Estimating cost of living in new location
I'm a US citizen exploring the option to live in a lower cost of living location. Finding living costs to calculate an alternative "expat financial independence number" or EFI is tricky, since I don't live in these places yet, so I can only estimate.
I've used Numbeo a lot, and asked for help from AI. Are there any other ways to calculate cost of living you'd recommend?
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The expatfire community on reddit can be a good resource as well.
I did not know that expatfire was a community, but I should have thought about that. Thanks.
I empathize with this. I am extremely lucky to be retiring back to a country I already lived in before. That said, inflation has changed a lot of things there. Also housing in a lot of locations has skyrocketed. Fortunately I have friends on the ground to help. But I would only say don't set up too much of a safety margin for unknowns and let that stop you. It's like the "one more year" trap or the "4% isn't safe, I'll do 3%" thinking. I'm pretty confident if I go back to the country I'm moving too and I've underestimated, I'll find other things to cut back on or there are services that will have gotten cheaper to balance it out. I'd rather have another year of living there and eat out less than to wait too long and realize I lost days of my life I could have enjoyed there.
Love the hat!
Having lived abroad for 10 years, and thinking about the same notion; my plan is to take a year or two to visit several potential places and see which I really like. In the end, you want a place you can feel like you fit in, not feel like an outsider, and it may take longer than a 3 day tour to figure that out. Not sure why it has to be so definitive if your not tied to working locally, try a place out for a month and then decide. However you calculate the cost of living, it won't exactly translate to you and your habits and in two years the economics can change drastically in many of these lower cost areas of the world.
I'm sure you are right. Everyone is going to have their own personal cost of living. We'll probably have a series of month-long stays in various places in any case to get a feel for each.
I kind of build my own spreadsheet for places I'm planning on going with estimates from Numbeo and:
https://nomadlist.com https://www.theearthawaits.comI don't know why my lovely list is coming out all crazy like that but anyway, 3 items:
- NomadList
- Price of Travel
- The Earth Awaits
Thanks. Those are interesting resources I didn't know about.
If you're looking at overseas locations, I'd probably join some expat Facebook groups and ask there or see if it's already been addressed. There can sometimes be quirks to cost of living that aren't easily addressed by calculators. For instance, in Japan, foreigners can be charged higher rent because they are considered higher risk.