Day 40: Step #16, How To Earn An Income Anywhere In The World

Can You Get A Job Overseas?

Dear 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.

I 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? My friend admits that, at the time, she didn’t have a clue.

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

As my friend 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.”

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

I’m not suggesting that you and your partner should relocate to a tiny island in the Pacific and become waiters. Rather, I 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 my Day 1 “Know Yourself Questionnaire.”

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?

Big picture, here are your realistic employment options overseas:

1. Arrange a posting in another country through your current employer. This is how friends organized their move to Costa Rica. They’d both worked for Dell in other countries and requested the chance to continue working for Dell…in San Jose. Obviously, this works only if you’re working for an international organization with an office in the place where you want to relocate.

2. Set yourself up as a local consultant. What business do you know? Where in the world might your experience and expertise have value? We know a guy who’d been in the pool business in Miami his entire career. His search for his ideal overseas haven took him to Roatan, in the Bay Islands of Honduras… where a lot of people are interested in building pools but the local talent for building U.S.-standard pools is limited. Our guy was able to parlay his decades of experience into an expat income.

3. Set yourself up as an international consultant. Maybe you could counsel people on building a swimming pool in Uruguay from your beach home on Roatan…but maybe not. On the other hand, an expat living in Uruguay likely would be eager to avail of your consulting services if your area of expertise isn’t pool building…but, rather, international tax strategies. If you’re an accountant, an attorney, or a money advisor, say, you could make a great living helping expats and retirees abroad structure and then manage their financial lives in Paradise.

The beauty of this consulting approach is that you’d likely need no formal, registered, or licensed status locally (unlike a doctor or a lawyer, for example, who would).

4. Cultivate a trade you could practice anywhere. Frankly, this can be your best option. It can work for anyone, and it’s highly portable.

In fact, I’m a laptop-carrying, daily letter-producing poster girl for the best mobile trade I know: travel writing. I have at least a dozen good friends who are currently paying for or at least supplementing the cost of their lives overseas as professional travel writers, and, every day, I communicate with at least a dozen others like us, writers (and writer wanna-bes) on the road and eager to file their stories.You don’t need formal training as a writer. You need an open mind, open eyes, a curiosity about the world around you, and a penchant for telling stories. If those things describe you, you could earn an income as a travel writer…even if you’ve never done it before. One of the most successful and prolific travel writers I know started her professional life as a barmaid. Others have been housewives. Engineers. Investment advisors. Accountants (yes, I know…this one is particularly unlikely…but it goes to show that, truly, anyone can do this…)…

Bottom line, this can be one of the easiest ways to make money from anywhere in the world. Here’s the best resource I know for getting started.

One of the many benefits of cultivating this kind of profession is that it means the resulting income will be on an international scale. If you take a job or set yourself up as a local consultant in a foreign country, you’ll be paid like a local in the local currency (this could be a plus or a minus, but it introduces a risk). Before you choose that route, investigate the typical local salary for whatever kind of position you’re considering. A professional who might earn US$60,000 in the States, for example, might earn one-third as much in Panama or Colombia…and be well-paid. Remember, of course, that the local cost of living will be less, as well.

5. Teach English. One of the most commonly sought and easily arranged jobs overseas is teaching English as a foreign language. If this interests you, take a look here for information on getting started.