“How would someone with zero savings move to another country?”

there are many, many ways, I suggest teaching English because it’s the easiest thing.

If you have a phone, you can start teaching English online.

you need $100 to leave the country, about $250 to $300 to make it to Asia, where most of the highest paying English teaching jobs are.

so let’s say you only have 30 minutes free time a night and you’re making the lowest amount of money teaching on an app, about $12 an hour, and you want to go teach in korea.

you’ll need to work about 25 hours to get $300, so 50 days of 30 minutes per day,

or a little over 2 weeks of 90 minutes a day teaching.

you will then have the savings to get to korea and start teaching, or you’ll be making over 2,000 USD with zero experience starting and your costs will plummet to less than $1000 USD a month.

so within 2 months envisioning the bare minimum of free time in the US, you can be in Asia saving $1,000 per month.

so within a couple of months, you have $1,000 more savings than you have, and every month you have $1,000 or more savings.

you can obviously tweak this, but those numbers are accurate.

“Most have every barriers of highly skilled, unfilled professions.”

this is inorrect.

most countries have barriers of unskilled in persons.

The more skilled you are, the easier it is to get a work permit in most countries.

are you into material sciences? are you a power plant engineer?

then you can get a work visa everywhere if you want to.

countries specifically have high-skill visas for high skilled people because every country wants high skilled people to move to their country.

you don’t need any skills, to move, but if you are one of the rare high skilled people and want to move permanently and work locally, professional skills help.

“How would an older person even pay for required documents, let alone a living space, food, utilities, especially being monolingual?”

can you clarify this question?

are you asking about specifically old people traveling?

there are no age restrictions on travel, so they would travel the same as I’ve recommended for any other English speaker.

All of those have been answered in detail in previous comments, food and documents and all that.

“So now we’re starting down the road of throwing out logical fallacies”

I don’t mind If you’re going to try fallacies next, but they probably aren’t going to fare much better than your previous illogical reasoning, which didn’t exactly pan out for you.

“Why don’t you just go do something else.”

I’m washing clothes right now.

you’re my down time.

“Arguing with people here with long winded responses isn’t going to sway anybody anyway.”

I’ve had the opposite experience.

although it is funny that you ostensibly think that while simultaneously keeping the conversation going.

“You can just walk into any hospital and a doctor will have time to see you and prescribe a medication for you?”

yes.

“you can just walk into any pharmacy and get a medication without a prescription?”

depends on the medication.

but mostly, yes.

I can’t think of a legitimate health scenario where the answer is no.

“Forgive me if I’m skeptical.”

forgiven.

I’ve heard these questions a hundred times.

If you’re haven’t traveled, you equate everything to the US, although things like the healthcare system abroad are meant to serve people rather than corporations so they function a lot differently than you’re used to.

“What country are you describing?”

most of Western Europe and most of Asia (I can only speak to the countries I’ve been to), and I know someone who lives exclusively in the Balkans who says all the countries there are the same as well.

“While this is generally true, it is not universally true for all medications.”

it’s universally true as far as I’m aware and have experienced.

you might not have the same brand, but it’ll be the same medication except readily available and cheaper.

“a lay person won’t know what those are and will require professional guidance”

yea, I assume it’s the same in your country? where some medications should be prescribed or recommended by a doctor?

“finding a doctor and waiting for an appointment.”

Google and maybe sitting down and playing on your phone for a half hour is a lot easier than you’re making it out to be.

“During which time you may well run out of your medication.”

how?

I can’t imagine this scenario happening.

Unless you’re talking about something you have to take hourly and you brought one pill with you so you’ll be without medication for 30 minutes?

these are such unlikely possibilities.

I’ve known known an uncountable number of travelers for the past decade, many of whom take medication, zero of which have ever complained of not being able to find their particular medication.

not once.

I hear “geez did you know X is only like three bucks here? It’s like $80 a bottle in the states!”

“This take suggests a lack of perspective on chronic/debilitating illnesses as well as poverty.”

couldn’t be less correct.

your doubt on what I’m saying simply demonstrates your ignorance.

I’m not using “ignorance” as a pejorative term, I mean that you literally don’t know what you are talking about.

chronic debilitating illnesses and poverty are characterized by financial trouble.

traveling takes away financial stressors.

I have known many retirees and chronically ill people who have regaled me with tales of how easy it is to retire in Vietnam/Germany/Portugal/Laos and so on because they don’t have to worry about the cost of medication.

financial anxiety isn’t completely determining their life.

“it leaves little cognitive space for more abstract/complex concerns.”

Yes, this was my original point.

If you don’t have any savings, if you’re a month away from living on the street, if you have healthcare needs, and these financial stressors are determining your life, traveling can fix that almost instantly.

then you can save up money, make a plan and go back to whatever you want to do.

but at the very least you’ll have breathing room, and what’s most likely is you’ll discover that traveling is way better than struggling in the US and you’ll keep traveling.

“…isn’t exactly conducive to success in America’s abusive work culture.”

yep, America’s work culture sucks.

most other countries have siestas and employee rights.

and are focused on draining you financially. every second you’re awake

Plus, if you’re outside of the US for more than 330 days out of the year, you fill out the FEIE, an IRS tax form, and you don’t pay income tax up to $120,000 per year.

“I really can’t fathom that it’s as trivial as you imply for someone who requires medications or other ongoing treatment to simply arrive and get the care they need without potentially problematic delay.”

That’s because you haven’t done it yet(and I never said it was trivial).

It’s difficult to fathom something you’ve never experienced.

especially when you’re living in the worst existing iteration of functional health care infrastructure.

you’ve grown up with excruciating waits and debilitating, financially disastrous healthcare your whole life, and you are surrounded by people who think the same thing and think it’s normal, so thinking about health care at all puts you in the mindset of excruciating waits, debilitating, financially disastrous, healthcare.

That’s mostly a US specialty.

ask anyone who has traveled for any length of time and they will tell you exactly what I’m telling you.

I’m very happy to answer these questions and will answer any other questions you have.

“Of course it’s possible, but it’s nowhere near as simple as you suggest.”

it is exactly as simple as I suggest.

you buy a ticket, tell your things, go to the new country.

start saving money, figure out what you want to do.

or don’t, and just hang out. retire at 30.

“…living there, there are many more problems to overcome to achieve that.”

not that I’ve encountered or heard about from any traveler, It’s more of the same.

“within the EU it’s doable”

or any other part of the world.

'but you’re going to run into visa related issues trying to immigrate to most other countries."

whoever is telling you this is incorrect from any practical or logistical perspective and obviously have no idea what they’re talking about.

moving permanently is easy enough procedurally, but there isn’t a ton of benefit in going through that whole process for no reason, whereas living in a place for 6 months or a year and then living in a place for another 6 months or a year gives you all of the upsides and none of the downsides.

especially within the context of saving money and controlling your own life, what’s the point of going through the hassle of applying for citizenship or changing nationality when a Visa-free stay or tourist visa takes 10 minutes?

living permanently on tourist or digital Nomad visas is way less trouble than going the citizenship route, while retaining all of the benefits.

“Some, perhaps most, of those can be overcome by throwing money at the problem”

you don’t have to guess, you can just ask the question.

If you have money, it doesn’t really matter because visas are way cheaper overall than the cost of living in the US. $40 for 6 months is very common.

The only time money would help is if you’re trying to buy citizenship specifically, in which case there are a few less financially stable Islands that will accept $60,000 or something to become a citizen.

again, there’s no real reason to do this unless you want to second citizenship, but you seem very focused on these esoteric non-issues, so there’s a way that you could necessarily spend a bunch of money money if you want to.

The Schengen areas are completely free for 3 months, and you can apply for longer visas if you like.

and visas take 10 to 15 minutes to apply to.

online.

traveling is much simpler than people think.

“Even once you have a visa there are often limits on what you can do and where you can work until you get the equivalent of a green card, which can take years.”

If you work online, most countries do not have a restriction on you working in their country.

If you want to become certified in that country at some offline profession, then yes you’re going to have to take certification courses like in every other country and profession.

but you’re coming up with this very unlikely problem, like your health concerns that are completely immaterial to practical life.

why apply for a work visa if you don’t have to?

Why commit yourself to a office job when you don’t have to?

Why struggle for more money when you don’t need more money?

If you are a native English speaker, you can start with zero experience TEFL certificate, repeating primary colors to school children for $20 an hour.

you can work as little or as much as you want online or in the classroom, and done.

work for a couple of months, save a couple grand, reevaluate.

English teaching is by far the easiest route to start making money immediately with zero experience, but online work is everywhere in every field and depending on what country you’re in, a few hundred bucks a month is going to cover you.

steve not being able to be hired as a paper company manager in Stuttgart just isn’t a realistic concern.

he doesn’t have that financial burden or the negative cultural reinforcement where he is forced to believe he wants to be a paper company manager anymore.

“Then there are the logistics of living in your adopted country.”

absolutely! immaterial.

Google house/apartment any City, get a house or an apartment.

every country has transportation, healthcare, supermarkets.

The “logistics” is a false scare, like “culture shock”, where Americans pretend that they don’t understand what a bicycle is.

“your muffins are usually savory? I’m used to sweet muffins!?! brain aneurysm!”

“upheaval”

sell your things. buy a ticket.

Slough off all of your financial concerns.

call your parents with free Wi-Fi calling or your family everyday.

or take your family with you, I know families that travel permanently.

it’s so much cheaper and they get to live in all the paradise places everybody wants to go to.

traveling is exactly as simple as I’m making it out to be.

I’ve been doing it with zero problems for years, I know people who have been doing it for decades, I know people from every walk of life who have done it, with every disability or privilege you can imagine.

it boils down to buying a ticket and going where you want to go.

The first time can be scary, but there’s nothing real stopping you from taking control of your life.

as soon as a traveler moves for the first time and you land in the new country, or you go into a store in Portugal and realize that yes they also have juice and toilet paper, you realize that all your concerns were ridiculous.

everything you do in the US, you can do in the countries you live in, for far less money with better social services.

“The money runs out. What do?”

you do not need a remote friendly skill set to find an online job that will pay you a few hundred dollars per month.

so you get an online job.

if for whatever reason you only want to work in person, you can go berry picking in a lot of countries or harvesting on farms, you can teach English in person in 40 different countries immediately, au pairs, housesitters, a lot of countries hire seasonal workers.

so if you need a job, you can find one.

and if you plan ahead at all (oh no! I only have four more weeks of money), your overhead is so cheap that whatever job you get will cover you, you’ll be able to catch up and hopefully learn to plan ahead a little bit.

example: this month you somehow forgot you needed money. but you remembered in the last month before you ran out and you taught English for 10 hours and you got rent for the next month.

now you’re one month ahead, so you teach English for 10 more hours, and now? you’re 2 months ahead, and you have one whole month minus 10 hours to figure out what you’re going to do next.

or what you want to do next.

most travelers don’t have this problem, I’ve never met one that ran out of money without some sort of plan in place.

you have so much time when you don’t have any financial stressors, and there are jobs in every country, and a billion jobs that you don’t need skills for online, plus countless online certifications if you want a professional online job.

there’s no reason why you would end up in a situation where you surprisingly ran out of money.

“you’re living paycheck to paycheck with children. You try to save money to travel for the reasons you’ve brought up here. It’s not possible. What do?”

do you have a phone? easiest way is to teach English online for 10 hours a month If that’s all you have.

you have enough money to move your family after a few months.

“No offence, but your account of travel as a solution here seems deeply naive”

That’s because you don’t know anything about traveling, so you are imagining that these simple solutions won’t work because you don’t know how to solve these problems.

I do.

“naive”

I don’t think you know what this word means.

i know exactly how to travel immediately and indefinitely, I’ve brought other people along and taught them how to travel, I have simple practical solutions to any question off the cuff because I know and have lived this stuff back and forth.

I have as much practical experience with travel and insight into traveling as anybody you’re going to find.

you’re assuming that because you don’t know how to travel, other people cannot know how to travel.

but we do.

“It can work for some, sure, but “just leave the country bro” simply isn’t an option at all for many, many people.”

travel can work for anybody, leaving the country is an option for anyone with a valid passport and 100 bucks.

and especially if you need financial relief, It’s a heck of a lot easier and more liberating than borrowing money from friends or family or living in your car or on the streets, or moving back in with your parents.

people are afraid of traveling, especially Americans, because they live in a monoculture, they’re told that the world outside is scary and other cultures are scary, but other cultures are beautiful and compassionate.

other countries function better than the US does in most respects, and practically all livability.

if you travel, you will learn that.