


Have you actually lived in the US so that you personally know of this 180 degrees of difference? If so, which parts of the US? I ask because the differences between New York City, Tallahassee, Chicago, Columbus, Nashville, Kansas City, Austin, Taos, San Francisco, Boise, Hattiesburg, Denver, Portland, Bar Harbor, etc. are so wildly stark as to be like different countries on many levels (and I say this as someone who has lived in a number of countries from the US to Europe to Asia, and in a number of States as well)


Really? American culture, architecture, and infrastructure is pretty uniform. I've been to all those places except Bar Harbor and I'd agree maybe Taos/Northern NM stands out due to deep and influential indigenous history. But even there you have to kind of seek out those differences because in town it's stores, restaurants, food, music, etc., that you can largely find anywhere else in the US.


That may be true in suburbia strip-mall hell. But the cities are much older, and more distinct. No-one would ever mistake New Orleans for Los Angeles. (Although you could be forgiven for mistaking Berlin in the summer for LA).


I can't tell the difference between New Orleans or Los Angeles if you look at the places where people live. Both are typical American with exposed power line poles, big roads everywhere and just single family homes. A few landmarks might be different but if you go a mile from the city centre then it is all the same. Berlin isn't anything like that, you'd never mistake it for an American city.


180 degrees from what culture? I’ve been to Belgrade a few times for work and worked with lots of Serbians for a number of years. They are more like the conservatives in the US.

People move to Belgrade because it’s cheap and the food is awesome. I’ve partied at the Splavs and had a great time. Random people were much more friendlier than Germans (the Serbs told me they were robots). There are some resentments by the Serbs against Americans and NATO bombings. It did come up while I was there.


I meant culture of living. Things like cities with lots of parks and pedestrian zones, more walking/less dependency on cars, hidden coffee shops between old buildings, ability to live decently on a very small budget, free education and healthcare, generally easier to make friends, specially if you are a foreigner - things like that.

I would not necessarily compare Serbians to conservatives in US (we are both generalizing now). What you may have experienced in general is 'caution' because that region of the world experienced wars every 30 years on average for the last 1000 years (unlike US). So it's not like its resisting change, but the progress was hindered so many times, having to rebuild everything from scratch. And it is hard to be 'liberal' in an environment where in some places you do not have basic infrastructure. Political 'progressive' thinking usually comes after you solved basic needs. That's just my assessment.


I'm sorry, but as a Serb from Serbia, I cannot agree with the first part of your answer. Belgrade is not a pedestrian friendly city by no means, and you are dependent on cars more then in an average European city. I've spent some time in multiple, smaller and bigger, and those are not features I would associate with Belgrade.


Compared to the US it definitely is. Especially if you stay away from New Belgrade, I've always underestimated how much is there to walk between like two or three blocs there.

Other than that it's just an incredibly interesting city to walk through, even if you're inconvenienced as a pedestrian multiple times on that trip. You never know what you'll find behind the corner: a building that looks like it's falling apart, a gaze-inspiring brutalist building from Yugoslav times, or a modern-looking office. The only thing you know for sure is that you won't have to walk long before finding a café.


I was comparing it to USA.


The reason I made the comparison to conservatives is because my coworker over there did an exchange program in High School and he thought the South had similar viewpoints to Serbians. I do agree with him about both being conservatives.


Yes I would agree that political views are in general more conservative but for historical reasons I described, not because it is someone's choice (plus strong influence of church 'helps').


So if you're non caucasian it's a big NO?


Lol. All I can say is that if you’re Muslim or of African decent it’s not gonna be the same as a Caucasian. Many do not believe in political correctness. Not that Europe abides by that like the US does but also not something you’d see in the UK, France, or Germany. Even Indian coworkers had "issues" there.

I have childhood friends who came to the US during the Yugoslav wars in the 90s. When I mentioned them my coworkers they would quickly point out the last name was Muslim and not Serbian. Also they would point out the one or two Albanians that worked with us.


I would disagree. What is important to know is that in this region of the world discrimination (if at all present) is in general not based on the race/color of the skin - and this is in general true for the rest of Europe too.

In Europe, discrimination, when it happens, is usually based on national or religious differences. All wars Europeans ever fought were over national or religious reasons.

In Serbia generally racial discrimination is not present, nor is a topic of any conversation in media or society (certainly not to any extent like in US). There was a war between serbs and bosnian muslims and serbs and kosovo muslims (note national/religious connotation) some 20 years ago, and some people may have 'hard feelings' about it, but in general that's the end of it. Still, being a Muslim in Serbia is IMO a 'better' experience than being one in USA (maybe also because 5% of population of Serbia is Muslim vs ~1% in USA).


Fellow European here, I have to somewhat disagree. While it is true that discrimination is not as heavily based on skin colour as it is in places like the US I believe it plays a bigger role than you make it out to be.

Discrimination based on nationality is a thing, but it is very much something that varies a lot in Europe. To generalise it as one of the top reasons for discrimination isn't quite right in my opinion.

That said, it's the type of discrimination that is the most prevalent, simply because that's what most people deal with.

However, I think that in day to day life skin colour may be more noticeable than other types of discrimination, simply because it is easier to make out.

While in some places discrimination of certain nationalities or religions is certainly common place and as such might seem like it is the predominant form of discrimination, discrimination based on skin colour is also present. Maybe to a lesser degree, but it is present everywhere.

The simple truth is that the "better" experience will be the one Caucasians get.


This is why I used 'in general' so many times in my comment :)

Perhaps we can agree that in Europe, national/religious discrimination is probably an order of magnitude more prevalent than any other form of discrimination. From my experience and in practical terms, I would even put social/economic/education based discrimination before skin color based one.


The USA might not treat Muslims well, but there have not been mass killings (in country - obviously there have been abroad). Anyone who wants to know more should google Srebrenica genocide, was the July 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica, during the Bosnian War.

Those individuals who during the 1990s were the most ardent supporters of the ultranationalist politics that paved the way for the genocide in Srebrenica—for the ethnic ‘cleansing’ of Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo—are in charge today, too. Since the time of the socialist state’s end, there have hardly been any powerful political actors in Serbia who did not in some way advocate some idea of a ‘Greater Serbia’.

There is a clear continuity of nationalist politics that has more or less been going on since the nineteenth century, and the dominant line of political thinking in Serbia throughout history has mostly been nationalism. The essentialization of Muslims as the ultimate ‘Other’ has been one of this nationalism’s main pillars. On the one hand, Serb converts to Islam are in some way worse than ‘born’ Muslims for most Serbian nationalists. There is the popular saying ‘a poturica [convert] is worse than a Turk’, and the derogatory term poturica applies to all South Slavs who have accepted Islam—including Bosniaks and Serbian converts.


Don’t even get me started on Serbs and Turks. 500 years.


With my girlfriend and daughter I live in Thailand (Thai countryside) and we have a budget of about 50.000 THB per month, or about 1.300 USD. We own our house, so we don't pay rent and we don't have any loans. This budget doesn't include costs for health insurance, which I pay separately.

I think a single guy could live on quite a bit less, but has to pay some rent. For about 250-300 USD per month you can get a decent enough place to live I'd wager (think: condo studio, 35 m2, gym, swimming pool). If you eat Thai food some of the time, food can be quite cheap (a meal without drinks could be had for about 1-2 USD in a typical Thai food stall or at a food court). If you buy foreign food things can get more expensive. Depending on where you live, coffee can also be had for 1-2 USD. Renting a scooter would be advisable for getting around a city, but would cost an additional 100 USD per month.


Thai food is so good I don't know who wouldn't want to eat it all the time.


I have a lemongrass allergy but I get by.


yeah, I thought Chinese food is great and diverse as well, but you will get tired of it after eating it daily for year or two and wanna change, so have to switch at least to Korean, Japanese, Malaysian or Western (Big Pizza and Saizeriya FTW)


Can I ask how old your daughter is? Doing the nomad thing in cheaper, less developed countries seems a lot tougher to manage with kids, and even more so in the countryside. Gotta think about schools, pediatricians, dentists, finding play-mates for them, kid-friendly things to do, and so on. I'd be curious to hear about how you balance all that.


> Can I ask how old your daughter is? Doing the nomad thing in cheaper, less developed countries seems a lot tougher to manage with kids, and even more so in the countryside. Gotta think about schools, pediatricians, dentists, finding play-mates for them, kid-friendly things to do, and so on. I'd be curious to hear about how you balance all that.

Our daughter is 4.5 years old now. Due to COVID the schools have been closed for the last month or so, but should be open again starting September. My daughter is half foreigner, half Thai and goes to a Thai private school in the area. Don't expect too much of these private schools on the country side, but it should beat government education (which is pretty much free). For the private school we pay about 700 USD per year.

I work from home and since our daughter has been home a lot lately, I've resorted to working during the nights when my daughter is asleep. I tend to sleep from the morning to the afternoon. From the afternoon until the evening I spend at least a few hours every day with my daughter, playing LEGO, looking the iPad together, drawing, etc...

She has a niece nearby that visits almost every day and is just a couple of years older. In daytime she often plays with her niece. We also have a neighbour with a son of about equal age as our daughter and sometimes they play together.

There's not too much kid friendly stuff around here I guess, but my girlfriend does occasionally take our daughter to a playground nearby, at a government school. There's a soccer field and such for children to play on.

I believe even here on the country side there's plenty of good dentists, but I have to admit I haven't tried any dentist here myself. Usually when I visit The Netherlands, once or twice a year, I visit my own dentist. Our daughter hasn't visited the dentist yet and my girlfriend doesn't either (she just takes good care of her teeth).

If our daughter is sick, usually we first visit the clinic of the doctor that delivered our daughter in the hospital (many doctors here in Thailand have their own clinic that they work at after finishing their work hours at the hospital). If there's a bigger problem, we drive to Chiang Mai (about 2-3 hours drive) to visit the private Ram hospital which offers better care. We had to visit the hospital in Chiang Mai two times in the past and stay there for a few days.

In the future I'd like to move again to a coastal area, perhaps Pattaya, perhaps Hua Hin, perhaps some other place. In those areas there's more stuff for kids to do, for example there's often an entertainment area for children in the larger shopping malls like Central, BluPort, etc... Also at these coastal areas there's entertainment like amusement parks, zoos, beaches, etc... Also there's better quality (but much more expensive) education available, like international schools.


Thailand is pretty developed though?


Buying a scooter would be a better idea if the goal is saving money. They don't seem to depreciate that much, rent where I was like 2-3k/month, I bought one for 17k.


I recommend the Balkans, in particular the less touristic countries. Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Bulgaria are all very inexpensive, safe, have reliable internet, and an abundance of cafes and co-working spaces. Most also have favorable visa conditions for Americans (e.g. Albania lets Americans stay up to a year on a tourist visa.) In terms of cities, I recommend Belgrade and Sarajevo the most.

Going further east, Tbilisi (Georgia) and Lviv (Ukraine) are also very inexpensive yet safe and filled with interesting culture.

Due to the Turkish lira collapsing, Turkey is also very inexpensive if you have USD. You can rent an apartment in central Istanbul for ±$400 a month.


I lived in Albania for three years - it's not at the level of the other countries on this list. It's firmly a developing country - water, electricity and other infrastructure are not great in the capital and degrade precipitously in the countryside and second-tier cities.

It's a great place if you're adventurous - if you're looking for stability, it isn't the place for you. Upsides are that Albanians love Americans (as opposed to the Serbs, who often harbor a grudge) and generally speak at least some english. Prices for things like coffee, etc. are low.

Albanians also have not been very good stewards of their environments, either - litter is a constant, nobody gives an "F" about rules and regulations, practically all the endemic animals have disappeared, and waterways, including beaches, are quite polluted. Cities are a hodgepodge of chaotic construction and barely-functioning infrastructure.

I lived roughly here: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.3170299,19.8070025,3a,60y,24...

If that kind of scene excites you, perhaps Albania is for you.


That's one of the better places (Komuna e Parisit). The lake is literally 10 minutes walking. But if you're paying $500/month for 100m2 in this photo, 10 minutes walking away that you have a view of the lake it's 2x-5x+.

And in 3 minutes walking distance you have every type of service that exists in the city.


Eh, it’s the Balkans. I wouldn’t call it a developing country, but sure, many parts of this region are rough around the edges in terms of infrastructure.


That actually looks very nice compared to the parts of America I grew up in.


Yeah. The quality of life available in many of these major Balkan cities is on-par with anywhere else in Europe for a tiny fraction of the price. You can find lovely flats in the urban center Sofia, Bulgaria for less than $500 pcm, pay basically no local taxes, access the quality of music/museums/restaurants you'd expect in any other capital city, use a solid public transport system, and get healthcare that beats the USA in both quality and cost. Add in a gorgeous countryside, safety orders of magnitude better than major US cities, and decent English skills among the younger generations and it's a very easy place to pass a year or two. Something to consider for retirement too. Trying to convince my parents to give that a go, since they'd be able to live like kings on their modest savings rather than developing ulcers from constant fear of retirement ending healthcare mishaps.


I second this, I would add Croatia to the list if you stay out of Zagreb and Split and even seaside tourist towns are doable for $300 out of season (October to June). Also Croatia offers a digital nomad visa which means you don't pay most of the taxes there.


Which levels of security will you find in Croatia - including appropriate behaviour of public officers, such as the police?

Also - how widespread is the understanding of the English language?


This 35-year-old left the U.S. for Croatia: ‘I live on $47 a day — here’s a look at how I spend my time’

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/21/this-35-year-old-expat-lives...


47 dollars a day is not cheap, that's 1500USD per month, for that I can easily live in Prague, most likely even in Vienna or Berlin


In my experience, even the worst parts of Croatia are safer and have more responsible cops than the sketchy parts of any mid-sized US city. Young people are fluent in English, along with most well-off middle-aged folks who know enough to consume the internet/English movies and television since Croatian isn't a hugely used language in media. Elderly people who don't live in touristic areas may know very little English but it's rarely a problem.


From what I understand it is very safe and fairly low corruption. English is widespread, especially in cities and costal towns with tourism. It is an absolutely gorgeous country, very Italian in character, but minus the chaos and cheaper as well.


Low corruption is not a reasonable description of any of the Balkan countries. Croatia is a little bit better than Serbia, Montenegro and Albania, but on corruption indexes is still considered to be one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.


This is really not something that a tourist / remote worker will ever experience.


Not in Croatia, but I have experienced corruption as a tourist in Serbia and Bosnia:

- Serbia: Driving in Novi Sad, and another driver illegally passed me and hit my car coming back into traffic, causing a few hundred euro in damage to my car. He got out and yelled me and then drove off before exchanging any info. I had photos of his license plates, but multiple Serbian friends advised me to not deal with it because it would ultimately come down to who was more able to deal with the nuance of bribing the police. On the other hand, I once stupidly left my Macbook Pro on a flight landing in Belgrade, and it ended up in the hands of the airport police, who handled everything professionally.

- Bosnia: Driving into the country, with insurance that's valid in Bosnia (and every country in Europe), which it says right on my insurance form. The immigration officer denies this and sends me over to his buddy 20m away to buy "Bosnian insurance". Only €30, but definitely corruption.


In my experience police was extremely professional in every interaction. Hell, I've even witnessed them refusing a bribe (body cameras tend to do that). Healthcare is also cheap. Had multiple tests to determine whether I needed an operation with no health insurance (I was on a vacation there that time) and it cost me below 150€.

As for language, of course, your experience will depend on where you want to live in the country. North-east sees less tourists than the coast, and finding that sweet middle might take some trial and error.


I can also highly recommend Bulgaria (Sofia). With 1000$ you'll have a decent lifestyle there. I did my Erasmus there with less money. The people are extremely helpful and friendly to foreigners. There is also a tech scene with meetups etc, were you can connect with other people. As a side note BG has the most beatiful women in the world...


I'd largely agree on the Balkans, though the trick would either to be in one of the large cities, or in the real countryside. A lot of the smaller cities are pretty depressing. I've been to every country in the Balkans except for Romania (which barely qualifies), and in terms of bang-for-your-buck, Tirana is probably one of the more interesting cities. It has less gritty big-city feeling (if that's your thing) than Sofia or Belgrade, but still a surprisingly nice central district (for Europe's second poorest country). I have even recommended it specifically for cases like this: it's a cheap place to hang out in Europe that feels genuinely European, but where the cost of living is more on par with Latin America.

Parts of Greece can also be surprisingly affordable (with much better infrastructure than Albania), particularly if you hit a place that's a summer hot-spot in the off-season.


Smaller towns in North Greece can be cheap nowadays. Especially the ones that don't have universities. About the infrastructure, might good or awful, depends on where you live.


>Due to the Turkish lira collapsing

That doesn't bold well for stability. Hungry did appear on my list, the rent seems very very low.

Right now I'm trying to see where COVID-19 will be in a few months. If it's still not possible to travel easily, I might need to stay and save for a bit longer.


The lira has been down for quite some time. I wouldn't consider it indicative of future instability.

Hungary is also a good (and affordable) choice. Budapest is probably one of the most interesting cities in Europe, IMO.


Hungary does have the Orban and anti-LGBT situations, so your personal comfort at living in such an environment is something to consider.


It's not as severe as advertised.


Turkey is stable, maybe there could be revolution, but normal traveler will hardly notice. Airport may be closed for couple of days. I was there during coup.

Also turkey is big and diverse, so if borders closes, it is still large country to travel. It hardly puts any limitations on foreigners.


You list Ukraine as safe. How's the current thing with Russia?


Lviv is in the western part of Ukraine, about 1,000km from the fighting in the east. Completely safe.

For comparison, Lviv to Donetsk is a greater distance than Berlin to Paris or London to Milan, and only slightly less than New York to Chicago.


I have heard very nice things about Lviv from friends and family, small but very pretty and extremely cheap.


You can use Nomad List[0] to get an idea of possible options. Eastern Europe, South America, South East Asia are all viable options with vibrant communities with people like you.

[0]https://nomadlist.com/


+1 for nomadlist, a great community has already done all the hard work on this subject.


Rather than looking at entire countries as a whole you should consider the urban vs rural split. Major cities in Eastern Europe or Korea or even third world countries are still going to be a lot more expensive than, say, some random town 200 miles outside of San Francisco or New York. First decide what kind of lifestyle you are looking for.


Depends on what you count as major cities; the second biggest city in any EE country will be much cheaper than the capital. But in Eastern Europe you also get health insurance much cheaper than in the US.


Not true for Romania, where Cluj is more expensive than Bucharest.

Also not true in Germany where Munich is more expensive than Berlin.

Probably not true in most countries.


I don't count Germany into Eastern Europe; there are historical reasons why Berlin is cheaper than some western German cities. Certainly what I wrote is true for Czechia (Brno cheaper than Prague), Slovakia (Kosice cheaper than Bratislava), quite sure also for Hungary, probably Serbia, Bulgaria and Ukraine too.


Cheap? May be. But the care is terrible too. Me and my wife pay upwards of 1500 EUR per month. We are healthy young people. My recent experience with public health care in Germany shows how terrible it is.


Is cluj really more expensive? Maybe for the average Romanian, but expat areas in Bucharest are the priciest in the country, last I checked.

I'm half Romanian and have been considering doing what OP is doing for a while. Cluj was probably going to be my choice, in case I wanted to hire any students.


But very rural and fast internet are often incompatible terms


It's very compatible in Japan, symmetrical 1Gbps FTTH is virtually on everywhere. Oppositely, there are many urban apartments only support rotten builtin internet, that significantly worse than FTTH.


One thing I'll mention for US citizens. Aetna's Mobile Healthcare Plan seems fairly reasonable. I'm paying around $300 a month total for coverage for my partner and me (most comprehensive coverage, highest deductible). Apparently it's still valid in the US so long as you spend the simple majority of your time outside of the US (i.e. 6 months abroad).

https://www.aetnainternational.com/en/individuals/health-pla...


In the U.S. it’s not enough to have health insurance: You also need to make sure that the healthcare providers you care about accept it.

Furthermore, there’s a wrinkle to watch out for where “renewing” a policy is actually “buying a new policy”. A new diagnosis under the current policy then becomes a disqualifying “pre-existing condition” when trying to get the new policy.


Every time I hear about the US healthcare system I’m amazed at how dehumanizing and user hostile it is.


I thought pre-existing condition was outlawed by Obamacare.


These are international plans designed for Americans living abroad. They might offer coverage within the US for temporary visits home, usually at additional cost, but they are not ACA plans, do not have to comply with the ACA rules, and do not meet the requirements for minimum essential coverage under the ACA.


Wow, that is extremely reasonable. I'm looking to FIRE in the next year and live >6 months abroad, and as a single person, any amount of coverage for <$300/month is a godsend and will not eat into my retirement significantly.


The problem you might run into is that if you're not spending at least 330 days out of every 365-day period abroad or, alternatively, don't establish bona fide residence in a foreign country, if you're an American citizen or permanent resident you will still be required to have health insurance that qualifies as minimum essential coverage under the ACA, or pay a penalty.

These expat health insurance plans are designed for expats living abroad, not US residents who spend time (even a significant amount) outside of the US each year.


Is there something like this for domestic health insurance (ie. no time abroad)?

Is there any risk they would drop you if you or your partner had a major illness or injury?


An ACA plan + Federal tax credit if you're between 100% and 400% of Federal poverty level.

https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-fami...

https://www.healthcare.gov/lower-costs/


You can live in almost any city in India for less than 1k USD per month. In Bangalore (Tier-1 City), rent for a 1-bed-hall-kitchen apartment will be around 200 USD. Add 10 USD per month for high speed internet. Another 100 USD per month for a dedicated maid and cook. Add 200 USD for all kind of grocery. That will be around 500 USD per month of living expenses.

You can live in Varkala/Goa (if you love beaches) and Dharmshala/Shimla (if you love mountains) for even less.


Which cities have the best weather and are safest? I’ve thought about relocating as an American born indian (abcd as the natives call it..)


yeah, good luck working with daily power outages


It depends on the city. I am living in Mumbai since 2014 and faced power outage only once which was due to grid failure caused by some cyber attack.

Otherwise, there is uninterrupted power supply 24x7x365.


If you are planning on working in India, Hyperjuice[1] is your friend (or similar).

[1] https://www.hypershop.com/collections/hyperjuice


Central Portugal: an hours drive to the beach and incredibly low cost of living at small towns. Amazing food and weather, very low crime rate, easy access to well connected international airports (Porto), easy access to regional tech hubs (Lisbon and Porto)

Example: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Viseu


With 850 euros, you don't live well in Portugal.. you survive. Disclosure: I live part-time there and I love it.


Do you have a family, by any chance? I've been thinking about moving to Portugal, some smaller town but not too far from Porto or Lisbon, but I don't really know how much a family would need. (I have a wife and 2 kids)


I have family, but they are based in Germany, but everything depends IMO if your kids are able to speak Portuguese or not. That for sure would impact your budget for education. Living in Setubal/Almada, you can plan a 700-800 euro/month rent, 300-500 for supermarket, 100-300 transportation and then education in case your kids need a private school. The costs with transport may vary if you have to commute daily to Lisbon, if you use car or not and etc.


Hey, thanks for the reply! My kids are fluent in Portuguese and I would probably enroll them in public schools. So you think a 2500 monthly budget for a family of 4 would be doable? (I raised your estimates to account for emergencies, healthcare, etc - btw, sorry for bothering you)


Yes, you will be able to survive, for sure. Some studies (2017, https://sicnoticias.pt/economia/2017-07-04-Que-rendimento-e-... ) suggest that EUR 2.200/month would be enough (depending on your long term plans, kids ages and extra needs).


Lots and lots of places. Plenty of the world is safe, cheap and easy to live in for a few months.

Do you have any specific time zone requirements? That makes a big difference if collaborating with anyone.

The length of time you can stay on a tourist visa has a big impact. It is limited to 90 days in most of the EU where there are open borders. You would need to fully exit the schengen zone countries for 90 days to be eligible for another 90. This is one of the things that makes Croatia and Bulgaria popular, since they are within the EU, but outside schengen. A few countries are starting digital nomad visas, so if you want to stay longer you can look into those.

Not sure what your vibe is, but check out Bansko, Bulgaria as a nice summer and winter destination with a good set of coworking spaces, extremely cheap cost of living and expat/digital nomad community. Lisbon and Chiang Mai are also very popular in the DN community. Really a lot of this would depend on the time of year for me since I like being places when the weather is nice.

And an obligatory mention of health insurance in these covid times. Travel insurance can be quite cheap and the health care systems of other countries can have vastly reduced prices as well, just make sure you have looked into this and made a plan.


Malaysia is very doable as a single person. Everyone speaks English, lots of good food. Coliving spaces were quite popular before the pandemic, where some entrepreneurs would rent an apartment and work together, but I don't know where you'd meet people like that.

Foreign visas are also quite loose. You could get an entrepreneurship visa (see the MDEC site). There's a rapidly growing games and animation industry too, so you might be able to find people you'd like to work with.


How's safety.

As far as I can tell America is more dangerous than most other places.


It's quite good. Violent crime is low, very unlikely to get kidnapped or stabbed. Robberies and mugging happens but I don't think it's much worse than average.

Healthcare is up to West European standards and is part of the $1000/month. Coronavirus deaths per pop is at #100th rank or so. The current wave is very bad, with daily cases at about 6th globally, but KL area is about 80% adults fully vaccinated now.

Roads are dangerous if you're driving. Corruption is lowish by Asian standards, high by Western standards. It's at a level where you can choose to bribe the nice policeman or report him, but you're unlikely to be arrested on skin color. We don't have many drug lords; organized criminals run government [1] or take on gov contracts.

Would you like statistics instead of anecdotes? A lot don't exist past 2005 or so, and be aware that many official stats abuse statistics [2]. I'm sure you can search the stats yourself, I'm just here to provide a view.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/najib-razak-former-malaysian-pr...

[2] https://twitter.com/dghisham/status/1427814223036370954


I was sure you were wrong. You are absolutely correct.

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Malaysia/U...


The thing I mentioned about statistics applies. Crimes are underreported in Malaysia. I get the impression they're overreported in the US.

Sometimes it's fairly innocent e.g. a lot of people feel the police are the last resort. People are known to "settle" accidents. Even burglaries; you can have a gentleman's agreement that the robbers will inform all their friends that this house has been robbed and there's nothing left to take, while the victims agree not to tell the cops. Or say, a teenager caught for drugs may not be reported, because the punishment is death. They'll just be expelled, beat up, or let off with a warning.


Being in a major American city, I'd argue crime it's under reported here too.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/after-san-francisco-sho...

Of course this is going to depend on the city, but for example when I went to Europe, I felt so at ease compared to living in America.


Yeah especially in a city for 1k a month, although if you pick the right type of rural crime is almost nonexistent.


Come to Taiwan.

My rent per month is about 336USD (live alone), I spend about 400USD per month on foods, and that's because I'm too lazy to eat out that I basically Ubereat everyday. (If you choose Taipei, the cost would be a bit higher, The point to live in Taipei is the convenience and it's more approachable to newcomers)

There's a lot foreigners in Taiwan, so it won't be much trouble to blend in I guess.

We have a excellent control over the pandemic, we welcome you as long as you respect the rules and are willing to self-discipline (especially in this pandemic).

Here I got a Discord server that a lot of members are foreigners in Taiwan: https://discordapp.com/invite/zFBqpET


As an outsider, do you have concern or daily impacts on your lift with the current China/Taiwan political issues? Maybe I’m misinformed but right now things seem a little more tense than they have been historically.


Daily life is not affected at all, even economic is same or maybe better after Chinese tourists stop coming to Taiwan for general public.

To be honest, the overall situation is usually better then I expected, international/domestics politics, economic, etc.

Do war breaks out tomorrow? I don't know, it could be, but it never happened in these years even though they threaten every year to subdue us.


Great

I was actually thinking Kaohsiung.

How is it for an English speaker ?

I really just want some place quiet and cheap


People are helpful in general and will try to talk with you, but their English will most likely be on a poor level. It's much easier to get around if you know at least a little Mandarin.

Also, it's a total opposite of "some place quiet" :) All the major Taiwanese cities are very densely populated, busy and loud.


Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Lithuania. Of these countries Romania and Hungary have the fastest internet speed. See this map and click NUTS-3 https://datavis.europeandatajournalism.eu/obct/connectivity/

They seem to have faster internet speeds than some western countries like the UK and Germany. They seem lower on crime too: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2...

Outside Europe there are lots of others, but I don't know about internet speed and crime rate. Just that the culture would be very different from the US. You can sort by monthly income here https://www.worlddata.info/cost-of-living.php


Vilnius can be done for $1k/mo. Rents would be $300-600, food is like $100, health insurance for non-schengen is another $200/mo. Nightlife is fun too, not expensive. Vilnius is not exactly progressive but largely chill on issues of race and alternate sexuality.


Warning in Hungary though, with Orban's government if you are not perfectly white, straight and Christian you might want to avoid it.


Hah, that's quite the caricature. You should diversify the media you consume.


Which media? Hungary's main opposition media was closed after 60 years of existence. The prosecutor general and constitutional courts have been taken over by the ruling party. Violences have exploded.

I agree that sometimes it might be hard to detect when a government is slipping from a populist phase to outright fascism, but in this case the overwhelming amount of evidence makes it clearcut.

And independently from any possible interpretation, when a government tell you explicitly that you are not welcome, ignore the warning at your own peril.


I live in Slovakia and I have spent €4112.09 in entire 2020 on everything (housing, food, hobbies, ...), I don't have a car so that could raise your spending (although you should not need one, you're be sitting on your ass making a game, mass transit is decent too). I also live in my own 1 room apartment so no rent, but bills are like 120/month (heating, water, maintenance, ...). Health insurance is €80/month. Internet costs €7/month for 80 MBit/s. Cheapest shared local lamp web hosting costs €3/month. Lunch in restaurant €5. Avoid capital and go to second or third largest city. If you are not white you will get stares.


So I like this idea and I’ve spent a little time in other countries doing something similar. The one caveat I’d say is that although it’s cheaper to avoid major cities it can be quite isolating. Depending on the level of english in the country you go to (I assume you are an English only speaker) you might end up not having a meaningful conversation in the flesh for weeks. I spent about 2 months in Portugal doing something similar and even though I sought out English speakers my conversational ability decreased dramatically, it was very strange. By the end I was literally stumbling over words and unable to make small talk with people. I regained it after a couple of weeks, but I was definitely more in my own head than usual.

In a small secondary city you have a much lower chance of meeting ex pats to talk to (depending of course on the country)


> Depending on the level of english in the country you go to (I assume you are an English only speaker) you might end up not having a meaningful conversation in the flesh for weeks.

One should absolutely, 100% make a good faith effort to learn the language of any country you intend to long-term reside in.

It's for your own health. For my two cents, it'll massively improve your standing in the community because you won't seem like some fly-by-night foreigner (common reputation of americans, which is fine when being somewhere as a tourist but not long term) and will allow you to have serious conversations with people or at least give you a reason to try and have conversations with people (who are generally nice about foreigners attempting to pick up the local language).


> One should absolutely, 100% make a good faith effort to learn the language of any country you intend to long-term reside in.

This is a good ideal but as an expat currently living in East Asia, reality doesn't always match the ideal.

1. Some languages take a dedicated effort to learn in any meaningful way. For example, unless you're a language maestro, you're not going to pick up Chinese with a casual effort. If you're working, have a family, etc., you might not be able to make the kind of concerted, consistent effort required to become proficient.

2. I've been to places where if the locals know you speak the language, they will treat you more like a local, which isn't always a good thing.

3. In terms of having serious conversations, keep in mind that language ≠ culture. In some places, the biggest barrier to overcome is culture, not language.

Also, in my own experience traveling and living abroad, there really isn't a "fly-by-night foreigner" stereotype that's applied uniquely to Americans. In fact, as an American, in lots of places, locals will be really interested to talk to you because a) American pop culture is so well known globally and b) they don't encounter Americans nearly as frequently as they do nationalities who tend to travel more than Americans. For instance, in much of Asia, pre-pandemic there were a lot more Australians and Europeans than Americans.

In lots of places, your "standing in the community" will be based on socioeconomic and residency factors. For example, where I live currently, the fact that I'm American, have residency through business ownership, live in a luxury apartment, etc. affects how I am perceived more than my inability to speak the language.


> you might end up not having a meaningful conversation in the flesh for weeks

So pretty similar to the last 18 months.


Lots of places in Pakistan and India you can do that on $1000 USD a month. If you don't do really well with hot weather you could pick a traditional hill station location (Murree, Darjeeling, Shimla, etc). They have lots of domestic tourism accommodation, I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible to negotiate month-to-month terms with some of the property owners there.


Why would anyone in their right mind go to Pakistan? Straight up dangerous for women, most places are dangerous for men as well.

Sure they have nice mountains, but you have those in much safer places as well.

When someone recommends Pakistan I feel like they’re saying: “Sure, Hell is a bit hot but it has great view”.


Stop watching CNN too much :) Pakistan is perfectly safe option and is a fast-growing economy with a significant IT industry.


I have coworkers from Pakistan, only women who doesn’t wear a headscarf is very rich and lives in gated community. She told me she definitely can’t go outside that gated community or she would be assaulted. YouTube videos display mostly men in the streets. If I can’t go somewhere with my wife the way she is, guess what, I won’t be going there, nor western women should neither.


Pakistan's homicide rate is lower than the US. PK has 3.88 homicides per 100k/year, the US has 4.96.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...


Yeah, Pakistan is definitely safer than living in the US (/s). Something tells me the numbers in that table are self reported.


Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir seem to be pretty safe


I’ve been to both Pakistan and India and would not recommend Pakistan. You can’t get things you want in Pakistan, it’s dangerous and to be honest besides the food there isn’t anything to do.


I'd not recommend even India - unbearable air pollution, unbearable outdoor temperatures for many months and daily blackouts to start with


What things precisely? Unless you went to a remote village, most cities have tech stuff readily available. Ofcourse, it's nothing like US.


How would Pakistan be for a long-term visit for a woman traveler? I've zoomed around some of the mountainous areas on google maps and as I'm interested in the hiking/mountaineering areas and one thing I've noticed is that there are ZERO photos of female travelers on any of the google images from those areas. Basically anywhere outside of Karachi I am not seeing pictures of women.

Between that and this recent thread on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/pakistan/comments/pb5l2k/how_can_yo...

I had been ranking it lower on my travel wish-list.


Frankly would not recommend it for solo travel unless the woman in question is a really tough individual with experience in even more difficult developing-nation environments.


Curious about Pakistan. Are you from there? Which cities besides Murree would you recommend?


I am from there. Hunza is a popular place to visit, the internet is not-so-great. Islamabad is awesome if you want balance between awesome internet and mountains.

If you want the best food, go to Karachi.


> If you want the best food, go to Karachi.

Come on man, don't mislead others like this. Everyone here knows you go to Lahore for good food :)


Lahore makes best donkey biryani, sure.


how's the internet in those areas?


I get better/more reliable internet on my phone in India than I do in my condo in Canada some days


This. I moved to Canada from India and was appalled at the mobile internet infrastructure here. It is a ripoff.


Romania, some major city that's not the capital. The outskirts of Cluj are perfect, maybe Sibiu or Brasov.

Access to all sorts of nature and activities, affordable housing (big apartments, could even find a nice detached house for less than $500), great food from around Europe, great selection of restaurants/fast food, easy access to the rest of Europe and the world, lovely people who will speak English enthusiastically (maybe not that well though) and of course great Internet for very cheap.

$1000/mo without paying local taxes is enough for all of the above.

In the cities, crime is very low if you're worried (the criminals moved west lol), bureaucracy is on par with Germany (OK that means it's shit), corruption is very low. Whole damn country is a hidden jewel of Europe. Just maybe not that affordable to locals heh.


I love your country, your people and your food. I've been several times and considered living there (ultimately, plans changed). By all means, promote it. But not with lies. Corruption is a big problem in Romania: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_Romania


To be honest, you'll most likely encounter corruption if you intend to operate a business, especially if said business has anything to do with any level of government. As an ordinary resident you might have to deal with bureaucracy, but that's not different than in any other European country. I might have a rosy picture of the state of things, since I only come here on vacations and to visit family, but I was born and raised here and I think I can see significant improvements on this front.


+1 on this. Gorgeous landscape, very fast and cheap internet and cell networks. Decent number of people speaking decent English, especially amongst the urban youth. Not as cheap as it used to be, but still cheaper than Western Europe.


I second this, Romania is really lovely. North side of the Carpathians, with proximity to forest.


A keyword that should pull up quite a bit of related information would be: "Digital Nomad" (though I'd think covid is still throwing a wrench into much of that).

The most "stereotypical" answer is Thailand, which offers cheap internet, food, month-to-month accommodations, friendly to visa runners (hopping over the border for a day and coming back into country every X months to reset your visa), quite a bit to do, and is also pretty safe.


justinram11 says>"The most "stereotypical" answer is Thailand,:<

But it's so bloody hot!


Just FYI you will only be able to stay for 3 months in most places on a tourist visa.

Most places do offer 6 month visas for artists and for things like what you are doing, but you should try and sort out this plan before you arrive at your destination, because once there you may find it harder to turn your tourist visa into something else.

Either that or you will have to travel to multiple places that do not share the same travel restrictions.


I remember the trick was to fly to another place and re-enter just a few days later to get another 3 month visa. Doesn't work anymore?


Depends on the country. It won't work in the Schengen because the visa waiver is 90 days within a 180 day stretch.


Not like anybody is checking this, I'm speaking from e experience. I had several coworkers over the years who used to live for much longer in Schengen countries without registration. In Austria this works moderately well so does it in Hungary, but of course it has some drawbacks too. Usually in countries where people tend to curb laws to their liking as well as "forget" to pay taxes (this is the case for Hungary) more often than not, this visa situation not a big deal


Yes, yes they are.


Enforcement may be discretionary in some regions, but like all arrangements like this, don't stake your life on such.


Depends on the country. Many weren't keeping digital records but most now are.


Some places started offering remote work visas:

https://expertvagabond.com/digital-nomad-work-visas/


Detroit - In 2021 30.6% of the city's population lives below the US federal poverty level. For a single person that's $16,000 a year.

Pros - Large spirited startup community

Negatives - High levels of crime. Snow and cold weather in the winter months.


It's all depending on your life style. Even in a low wage country you would need more than the average Joe makes in that country or you are used to Western standards. I lived Ukraine for some years. Many local Devs around me were making around 3k living a good life. But I needed much more. I wanted to travel a lot. I wanted to drive expensive cars. And I wanted to live in a fancy apartment. And I also didn't like to cook. So I went to restaurants and clubs a lot. I spend around 6k minimum a month. As a nomad you need to make min 8k a month to be sustainable and live good. As a developer not that hard to make.


If you want to have a great experience, I would suggest South of Brazil (something like country from Rio Grande do Sul or Santa Catarina), Buenos Aires in Argentina, or my favorite spot Montevideo, Uruguay. In the 3 options, you can live well with 1k USD and have one of the best times of your life, without a super huge cultural shock. Have fun!


South of Brazil is alright, but as someone who lives in Porto Alegre it is not really 'safe'.

By far the best place to live in Brasil is São paulo (state) countryside. Very safe cities, close to urban centers, not expensive at all. Santos is also pretty nice but 1k might fall short.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_S%C3...


well, with 1k USD in Sao Paulo, almost 5k BRL, you won't do much. For sure its the best city, but I'm sure in cities like Jaragua do Sul, Blumenau and Floripa in Santa Catarina, is way cheaper and with a great live quality. Regarding Rio Grande do Sul, I wasnt thinking about Porto Alegre, but Sao Leopoldo and Caxias do Sul. BTW Rio Grande do Sul has a great game development scene.


+1 about South of Brazil. USD 1k with BRL as it is, it's more than enough to get an entire middle-class apartment for yourself and pay for all utilities in any neighborhood. (I'd not recommend largest southeast cities because you could feel "back" in L.A. traffic).

As I've experienced trying to rent a place in SF, in Brazil even largest cities are _waaay_ easier. You'd have to talk directly to an owner (since it would be difficult for you to prove income) but it wouldn't be a problem finding them and renting for less than a year.

Language will not be a problem, there's a startup scene if you feel like talking shop, and plenty of places to see and visit. You'd have all the infrastructure to stay for a long time.


I live in Uruguay, it's not an alternative, it is very expensive. Good quality of life, but you don't live well on that budget. You need up to 2k a month (one person) to live well. Brazil and Argentina are very insecure and economically unstable.


I live in the south of Brazil, it's pretty safe, but it depends on the city.

You can go pretty far with 1k USD here. Also pretty well served in terms of free healthcare, but I don't know how it works for foreigners.


You can get a tourism healthcare plan. I have one that I use while I'm outside of Europe, I pay less than 10 euros/year and can spend up to 90 days abroad of EU.


I came to say that Argentina is a very good option. You can live more than fine with that amount (specially if you sell USD in the black market, which at the moment pays like 70% more than banks). You’ll also be able to meet a lot of high quality artists, programmers, etc. There are a lot of coworking spaces, a local game dev scene, nice restaurants, a vibrant cultural scene, etc. There are many things to complain about, but coming as a tourist you might very well love it. Buenos Aires is pretty pretty safe, as long as you avoid certain places and behaviors (e.g. don’t dress like a tourist and flash expensive things).


I currently live in Montevideo and it's surprisingly expensive. Complaining about the prices is very very common. That said, it's very nice and safe with great quality of life overall. It does get a bit boring over time.


Isn't Argentina currently under a strict lockdown?


I fail to find in the question, the time period when the user is planning to do it. I wasn't assuming he is planning to do it literally right now.


In Latin America you can try Chile, we are doing OK with the pandemic compared to other countries, we are in opening phase now, housing can be not that cheap but you may try sharing an apartment/room/house.

The south can be pretty nice and chill compared to the capital (see Canada vs US), but you have less services the more you are in rural areas. Dunno how the prices are there, though. Capital's downtown can be very calm compared to the hell of Santiago's (too much peasants on the road!), but in Santiago you have museums and All-the-nice-stuff(tm) like architecture and European-like roads, metro to everywhere,etc. It can feel like living in another country sometimes, but some things costs more.

Same with Valparaíso or Viña, doesnt look that good but at least you have beaches and a lot of services.

Beware our spanish dialect, we use lots of loanwords and nonstandard stuff sometimes...


I would suggest Vietnam but I don't know anybody there with gigabit internet. If you consider best case 100mbps good then here's my pitch

Move to a big city in Vietnam. Pay less than $400 for a 1 bedroom serviced apartment (they clean it ~3 times per week, usually they do your laundry). You can get vegan food pretty easily, it's hot in the summer but you can just stay indoors with AC or go to businesses with AC. Tons of mall and theathers. Movie tickets are $2-$4, double that for soda + popcorn. A cheap meal will be $2, even less if you have a light lunch (think bánh mì) for $1. I'd usually spent $5 per meal or more just to eat foreign food after getting homesick. You can live in a trendier part of town by paying slightly more and be within walking distance of trendy western cafes/restaurants. You can take a motorbike taxi (pretty comfy outside of rush hour) for $5 all the way across town (20km) and a lot less if it's a shorter distance. During rush hour I like to take a car and that'll be $10 for a 9km trip usually.

Plane tickets to other cities will be $40 one-way for vacation/travel purposes. Cheaper hotels $20/night and visiting beautiful beaches is very accessible. Travel to nearby countries (Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, China) for around $200 in airfare. It's a great staging ground for the area.

You seem American, so you can get a 1 year tourist visa (just need to get out of the country every 3 months, use it to visit another country for a few days) without any additional documents (no financial documents, etc).


You can live in some areas in Spain for under $1k/month (outside the main cities of Madrid and Barcelona). I lived some years in Andalusia and my budget was usually around 600eur/month. Not a luxurious life, but Spain has really good services/transportation/infra (including internet) and the weather is difficult to beat.


Paraguay. Cost of living $300/mo in Asuncion. You can get permanent visa allowing you full rights to live and work for life by depositing 5k in local bank.


Also, the best coffee I have ever had in my life.


Lowest average rent by state in the US is West Virginia at $628. That means some parts of West Virginia must be much cheaper than that. $400 for food and utilities seems easily doable, but probably not healthcare, so you're likely going to have to be uninsured and pray you don't get sick or injured for 6 months. I'm guessing you'd sage on moving and travel expenses by staying in the US, but maybe not enough compared to some truly cheap countries. I had a good friend in college from Kazakhstan and her family had a 20 bedroom mansion there appraised at the equivalent of about $40,000 USD.


I'm in Morgantown, West Virginia. A university city (cities don't get very large in West Virginia, the state only has 1.8 million people; it has seen zero population expansion for 90 years).

Sold my house not long ago, moved to Morgantown, and I'm renting now. My rent for around 900 sq ft is sub $700. Electric + water + Comcast is a combined $100, that covers all of my utilities. I'm under $800 for rent + utilities and under $1,000 for rent + utilities + food.

Crime is low, as is the murder rate; I don't think there has been a murder here in roughly five years. The Internet is great (Comcast goes up to 1.2gbps here for $80/month, but I don't have a use for that). There's a decent bus system that goes to most parts of the city and is cheap to use. The area, and really the state in general, is overwhelmingly green; drive a short distance in any direction and you've escaped civilization. There's skiing an hour away in the Winter, and a few popular lakes within that distance as well. Oddly housing prices are higher than they should be for the income levels of the region, and it has been that way for a long time, so that's a downside (but this is relatively speaking, as you can buy a nice house here for under $400k; for anyone working in tech remote it's not expensive). It is a boring, docile, quiet region, and that's not everyone's cup of tea; the restaurants are lacking, and there's no consequential nightlife; the nearest relevant city, Pittsburgh, is 80 minutes away.

In the US, university cities - which the US has a lot of - are often the hidden gems of combining safe (low crime, low murder rate) + a relatively low cost of living.


Almost anywhere in France, except in big cities.

Pros:

-you get a free healthcare coverage.

-cost of life is reasonable (again, outside of big cities where accomodation is expensive).

-internet connection is good and cheap.

-you will enjoy a few benefits after some paper work. Ex.: the RSA, which is around 500€ you get with very little conditions (not having any revenue, being at least for 3 months in France, having a regular visa, etc.).

-you can legally start to earn money by being declared as auto-entrepreneur, with very little paper work (also with a regular working visa, and with some revenue cap).

Cons:

-language: better find some friend who can speak the language, especially when dealing with the administration.

-check carefully where you settle beforehand, France is one of the most crime-prone country in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...).

To be honest, I would not recommend it because of the last point.


Sure, the crime rate is high for Europe, but in context it's not that far away from California[0].

But I think for European countries France is on the expensive side, but it's true that you get healthcare, and you can make do with 1k

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/232564/robbery-rate-in-t...


You could live in rural Finland on $1k USD, although frugally.

The upsides: lots of peace and quiet, excellent infrastructure, almost no crime, progressive Scandinavian values, almost everybody speaks English.

The downsides: long dark winter, sparsely populated, quiet people don't actively seek interaction with newcomers.

Probably not ideal unless you're serious about just huddling down to work.


Not quite $1k per month, but in the cheap areas of the UK you can rent for $620/mo, call bills another $230. After adding food, you won't be far over $1000. Just in case you wanted an English speaking country and could stretch the budget.


You'd be really pushed to live on $150/m food. That's £110. Even if you went veggie, super healthy, cooked yourself I think you'd struggle. And zero going out or booze...


You can do it even cheaper than that: there’s a one-bedroom studio flat on Rightmove right now for $380pcm in Newtown, mid-Wales, for example. Newtown itself is ok but the surrounding countryside is gorgeous.


How cheap is Norwich?


Not the cheapest. Rent would be more like $900.


1000 USD = 850 EUR. You could get by in Estonia, though not very lavishly. An average quality rental apartment is ca. 400-600 EUR/month in the capitol Tallinn. So you'd have some money left for food and stuff. There's free public transport. But the average net-wage is around 1200 EUR, so you'd have to sacrifice some things compared even to the average Estonian. But you'd win in having a small IT friendly city to live in.


1000USD is quite a big amount in India. You can live like a king with 150-200mbps, eat out frequently, go to pubs on weekends. Location Bangalore. The weather is mostly pleasant throughout the year.


Pichilemu, Valparaíso (Viña del Mar) or Santiago of Chile are actually pretty good, safe and cheap, and there's a Google node just a couple of streets of the port in Valpo.

Chile is also 8th in the world in Fixed Broadband. source: https://www.speedtest.net/global-index


Can confirm as a Chilean. Santiago gets more expensive as you approach the main part of the city (Which offers more amenities), but overall, living with 1k USD is very doable (specially with the actual conversion rate).

Living in other regions will be MUCH cheaper, but they tend to be more simple (outside the tourists hubs).


As others have said you could do this in many places - including countries that are generally more expensive like Germany (350-450€ for a small flat in Leipzig). In practice the main challenge might be finding a short-term rental for as low as people staying a year or more, so factor that in to your search.


I just left Kenya which has a couple of things going for it:

- $1k allows you to comfortably live a upper middle class life-style

- It has a thriving tech scene, lots of interesting startups coming up (I know because I just had to close mine) and lots of techies looking for work.

- $1k also pays the salary of a decent developer there

- It is culturally very different to the US and offers interesting perspectives

Things I did not enjoy:

- A quite "negative" post-colonial mind-set. I struggled to deeply connect with locals because there is a big divide. This is a complicated topic imo.

- Traffic in Nairobi is bad


Perhaps Costa Rica if your ok with a standard of living the same as the locals? Most call centers there pay around $1000 a month for those with good English skills and an education, and their healthcare (universal healthcare) and education systems seem efficient and well ran.


I recommend Thailand. I don't live there anymore but I used to. It's very doable to live on $1000/mo if you don't live in the center of Bangkok (try Chiang Mai) and eat local food. You have the added bonus of a huge expat and digital nomad community, including many game developers, and no problems doing everything in English. Most things are no-hassle, no big deposits, etc, you just pay, and that's it.

And nice beaches aren't far away.


Grandview, MO.

There are homes for sale for as low as $80k, so you can not only live cheap but build equity.

It’s a splurge on your budget but Google Fiber is available.

Grandview is the poor side of town and many people live very cheap. The amenities of the KC area are nearby, many of them free. The parks are great.


I suggest Colombia, you can find greatest rentals for less than 300 USD, and cheap cost of life and amazing food as well. Thinking in cities like Bucaramanga, Santa Marta, etc.


How's the crime and safety situation in Colombia recently? Many years back a good friend of mine lived there for a significant amount of time and it seemed quite unsafe.


A lot, lot better than it used be. I went there in 2017 (or maybe it was 2018) and there were lots of places that Colombians from other parts of the country (or even other parts of the same city) were scared of, but we perfectly safe when you went there yourself. There are places you shouldn't go, but the safe places are pretty safe.


I would say it's fairly reasonable. It's not like a war territory or anything like that. You find big areas that are pretty normal in terms of what to expect, only small crime, and to feel safe it's a matter of being self aware and reduce the attack surface. As it's in many other countries around the world, is more a question of being privy of where the shady neighborhoods or what are the avoidable zones around town. I am colombian and I live in Bogota, so I can answer more questions if you want.

I love the Colombian caribbean coast, so that is why is my first recommendation to the OP, the weather is perfect almost all year round, and with a modest budget he can definitively have a moderate (and even higher) lifestyle with no much compromises.


Medellin is reasonably safe if you stay out of certain areas, and has "eternal spring" (close to equator, but high elevation). The homicide rate of Colombia is 5x USA, which in turn is 5x Germany, which in turn is 5x Singapore.


In Colombia being able to pass by a Colombian is a must if you want to live in cheap places.

This means to assure that you can get a solid tan before the arrival, keep a low-key profile and try to keep your mouth shut in crowded places to hide your non Colombian accent, even if your Spanish is fluid.


++ for Colombia. Healthcare is good for non-citizens, too. Depending on the city, it is high quality, IMO.


How is Santa Marta? Debating on that, visited Cartagena and was not impressed, Also $300/week seems to be the norm for an eh place.

Cheaper than USA for sure, but also not a fan of the food in Colombia either. Or most of South America when compared to Asia. :D


Colombia is a beautiful country, but I can't agree that the food is amazing. On par with British cuisine.


Ukraine fits the bill, you can rent a nice apartment in downtown part of town, internet is cheap and fast, food costs something like 3 times less then US, cities are walkable, you don't really need a car. Lviv or Ivano-Frankivsk for a more cozy atmosphere or Kyiv if you really want to live in a big city.

Climate is on the other hand, winters could be cold and summers unpleasantly hot so in that regard Balkans could be better.


You can comfortably live in Latvia on that budget, internet infrastructure is very good & cheap. I got by for years only speaking English.


Indonesia. And outside Jakarta to save another 40% Philippines, same logic avoid the capital. Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Laos, Myanmar (not safe these days perhaps), Peru, Mexico, Chile, Ukraine, Belarus, Croatia, Bulgaria, C.replublic.

All those countries will cost you far less than 1k usd per month, given you avoid the capital city center and other hot spot where rent is double price.


In order of increasing cost of living:

Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania.

Why these countries:

* cheap (this is why Greece is not there)

* Christian i.e. culturally closer to America than say Turkey or Albania or Bosnia)

* 0-wokeness (if you are LGBTQ you will probably find it a bit more difficult, but Tinder/Grindr works so you can definitely find people for sex)

* good internet for near 0 cost

Probably best to pick the capital of each of them, or a large coastal (or mountain) town.


If you are a developer, you can move to Bangalore. You can get a new job in a heartbeat. Salaries here for a senior dev can range between $60K to $120K. Living expenses depends on where you live and what you do. You can easily live here in $1K. A decent 2/3bhk (2/3 bedrooms, hall and kitchen) with all furnishing in a nice area would cost $400-500 along with maintenance.

Rest is super cheap. $20 for really fast internet. $5 for all you eat 4g phone connection. Netflix here is also very cheap at $10. $200 for groceries would fetch all kinds of good fresh veggies. $150 for a maid to clean, wash and cook etc. Rest you can use up on ordering food (roughly $5-10 per meal)...huge number of eating out and ordering in options. Delivery apps are everywhere so no need to go out. Uber is there for going around. Medical is really cheap compared to USA. You can get really good insurance policy for say $300 per annum which will cover everything and then some. Weather of Bangalore is really nice. Never too hot


What about working visa?


You can do it pretty much anywere. But yeah, Eastern Europe or SE Asia would be easier then Western Europe.

If you wan't similar culture, go for Eastern Europe capital cities. In Belgrade where I am from you can get 10gbps internet at home where there is fiber, if no fiber then 200-300mbps cable.

In Thailand and Bali I also experienced very good 4g internet and good fiber optic cable net.


Southern Italy. You can live in a small but beautiful village in the south (e.g Sicily) or any seaside village during autumn/winter. If you like mountains you have to go north (Dolomites) but it’s harder to find a small village for 1k/month in winter.

Obviously living in big city like Milan or Rome costs around 1500-2000€/month for living.


Honest question: if you’re a long-term visitor, do you get affected by the organised crime at all? My general impression is that tourists are fine, but business owners are in the receiving end of the nastiness.

Digital nomads feel like something in between.


Organized crime have international business operation bigger than us. They don’t care about you. It’s just a movie stereotype.

If you go to Sicily you should more worry about you how much good food you will eat rather than organized crime :)


I loved loved LOVED Sicily as a tourist. One of the few things holding me back from moving there would be the above concern.


As Italian, I can say that there is not any risk about organised crime for a "normal" person, unless you are not going to open a shop. I would feel safer in Sicily than in some zones of Milan.


You are probably not going to open a shop - so, I guess you will be basically "invisible" anyway.


How do Turin and Genova compare?


I live in South Africa now, with my wife and daughter, and while I could live in less than 1000 usd, it would be in dodgier areas of town. That said for a nice 3 bedroom pay ~700 usd, and food is like 250 per person. So from the sound of things, there are much better options out there.


Serious Question: are there parts of South Africa that aren't dodgy?

After the recent riots in Kwazulu-Natal, it seems kind of wild.


Yes there are. Tons. I live in South Africa and feel completely safe. And I don't live in a security estate either. It's not as crazy as what you see on the news. It is however all about location.


What locations would you recommend that are safe?


Anywhere in the Western Cape, but I mean it doesn't just end there. I would be perfectly happy with many places in Johannesburg (like Bryanston), Pretoria, and also many rural locations.

That is not to say security is not a serious concern in many of these places, but you can lower the risk substantially by choosing the right neighborhoods etc.

Most of the crime happens in the dodgy areas (ironically - poor people suffer the most from crime).


If you're happy in a share house, you could live on that in Aus, albeit frugally. Though if you wanted to live outside the cities you could get rent down to $600AUD, and leave you $800AUD to live on, $200 a week for everything else is stacks.


This was me for 10+ years from leaving home through uni to early career. I lived 2km outside of the Brisbane CBD in a really nice neighbourhood on less than 1000AUD a month. It was enough money that I could eat well, afford beer and go out on the town every now an again.

The cost of share housing hasn't gone up by a huge amount either. I am currently renting out the down stairs of my house (its dual living) for $150 a week per room (2 rooms). Each room gets a 2nd study room as well. Again this is in a nice neighbourhood about 2.5km from the CBD.


You can definitely live in Brazil with 1K USD/month.

And nowadays it's even better because the USD-BRL rate is about 5-something. For a comparison, 1K USD is about what I spend every month to live - and I definitely don't cook beyond just breakfasts and some snacks/sandwiches. So I lunch in restaurants every single day, I live in a quite comfortable apartment, etc. - I mean, I'm not "stretching myself to spend as minimum as possible". In fact, 1K USD is about 4x the BR minimum wage, and about 2-3x the "common" income of people.

I live in Fortaleza, a very sunny city which is close to some incredibly beautiful beaches. Search for "jericoacoara" on Google and you'll know what I'm talking about (Jeri tends to be a bit expensive tho, due to heavy presence of tourists - but not much).

Fun fact: it's quite common to hear about gringos coming around and deciding to stay. You'll find some French and Italian restaurants in Jeri and/or Jijoca - and lots of gringos, of course.


Turkey would be the best option because of the current exchange rates and inflation. I used to live in Izmir (most beautiful and "liberal" city in Turkey) before I move to UK. Here is a broad overview of our monthly cost for my family of three. If you are single, you can slash in half most of these.

- Rent: $430 A secure and modern 3 bedroom flat in Karsiyaka (the most popular neighbourhood)

- Utilities: $50 (electricity, gas, water etc.)

- Internet: $13 for 100Mbps

- Food: For $500 per month, you can eat like kings in Turkey.

- Transport: It costs $0.5 to get to the airport by train from Karsiyaka.

- Eating out: For $50, you can have a great dinner for two.


Take in mind that housing is typically more expensive for foreigners/tourists than for nationals in most countries

Because nationals have a social net of family and friends that tourists don't have. Because nobody knows you, so the landlord is taking a higher risk, and because locals have more information about the place (were to go for eat cheap, business or streets to avoid, etc...).

Being able to blend with the background can be a big advantage even if the place is a little more expensive. Your personal circumstances (food that you don't like, can't eat by religious reasons, etc) must be taken in mind also.


(Created a throwaway because I don't want my employer to somehow notice that I'm retiring in ~a year)

This thread is highly reassuring to me. I spent six months traveling around SEA in 2014 on ~$1k/month. It was pretty easy to stick to that budget even with the cost of moving around. Seven years later, I had mostly assumed that a $1k/month existence was hard to come by unless you are willing to live in relative poverty - apparently that is not the case.

Hopefully inflation and the post-pandemic travel boom do not change this much.


Brazil is currently very doable as 1k USD is about 5k BRL (Brazilian reais) which more than the living wage (calculated by a trade union group) and is good salary for a starting engineer or lawyer without experience.

You will probably not be able to live in luxury areas but will be pretty doable even in large cities.

Note that living even living in a large city things will be difficult without speaking Portuguese, but you can order pretty much anything to be delivered to your house so will be able to use Google Translate without relying on its speech related functionalities.

You seem to be an American, so you will almost certainly require a visa before you can come here but I think it will be easy.

A few recommendations:

  * Get a CPF number (SSN equivalente) as soon as you can, ideally even before arriving in the country. I think you can apply online and show the original documents at the embassy. (Seriously, almost anything e-commerce related will ask for your CPF but it is almost always optional in regular physical shops)
  * Get an RNE card as soon as you can. This way you can leave your passport safely at home.
  * Get a local phone number with mobile internet and install Whatsapp (almost anyone here uses it)
  * If you stay in Brazil for around a year you may owe taxes here. The good news is that the filing is electronic the bad is that it is still confusing.


No one has said this but one option also is to book an all inclusive hotel deal in Spain, Portugal Morocco, Tunis, Egypt, Greece, Turkey or Israel. These destinations have amazing value for money because of the volume of tourism

And you won't have to worry about cooking or cleaning. Every day delicious buffets and room service :-) you could even keep switching hotel and do some lazy traveling. I do this once a year but only for a couple weeks because I have a family to come back to. I feel reborn each time


For $1000 per month? Links please?


Yes, replied below. Just go on loveholidays and filter results.. I usually decide the country on the best deals to get more value.

You can do the same in winter if you fancy skiing in Bulgaria


I don't see a price filter/sort in the results there. Can you show some examples?


There is no filter in "hotel only" results, but what you can do is a "hotel + flight" search, which allows price filtering, and then do a hotel only booking once you've found an affordable/cheap option you are happy with. Don't forget to tick the "all inclusive" checkbox


Is this possible with a 1000USD/month budget?


Yes. You wont get 5 stars but 3 stars for sure (5 stars in Egypt, which is the same)

And the food is amazing everywhere


Mexico is a great option. It’s extremely cheap, has great food, the language isn’t too hard to learn, and it’s a lot safer than people think, as long as you stay in specific areas.


which areas?


I'm not an expert on all of the safe areas but the richer areas of Mexico City and Oaxaca are certainly safe.


I've lived across Mexico for almost a decade. You don't need to stick to specific places, there are just specific places to avoid that are hard to arrive at accidentally, like northern border towns.

Petty crime is always on the table though.


Rural Taiwan. Very good and affordable health care. Super fast and cheap mobile Internet.


Very good food, too. The downside of Taiwan is to learn the local language.


Which, unless I am terribly wrong, involves ideographic characters and not alphabetic. This should be a major obstacle.


The written language is Traditional Chinese.


Exactly. I can recommend the work for Shaolan, Chineasy, for having the basics for Chinese language ideograms - and she is from Taiwan.

Unfortunately, if ideograms is all you have in the place, it will take quite some time and effort to be proficiently integrated.


Actually, I would say anywhere in Taiwan other than Taipei, you'd be fine on $1k USD / month... so for those that would still prefer urban/city life, you should definitely consider Kaohsiung or Tainan -- both urban centers that are in the southern part of Taiwan.

Weather may be a bit more of an issue though (especially in the summertime), but cost of living is still very very reasonable.

Agreed on the language though -- Taiwan in general is a bit tougher to navigate for non-Chinese speakers. You may be able to get by with just English in Taipei, but in the rural areas or in the central/southern urban centers, it'll be a bit tougher.


Having cycled much of it I would recommend the east coast around Taidong. Best pineapples ever.


I just came back from 2 months in Colombia with my wife and a 3 year old. You can definitely live off 1k USD in an intermediate city (not Bogota) with a very high living standards compared to the average colombian.

Medellin would be my recommendation, very safe, unbeatable weather, access to high speed internet, a trendy startup culture and decent level of English-speaking people, non-stop daily flights to major US cities and same time zone as the US.


I don't know about _very_ safe but it certainly isn't how it used to be. Let's be real, you're in Latin America. It is safer than most Americans would think? Yes, but saying very safe is a bit of a stretch.

Source: I lived in Medellin and spent years living in Latin America.


Albania. It's still a developing country, but the climate is perfect, places are stunning and you can live with a lot less than 1k/month.


Vietnam... Ho Chi Minh mainly, as it has great internet (except the couple of "shark attacks on submarine cables" each year).


> "shark attacks on submarine cables"

I thought this was a euphemism for something but, no, an actual thing: https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2020/07/...

Who'd have thought...


Nope, very real! You're working in your coworking space in HCMC, then all of a sudden all internet stops, friends miles away too.

In the US/UK, one would mostly bet on Cloudflare, Akamai, AWS, GCP outages... There, it's either sharks, or some locals think it's an enemy country that's close by that's doing sabotage.


Remote control shark in the catalog?!

SHARKNESS


How long?

I spent 4 months in Vietnam in 2007 in HCMC. Rent was $300/mo for a sweet pad down the street from the Ben Thanh market. Food was $400/mo, and I didn't cook much at all because street food is cheap and delicious.

However, I'm not sure how this would work out long term, like decades. I couldn't commit to living in a country like that full time. The language barrier would be overwhelming, and I did get tired of friends vanishing after just a few weeks. I'm a het-dude, and the local women I dated really wanted families asap and I wasn't ready -- there are a lot of highly successful women there who I got on with w/o much of a culture barrier since they had studied in US/Europe; I wasn't there doing the creepy-US-dude-looking-for-boomboom thing. Not sure I could have made a life for myself there and been happy into old age. I can't imagine what long term healthcare would be like into my 80's as an expat in Vietnam.


Lived there for roughly a year. Short term I cant think of anywhere better, the country is within the OPs budget and offers metropolis cities, to tropical beaches. The food is good, and the culture is fascinating - if thats your kind of thing & are prepared to be open minded.

Long term, I share the same sentiments and felt it was time to leave after a hell of a year. On reflection, that year was probably on of the best of my 30+ years on this planet.

I sometimes think of doing it all again, going into an unknown culture and winging it. You learn a lot about yourself that way. Good luck to OP whichever country he chooses!


Right? The Vietnamese were really, really friendly. Constantly had people wanting to talk to me wherever I went, regardless which part of the country. At first I was scared there was an ulterior motive, but not in the slightest. They just wanted to talk.

Contrast: I spent some time in Central America a few years ago, and I found a lot of people who were really unfriendly, or hostile. Mostly because I didn't speak Spanish. Whew did I get yelled at a lot. One guy at a Panamanian IT cafe called me out when I asked for the password in English. He shouted: "You come here with all your money and expect us to do everything for you and you can't even speak our language?" Yikes. Whoops. He was 100% right.

TBH, because of that incident I'm still embarrassed to this day when I have to travel to a country for work and can only speak the few phrases I crammed on the plane, and then have to point or speak English.


Look for countries where the USD is in a 5y high. Brazil, for instance, was 2.5:1 a few years back... it's now 5.2:1. I imagine one or another G20 country that didn't handle COVID very well can be in a similar situation. This won't last forever, but it will last at least one or two years so it's a good opportunity for you.


I live in Jakarta, Indonesia. My monthly living expenses (adjusted from IDR to USD on current rate)

1. Apartment rent, 6 months contract at $1300 + $200 deposit, pay upfront, thus $250 monthly. It is a small apartment 1 common area, 2 tiny bedroom, and tiny balcony

2. Utilities, varying from $30 to $50, mine has 2 AC running almost 24/7, a PC with average 200 to 300 watt power draw, and 5 led light bulbs

3. Meals, 3 times a day for 1 person, $20 daily or $600 monthly (this amount considered fancy meal, you can get way cheaper meals like $2/each, way cheaper if you cook)

4. Internet, up to 100 mbps, $35 monthly. Internet quality like speed and stability will depend on area

5. Phone data, $7 monthly

6. Cigarette, I'm a heavy smoker (almost 2 packs a day), $4 daily thus $120 monthly

In total: ~$1050 I don't count for entertainment, transportation (people mostly use Gojek or Grab), subscription

Experience living in Jakarta from native perspective.

- Language barrier, most people can talk in English, although not that fluent, hand gestures give you more power than talk

- Poor pedestrian side road, if you like to walk

- City full of concretes, green park almost non existent

- Bad air quality

- Noisy if your resident near big road or high way

- Covid-19 related situation, Jakarta not the worse but people here tend to not care about this

Alternative to Jakarta, I would recommend.

- Bandung, cheaper living cost, small city, good air quality on most part, had lived there for 2 years

- Bali, foreigner friendly, especially Ubud area for extra nature scenery, I don't recommend Denpasar

Let me know if you have any question (email on my profile), as a fellow game dev I admire your dedication


Thanks for your response.

The rat race can wait , I think 6 months focused on game dev will get my game to where I need it to be. And if not, at least I had some fun.

Any big cultural shocks.


Can't say much about culture shocks, Indonesian myself, but from my european friend who live in Jakarta for almost a year now said "people just late everywhere"


Colombia. Both in Bogotá and Medellin you will be able to live comfortably and the internet is pretty good in those 2 cities. I pay USD 387 for a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment relatively near the city center in Bogotá. Food is quite affordable a very good restaurant with entry, main course and a glass of wine would be less than 15. A big mac costs less than 5.

The big advantage is the plummeting of the Colombian peso in comparison to the US Dollar. 1k USD is almost 4x the minimum wage, and most people make less than the minimum wage and survive so 1k USD for one person puts you in a strong upper middle class actually.

The only caveat is that most people have poor English, so some Spanish is a must. Maybe in Medellin could be different since there is a huge number of expats there, but in Bogotá at least, most people won't speak English.


Plenty of places you can do with $1k/month really. Of course YMMV but if you just want to focus on your game, I would definitely recommend checking out nomadlist.com and see what inspires you.

If you can accept some underdeveloped [some parts may actually positively surprise you] countries, take a look at Georgia, it can be really affordable and give a fairly good quality of life.

"Eastern Europe" (i.e Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bulgaria) can be a little more expensive but plenty to do with $1k. Also, it is actually a lot more developed than you may think. Oh and it's really safe!

As a rule of thumbs if you keep your expenses low, if you can find a place on Airbnb for $500/month, you could easily go with the other $500 for monthly expenses. Even maybe save some money or have some fun!


Try Pakistan, I am from there. And if you really consider doing it don't go to any city other than Islamabad. And live as near the center as possible. You will get amazing views, safety and nearly everything you probably want. May be even drinks if you find the right contacts (rich class). We have good fiber internet, 50Mb for consumers from Nayatel. Food is great on general.

Islamabad has best views, you better live in the E sector, that's where most foreigners choose to live anyway. And its most close to mountains and you will get amazing views throughout your stay. Also it's probably the greenest city.

For rest of Pakistan, that's the real Pakistan. You will get a lot more stares, and will be more prone to everything that attracts attention.

You can very easily live within 1000USD, in Islamabad, Pakistan.


If you buy a house outright and don't blow tons of money every month on stupid crap you don't actually need like eating out and cinema and clubbing, you can add large swathes of the United States and Western Europe to the list. Ireland, for example-- perfectly feasible, just not in Dublin.


If your primary concern is runway with the cash you have, I would not recommend tying up a massive amount in buying a house.

A $200,000 house would be 200 months of runway at $1,000 a month. And it’s not like you can actually live there for free. You still have property tax, utilities, maybe repairs, maybe HOA.

Then you also have less flexibility to move or scale down if you decide to go for a cheaper place. Every home transaction has a 6% fee just for the real estate agents on top of any other fees, and your house could also lose value.


India (City - Mohali) is also doable. For Rs. 5k (~$70), you can easily rent a room; that takes out the biggest expense part. For everything else, it's up to you, how much you want to stretch out.

P.S. - I grew up in that city, before moving out at 26. I still visit though - 1-2 times a year.


Starting on January 1, 2021, Croatia started offering 1-year digital nomad visas.

1k USD per month is the average monthly salary in Croatia, so you should be fine (especially in smaller cities), unless you overspend by eating out every day.

Here is a video of an American guy living in Split, Croatia (second largest city - very touristy and not that cheap) on $1,400 per month. He is spending $600 on food which means he eats out a lot. Locals spend way less than that on food. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkJSoBLHKaI


Anywhere in Vietnam, especially outside of Saigon. Good internet connection (I worked for companies in the US and EU with daily meetings for 4 years).

I'd recommend Da Nang. A modern, clean city, with both beautiful beaches and mountains, and an international airport.


I live in Argentina. I pay 10 dollars a month for 5-8 mbytes/s of download speed, 180 dollars for rent, 30 dollars for food (the kg of potatoes is worth 15 U$A cents) 15 dollars for gas, water and light services. And the rest for the occasional new necessity, furniture, going out with friends, adding up to 300 dollars a month. People here are extremely friendly to foreigners in the city of Buenos Aires. Just watch out for zones like Retiro, Plaza Miserere, and Flores. Orrr you could live in small town in some of our provinces. You could probably spend half the money on rent there and live off 200 dollars a month.


You would live incredibly well in Ukraine on $1000 a month.

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Lviv?displayCurrenc...


It should be noted, although Kyiv is doable for $1k, that would be mainly dependent upon securing cheap rent (somewhat difficult for someone new to the city). I would place Kyiv in the 4k per month bracket to live "incredibly well". Yes, this is a subjective measure).

From your link: "Rent Prices in Lviv are 39.98% lower than in Kiev (Kyiv)" (in reality, in many scenarios the difference is greater than that).

Info: securing a three year resident visa in Ukraine is very easy.


Lviv is a great city as well. I liked it better than Kyiv personally and I have spent many months in both.


Romania. You can get a decent flat for 200euros/mo. 1gb/s internet + tv channels is only 10 euro which is high quality stuff compared to other places. Corrupt country/political system but you shouldn't be disturbed by that.


Everywhere in Southeast Asia - Thailand, Malaysia, Philipiness, Indonesia, Vietnam plus you have great cuisine and no need to worry about cold weather much.

Smaller towns in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary should be also no problem, just forget about top 5 cities in each country, in Bulgaria/Romania maybe even bigger cities, just not capitals.

I would more worry about long term visa situation than about cost.

You also didn't define "living", one thing is sit at home most of the time, cook for yourself and just hang around city without travel, other thing is going to pubs 3 times a week, travelling on weekends etc. Entirely different budgets.


India is perfect economically and internet-wise, but you may want to avoid major cities if $1000 is your limit.

I pay ₹1200 ($16) for solid 300Mbps (up and down), with a 3TB cap. Food is cheap, even in Bangalore which is generally an expensive place to live. For example, you can have a nice nutritious breakfast (dosa and idli) for less than ₹100 ($1.50). Wanna go out for a movie? A top-of-the-line recliner seat ticket will cost you maximum ₹500 ($7).

Rent is a problem in Bangalore, it is disproportionately expensive compared to other smaller cities. You can expect to pay ₹20k ($270) for a proper single studio apartment in a nice locality.


https://www.moneycrashers.com/inexpensive-countries-2k-month...

I posted this for living on $2k or less


You should check out touristy parts of India. Kerala backwaters or Himalayan towns of Dharamshala, Manali, Gangtok would also work. Alternatively, be basic and go to Goa. If there is one thing India has, it is good internet.


There many cities in Greece where you can live with 1k. Patras, Chania, Ioannina and other relatively small cities offer a good balance between cost of living and access to various activities. Try to avoid Athens and the well known islands & tourist places since rent is expensive. Greece is safer than other Eastern European countries (IMHO), has relatively good internet access, more sun, friendlier people and most people know English. There are many co-working spaces available and there are some government programs running for attracting digital nomads (tax exemptions, work visa…).


Honestly, decent health insurance will be the biggest cost in many cases, whatever country you go to. The subsidized stuff is usually only available to citizens and permanent residents. A short-term visitor has to pay full up front. While healthcare costs in lower income nations are lower they're not trivial.

Otherwise, even a high-cost country like Canada (or the USA) can just about be afforded on $1000 a month if you go out in the sticks and cook for yourself and take transit and walk. But non-residents are looking at that much again, for private health insurance.


I believe $1K/person is more than enough for great living (including a humble but nice room rent) in the majority of countries (including a number of the EU members, let alone the "third world").


Finland seems possible. On condition that you don't try to do it around capital. Ofc, the money left over from rent doesn't buy very high standard of living, but it's not impossible. I believe same applies to other countries as well, avoid the expensive areas and cities.


I think 1k is a reasonable target for an American though.

I strongly suspect I could get down to 500$ , but I don't want to push it.


The lowest median rent in the US is $725 a month in West Virginia and the internet access is not great.


> The lowest median rent in the US is $725 a month in West Virginia and the internet access is not great

I'll note this is not correct. I'm in Morgantown WV and the Internet is great. I'm paying in the low $30s for 200mbps with normal low latency and it's highly reliable, via Comcast. That'll go on up to 1.2gbps if I need it. Speedtest usually comes out to 180-230mbps depending on the test site.

Most populated areas of West Virginia offer typical Comcast-style Internet speeds and prices. If you're living in the middle of nowhere, or a town of 2000 people, it's true that may be a different story. Starlink and local cable providers are your only serious options then.


Do you by any chance know how it breaks down across different types of housing? Studio vs 1-bedroom vs 2-bedroom, townhouse vs single-family, etc? Any websites to find this kind of data that you'd recommend?


https://www.goatsontheroad.com/15-countries-live-on-1000-per...


I just watched a season of Alone where people lived for up to 100 days in the Arctic with no more supplies than a backpack. Of course, you'd have to get good at hunting and bwasting wabbits.


India!

Set up a base in a Tier II City in North India.

Accomodation around INR 10-15K

1GbPS Broadband: INR- 4000 (+ taxes)- This is now GST so you'd consolidated bill.

Excellent 4G services- INR 300 with 1.5-2 GB of data per month. You can also opt for PostPaid.

Living expenses around 15-20K (including trips for groceries+ Uber/Ola- tide hailing). 24 hours electricity- around INR 708 per unit. If you run AirCon for the whole day, youd not exceed around INRO 10k.

I am assuming you have yourself covered for Netflix etc.

The cities are not exactly bicycle friendly- I ride a cycle to work- but you can negotiate your way around.


You can live in Pakistan. 1 USD equals to 168PKR at the moment and $1K per month would get you a good life in the metropolis of Karachi which has good internet and other amenities.


Hands down. Come to Medellin. Send me an email if you want some advice on specifics.

Ive been doing the nomad thing for almost 5 years now and the quality of life / $ is unbeatable.


+1

I lived in Medellín for four months a few years back. I'm dying to go back!

To add some numbers: Back in 2016,

- a basic but delicious lunch at the restaurant at the corner used to be ~7,000-8,000 COP (~2-3€ back then)

- rooms in shared apartments could easily be found for ~300,000 COP (~100€) per month (or even less if you're fine with very basic accomodation)

- a nice spacious apartment in one of the high rises was (at least) 1,000,000 COP (so ~300€) per month

USD and EUR have become stronger since then but at the same time the COP has seen some inflation, so I'm not sure what the current price level is.

> Ive been doing the nomad thing for almost 5 years now and the quality of life / $ is unbeatable.

What industry are you in? Is it only remote work that you do or do you (by now) also have people you collaborate with in Medallo?


Surprise surprise, I do software consulting.

Most of the prices you list are still roughly correct in 2021. It is getting easier to spend more here but the deals are still around.

I arrived back here for my fourth trip about a week ago with no plans to ever leave. My goal is to do a startup in the tourism sector here.

If you are in town write me an email


Niiice, looks like you're living my dream :)

> I arrived back here for my fourth trip about a week ago with no plans to ever leave.

Which neighborhood are you planning to move to?

> If you are in town write me an email

Will definitely do!


I'm in Provenza bt I'm trying to move out towards Santa Elena/Retiro


If I may ask, why are you planning to leave the city? Any reasons in particular? (Crime / noise / traffic / …)


You can also just buy a Cascade Camper van for $33k new, rent a WeWork for $300 a month, and park / live in whatever part of the US has the best climate. That's what I'm doing. You can sell the van after your sabbatical if you want. If you want to live abroad this wouldn't make sense, but it's definitely possible to live here on $1000 a month with this plan.


Chiang Mai, dirt cheap (as little as $100/month rent, wood floors, mountain view). Poor air quality, great local food.

Da Nang, Vietnam. Bit more expensive, $200/month rent on the low end. Friendly people, surprisingly even to Americans. Great air quality, decent enough waves in winter if you surf. Terrible local food, but certain areas cater to foreigners and there the food is excellent ($5 to $15).

Internet is solid in both locations.


Go to Buenos Aires.

Programming is draining on the brain and you need a way to disconnect from your project in order to rest your mind. Tango will provide you with the much needed balance.

This way, you can code during the day, socialize/move your body during the evening at tango classes or practicas and maybe have a great time at a milonga (tango party) once a week.

When you get back to US, you will also come back with a great body skill.


If you like living off around the beach with a stable weather year around (summer from January to December) and amazing food, have a look at this small town called “João Pessoa” in Brazil. 1k USD there you can leave quite comfortably, including rent and all living costs (way above the average there)

I come from there and while I am living in the EU at the moment, I plan in retiring early and move back soon.


Tokyo, you can find a decent apartment for around $600(cheaper alternatives exist) in the centre. Then maybe around $100 for utilities and the rest for food and entertainment(considering that you cook on your own).

For housing market: https://www.homes.co.jp/chintai/tokyo/map/


How decent is "decent"? 80sqm?


The guys who built Notion did this in Kyoto. I'd imagine the cultural stimulation of Japan's historic capital helped them to be more creative:

https://www.figma.com/blog/design-on-a-deadline-how-notion-p...


Vietnam is crazy cheap. A big city will have great internet. The south is a little more western but really hot. The north is very nice too. Hanoi is a little more expensive. If you leave the country you can get another travel visa for 3 months. So if you take a small holiday every three months you can stay for a long time. Covid has the shut down but that won't be forever.


- Eastern Europe - Balkans (South-East Europe) - Portugal

All cheap, decent healthcare and if you play your card rights you can avoid downsides (like heavy pollution mentioned).

As a rule of thumb, check all the countries with an average monthly salary below 1k $.

Bonus points if the average monthly salary in the capital city is below 1k $.

Then sort out all the countries with heavy downsides (check HDI).


Assuming you're American, be aware that you might still need to pay some taxes to the US despite living abroad (as long as you're a citizen). Many countries have set up their tax law to make sure you don't get taxed twice because of the USA's weird tax laws, but it's worth taking into account!


Isn't the first 100k tax free?


hi,

imho. it heavily depends what you expect from "living", but you could easily live - read: rent a cheap room & eat healthy - with 1000 us$ which roughly equals 900 euro in a lot of cities within the E.U.

out of my head - starting with the most obvious & startup-friendly ones

# berlin (germany) # vienna (austria)

and whole countries # nearly anywhere in the eastern part of austria # nearly anywhere in the cheaper parts of germany - more in the north # anywhere in the central to northern part of portugal - imho. inculding lisbon # nearly anywhere in greece # lot of parts of spain (north, south, islands ... definitly not in catalonia/barcelona or madrid) # in the cheaper parts of italy (south)

east-europe: # nearly any country/place which was formerly known as "eastern-european" / behind the "iron curtain"

br, t


I have done a bit of cross checking of different quality of life metrics and from what I have seen Croatia/Slovenia, Portugal, and South Korea emerge as outliers on the tradeoffs between cost and quality of life. If you are English speaking Croatia and Slovenia become the winner.


Is outside the US a requirement? if not I could point at a few cities in the us where that is doable.


Also consider the culture of the place where you want to live, make sure you can find people who you can communicate with. I lived in Korea for 6 months for something similar to what you are doing and it was one of the most isolating experiences of my life.


Not the exact thing you're looking for, but may be of interest.

https://www.insider.com/italy-town-maenza-selling-one-euro-h...


Barbados in Caribbean is really nice. It has some partnerships with Canada and is nomad friendly.


You also need to check on visa requirements. Usually you cannot stay longer than 3 month per half year in Schengen on a tourist visa. I read a while ago some countries have special arrangement with th le US, but either this expired or it is well hidden.


Egypt, it's not a good country to live in, but check Dahab (city in south Sinai), it's a good place for freelancers and tourist at the same time

Not very popular but that's good because that makes it cheaper and quieter than popluar destinations


Go to south west Turkey. Several kite surfing towns, food is very similar to Greek, people are super friendly, weather is fantastic. Internet is good enough. Finally, 1K USD a month is equivalent to a local mid-level engineer net salary.


Eastern part is cheaper and less crowded.


I have a 2 BHK apartment available for rent in Bangalore, India for $375. Internet access is great and it's located right next to many US companies that have branches in India like IBM, Oracle etc.


Georgia (the country) is a good option.

This video has other interesting alternatives: https://youtu.be/9aY8_DISMJ0


Bulgaria, very nice country with forests, mountains and sea. Also sort of tax heaven. Or Georgia, very visa friendly.

Do not go somewhere hot with too many distractions. It will ruin your productivity.


You can do this in Greece, cities like Thessaloniki or Athens, or even some satelite towns there on the beach. Also Balkans, Sofia and Belgrade are beautiful and 1K goes a long way.


I posted This for $2k a month with some comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27468779


Croatia, Istria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnJldCAW0rM


Aren't there also places within the US where you could live off $1000 per month?

I'm not asking to discourage you from moving elsewhere, just out of curiosity.


Absolutely there are places where it's possible. Just pick a small town in literally any state.


Medellin or Bogota in Colombia are both cheap and have awesome tech scenes with major language conferences, coworking spaces, meetups, great food, music, etc.


Ukraine — almost in any city. I recommend Kharkiv and Lviv.


Kharkiv would be difficult if you don't know Russian. English adoption is very low there.


Easiest is probably Mexico or in small town usa in texas.


It depends a lot on the type of "experience" OP is looking for, but Mexico would be very good if he is looking to still be close to US culture.

My suggestion will be somewhere like Ensenada, La Paz (Baja) for the West side. Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, Guanajuato for the center or Merida or Campeche for the east.


Wouldn't this be very doable in the US, with a lot less hassle?

Have you looked at rent prices in some of the smaller cities in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah?


I would have said India - but it appears that you want a quiet place.

India is an adventure. I don't think I'd work if I go there for 6 months.


Lucked out and found a nice little apartment in a gated community in Baja California for $500. $1000 is pushing it a little but doable.


Kiev is great. Cheap apartment about $500, coworking around $140, $300 for food with a decent amount of eating out at lower end places.


There are probably lots of places. Maybe Cambodia, Guatemala, Romania, Portugal…? And lots of others. Best of luck with your games!


Sort of a side tangent, but what is the best way to go about choosing a place (even in the US) to live? Aside from budget ofc.


I would say it comes down to personal preference. I love nature, I would love to live near mountains with relatively safe animals around. Some might love being near the water, and some in city environment. To live in the U.S. for $1000 somebody really needs to stick to strict living because starbucks cost the same everywhere etc.


That's fair - I've been working fully remote for ~5 years now and I'm trying to decide where to move (not under the same constraints as OP though)


Teleport.org has a great website. It starts off with a set of selections and then returns options that fit your criteria.

hth


My family has a simple apartment in the outskirts of Tokyo, and we've occasionally toyed with the idea of renting it to foreigners for for cheapish (~$400/mo). If you don't go too crazy with fancy dining or anything like that, then I think living in Tokyo for ~$600 / mo isn't an insane proposition. Here's the website we created if you're interested - https://mitakahouse.omardiab.com/


Any medium city in Brazil, but I wouldn't recommend coming to this wasteland right now


Morocco, rent would be around 300$, same or less for food. These numbers are for a family of 3


South East Asia (except Singapore) certainly, but you’d need to wait for travel restrictions to end.


Solar panel + battery + 5g internet + tent + food + car + Bureau of Land Management campable land.

Thank me later!


1k USD in Bali, Indonesia is very doable with decent housing & a good internet connection.


If you don't have any particular health issues I can easily recommend south Italy.


staying out of major cities can make rent or buying a home an order of magnitude cheaper.


Argentina. Living alone, you'll be ok with half that, so you'll have plenty.


You can do this in Savannah, GA which is an excellent city for being a single artist.


- Chiang Mai

- Georgia

- Ukraine, but not major cities

- Vietnam, but can’t get into the country for a while probably due to corona

- Serbia

Just check Nomad List :D


Wouldn't any Southeast Asian country except Singapore suffice?


alabama or mississippi. it's not all bad if you know where to go.


New Orleans too


I have lived in many countries thanks to my freelance career. I will give you a comparison of cities to choose from.

Istanbul, Turkey:

This will be your cheapest Europe option. People live on literal 300$ here. The food is amazing and cheap, the people treat tourists like kings (be careful for getting overpriced or scammed though), plenty of sights and nightlife, and you are surrounded by water (makes for a nice view while you are riding around)

The cons are that there is high political repression (you can't speak about the govt) and the internet is censored and slow, you need VPN for anything sexual or political.

Bucharest, Romania:

Where I currently live. I live in a 300$/mo studio and my food utilities etc all comes down to 600$ per month max. I have 400$ left for hookers, adding to my travel budget, or medical stuff etc. It's a very liberal country and the people are very chill, lots of natural sights to see and awesome nightlife. The cons are that it's ugly (commie blocs everywhere) and can get dangerous in certain areas at night.

Warsaw, Poland:

I did not really enjoy this city, the people are cold and nationalistic, it was cold all the time and the public transport has very few English translations, but its cheap and has good nightlife.

Berlin, Germany:

Very difficult to survive with 1k a month here especially if you are not single. Has awesome nightlife and food though, people from almost every country in the world and its very diverse and free.

Manila, Philippines:

This was probably the most fun city I visited, great nightlife and beaches, you get your bang for buck for apartments and condos, and also the people are very friendly and helpful to tourists. English speaking rate is very high and it helps being more comfortable there. The crime rate is very high though so if safety is a consideration I would avoid (I have an adventurer personality, you may not, it's fine)


maybe turkey. 1k usd equals to 8.5k try and it will buy you mid level living. for example you will pay $100-200 for housing.

( i'm living with $500 in izmir and my rent is $120 )


Colombia, even on Bogotá and Cartagena is super doable.


Came here to add Colombia to the list though I would suggest Medellin.

Stayed there for six months. Inexpensive, friendly people, generally safe if you stay near the Poblado area and not flaunt your wealth.

Use apps for just about everything and if you’re inclined, cook at home.

Here’s a cost breakdown:

Rent: staying at a 4.5/5 star hotel near Poblado runs you $400-500 USD, check with some of the newer hotels and avoid Booking.com (at least after your two week stay). Hotels will work with you If you try to negotiate long term pricing, some even have bigger and dedicated rooms.

Check out properties with Caracol and AirBnB. The idea is if you negotiate pricing outside the platform, it’s often cheaper for longer term stays.

Food: use Rappi to order your meals, it’s similar to Uber Eats (since discontinued in the country); half the cost of what you’ll usually pay in the US.

Transportation: Uber, DiDi, Cabify.

Loved the country and looking to return next year. Haven’t been able to obtain a visa yet.


Parent's house.


Buy a $5 house in Detroit? Live off Costco rice bags?


Canary Islands, good weather and cheap rent


Armenia. Internet service is good. Cost of living is cheap. Yerevan is a modern, safe, mid-sized city that is easy to get around. Lots of bars, restaurants if you're into that kind of stuff. There's a small tight-knit tech community.

Downsides: language barrier can be a problem, but generally there's at least some degree of English knowledge among the younger population. If you happen to know Russian, it'll be even easier since most people understand it there. Also, with COVID, prepare for a LOT of people refusing to mask up or vaccinate. Better get your shots before going.


chiang mai, thailand, bali indonesia


Don’t forget the new darling Costa Rica

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28179018

Though looks like $1000 might not cut it.


spain morocco


I loved loved LOVED our three week stay in Morocco in 2019, and their cellular infrastructure was pretty decent (like, traveling all over we were never without cell service and at least some level of internet), but the internet in the places we stayed was pretty terrible across the board. Having said that, the food was so amazing that I'd be tempted to deal with the slow internet. :/


yep, morocco is a pretty good deal. Close to europe, most people speak english and/or french and you can easily live off 10k dirhams per month (1k usd)

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?cou...


I can nearly guarantee that there are many people living under $1k/mo within 10 miles of wherever you are. That’s the low-chaos option if you really want to focus.

Such a question is common from people who are running away from an unhealthy situation unrelated to geography. If so, maybe cut that off prior to and independently of the move, and then probably move anyway.


>Such a question is common from people who are running away from an unhealthy situation unrelated to geography. If so, maybe cut that off prior to and independently of the move, and then probably move anyway.

I have a ton of money saved up and I've never gotten a chance to live in another country.

So why not. Worst come to worse I can always come back and proceed to work another 30 years.


I say go for it, but maybe don’t bring anything with you, and don’t leave anything behind.


It depends where you are. You're almost certainly going to have car costs if you're not in some city--and for many cities you're going to have to put up with miserable bus service. I'm pretty sure you're not going to draw a 10 mile radius from SF, Manhattan, or Boston and get to $1K/month or it's going to be really miserable.

Your statement's probably literally true but I assume it's mostly people living with family or other community.


There would be a huge bridge trying to live on $1k/month in the US, assuming you were ratcheting down from some larger income. You wouldn't qualify for subsidized health insurance, for example, until that $1k/month was in place for a year.


Dominican Republic


Bangkok


Only if you're a Gary Glitter fan.


Check out nomad capitalist youtube. I know the guy, he is incredibly nice and knowledgeable on this topic. Myself, I would recommend Mexico and Bali but I’m Eastern European so really bored of the area. Georgia (the country) would be much better than Poland and other suggestions here though.


Sayulita, Mexico


Forget Scandinavia


Not good living, but possible. I don't think it's impossible to find smaller studio for about 500€ in smaller towns. Ofc, living on 500€ is tough, but not impossible.


Kosovo or Albania


Argentina


Uruguay


România :)


I had been paying a little over $1,000 USD per month in Tomsk, Russia.

I had about 125 square meters in the center of the city, right across from the main university campus, 600/600Mbps unmetered symmetrical fiber with a static ipv4 address ($10 a month from domru), unlimited 4g (a little over $10 from megafon), ordered delivery for literally every meal, and used taxi apps for all my travel.

The bureaucracy and paperwork for existing is probably a fair bit more than what you’d be used to in the US - e.g., needing to register your residence every time you go to a hotel, go back to your apartment, etc. But, the process for actually getting stuff done, like getting an apartment or getting bank account, is actually pretty simple and something you can navigate easily on your own or with any Russian speaking friend.

Healthcare was good too. I had a good experience at the state run hospitals when I, unfortunately, needed surgery; patient staff, quality work, and I didn’t even carry my wallet in and walked out paying nothing. Similarly, ambulances were another painless experience, not even asking for my insurance.

FWIW: I think the typical “nomad” is often quite a bit more right-wing and concerned about taxes and money than I am (don't take offense, just an observation!). The city is fairly liberal for Russia, it’s young, has a nice academic scene, etc. I’m not sure I’d stay forever, but I don’t regret the years I spent there. It was a lot of fun, people were nice, the experiences were wild, and university was great.

Downsides:

- Access to foreign products, electronics, or even things as simple as English books can be lacking.

- There's nothing anywhere near as convenient as Amazon, so be prepared for visits to actual stores when you need a cable or something and have fun navigating aliexpress, avito, and similar.

- Racism is still a thing and even though actually getting my apartment was easy, finding a landlord willing to rent to an "Omar" was a lot harder ("for slavs only" is an unfortunately common thing in realty listings). Similarly, my Chinese friends experienced a fair bit of serious discrimination when the pandemic first began. If you're light-skinned and have a white-sounding name, I don't imagine you'll face any trouble, though.

- Although Tomsk is significantly more liberal than many other areas, and I don't think anything particularly terrible would happen, it's probably not got the most vibrant of LGBT atmospheres on the planet.

- Weather is just brutal. From the windchill of -51 I experienced to the 30+ summers.

- Get an apartment with a boiler. Most people use city-provided hot water for showers, but that means every summer, you'll lose your hot water for a week or so while they do they annual maintenance otherwise.


serious answer, I have no idea how feasible: Live on the street in LA or SF! There are tents and campers parked all over the place with people living in them, and just because they are currently populated mostly by the aggrieved doesn't mean you need to be aggrieved.

The cost of a van/camper is not crazy, internet in LA and SF is easy to come by, cheap food is plentiful if you're willing to accomodate your diet...

and there's no lock-in or insane sunk cost. "What could go wrong" for you in a country like Georgia has a lot of unkowns, vs in LA you'd pretty much know how to figure it out. Visiting friends and family, deciding to bail, etc. all easier.




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