Day 31: Earning A Living In Europe

Dear 40 Days To Your New Life In Europe Student,

Can you earn an income in your new home overseas to support or supplement the cost of your new life there?

Absolutely.

You have two options—you can get a job or you can start a business.

Let’s begin today by addressing the idea of finding gainful employment in your new home. How realistic an objective is that?

Very… or not at all, depending on who you are, where you want to live, the kind of life you want to build, and what you’re up for.

We have a friend who, some years ago, wanted to experience life on a Pacific island, mostly because she wanted to be able to scuba dive as often as possible. She and her husband, who shared her interests and her flexible, open approach to life, decided to move to Saipan in the Mariana Islands.

The couple had been in the U.S. workforce for some time, but, relatively young, hadn’t accumulated much of a nest egg. In other words, they needed an income to make this South Seas adventure realizable.

How to find a job on Saipan? Our friend admits that, at the time, she didn’t have a clue.

So she didn’t really try… at least not in advance.

As she explains:

“We left for Saipan with no job in sight. Most of the people we’d contacted during our research did not return our calls or offer any real assistance. When we arrived on Saipan, we immediately got in touch with every resource and lead we’d managed to identify through our online reading. Primarily what we had going for us was our foreignness. We were such a novelty that we both landed jobs quickly. I got a job as a newspaper reporter almost immediately (there was a surprising amount of news on that island!) and a second job at a coffee shop. My husband got a job selling cable for a new cable television company.”

Our friend and her husband were delighted with their situations and enjoyed several carefree years of South Seas bliss.

We’re not suggesting that you and your partner should relocate to a tiny island in the Pacific and become waiters. Rather, we share this real-life story to prompt your thinking. If you need an income to supplement your nest egg to make your new life overseas a reality, remind yourself of your responses to the questions in the “Know Yourself Questionnaire” you took on Day 8.

What’s important to you? What do you like to do? How can you convert your interests and hobbies into a paid position?

Note that even if you don’t enjoy your current job, you might find doing the same thing someplace foreign a lot more fun and interesting.

Take stock of your skills. What languages do you speak? What experience do you have? What training?

Imagine what you’d like your new life to look like. How much structure do you want? How much flexibility?