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I am a veteran of the US military who has a couple service-related injuries and I currently receieve $366.46 per month for disability compensation. I am currently a college student considering becoming a teacher in the United States. But I'm also considering "retiring" (I'll do a lot of online work and writing to make extra money) abroad when I get my degree. Where can I live with a decent standard for that much per month? The $366 figure is for my lifetime and will go up every year with U.S. inflation blue squares fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 07:09
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What do you define as a "decent standard"?
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Jan 12, 2016 08:17
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pig slut lisa posted:What do you define as a "decent standard"? Pretty much a private bedroom, internet access, and plumbing. blue squares fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 08:24
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You can live a lot of places with that much money. You need to look at cost of Living calculators and the average income of citizens from X country. For instance, the average Filipino laborer makes $5 a day. While you make $12 a day. So yes, you can live in the Philippines with that income. The real question becomes how tough of a life can you put up with while remaining happy. Do you like to drink alcohol? Have any expensive hobbies? Could you eat rice every day? What are you going to do all day? That doesn't cost any money? Do you think you could remain sane if you're the only person who speaks English within a 20 mile radius of where you live? Do you see where I'm going with this? Yes it's possible. But I don't think you'd be happy living that kind of life. At least in the Philippines English is prevalent. I saw a lot of old retired men doing exactly what you're talking about. I assume they had a little more spending money though. Good luck!
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Jan 12, 2016 19:34
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:You can live a lot of places with that much money. You need to look at cost of Living calculators and the average income of citizens from X country. I think this is a pretty good post. I'd add medical/dental expenses, which you didn't mention in your response to my initial question. There are lots of places where Western expats live really well on $1,500, $1,000, even $800 a month. But--with the caveat that I'm not an expert!--I'm unfamiliar with expats living on <$400 a month and enjoying it. I'm not sure that that amount would even tick off the three things on your list, even assuming you sacrifice as much as possible on food/travel/activities/medial/everything else. pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jan 12, 2016 |
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Jan 12, 2016 19:54
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I'm getting just a little more than you, and have pondered the same question, but I'm just not inclined to live that tight, plus you really, really would want to have quite a few thousand saved up for contingencies. Have you already exhausted your options appealing the VA's findings? If they turned down some of your claims, try appealing them and see if you end up with a higher disability rating that's bring more benefits. If you really, really have a simple standard for living, I could see getting by on $500ish. Honestly take a look at how Peace Corps people live and adjust from there, they live on something like $400/mo stipend in a lot of places. That said, they also have a fallback plan, like if a PC kid gets seriously sick or injured Uncle Sam will evac them back to the US. For you, you don't have that, so you'd want to have quite a few thousand reasonably accessible in case you bail out of the country. I did want to single out the "I'll do a lot of online work" aspect. If having fast and reliable internet is key to your survival, you have to *very* explicitly incorporate that into your plans. Internet access is still really patchy in a lot of the world, and/or running your computer off a cellular hotspot can chew through lots of expensive data. As in, depending on how much internet you need to keep doing online work, it could easily be a bigger expense than rent or food. I'm working for an actual for-profit company in West Africa, and even for us we have frantic times where our internet goes down, in the capital city no less, and we're up on our rooftop trying desparately to get enough signal to Skype because we absolutely need to arrange a bank payment in the US that day. Our internet is about as good as my $60/mo package in the US, but here it costs $800/mo. We've had a number of times where we've had to drive to a restaurant or hotel that has wifi on the other side of town to send an urgent email. Clearly not everywhere is as bad as here, but you do want to make sure that you have a plan and budget for getting whatever amount of internet you need to keep bringing in supplementary income. All that said, I think it's a pretty cool idea, you just want to have a very clear plan for fallback funds for medical emergency or evacuation, and a plan to have the interwebs you need.
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Jan 14, 2016 17:47
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Thanks. I did realize that I could do what I wrote about in the OP by joining the Peace Corps, which is something I have been considering and reading about for almost a year. It would give me something to do, stability, medical coverage, etc. I'm getting my teaching certificate so Peace Corps education program would be a good fit for me. Plus I'd get the stipend on top of my VA stuff so I'd be pretty set. If you check the time my OP was posted, the idea was fueled in no small part by the hour and the alcohol in my system.
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Jan 14, 2016 17:56
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blue squares posted:Thanks. I did realize that I could do what I wrote about in the OP by joining the Peace Corps, which is something I have been considering and reading about for almost a year. It would give me something to do, stability, medical coverage, etc. I'm getting my teaching certificate so Peace Corps education program would be a good fit for me. Plus I'd get the stipend on top of my VA stuff so I'd be pretty set. Definitely join the peace corps. The advice about their stipend is true. Once you've lived on like $200 /mo you'll be used to just making it happen and less than ideal conditions. Don't count on running water, plumbing, or electricity though. You shouldn't need to touch your VA money, so you can just let that pile up. When you finish, you'd be well situated to just keep living in the country on the cheap, if you still wanted to. My program had a few vets in it and they were cool guys.
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Jan 16, 2016 22:00
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Have you given any thought to visas? Most countries won't give you one so you can live there and bum about on the Internet. You can get tourist visas and just do visa runs every few months, but eventually they'll notice and won't let you back into the country. If you're doing a teaching certificate you could just teach English somewhere, it will get you a working visa and some extra income. I teach at a university in China and work 2 or 3 days a week depending on my schedule for the semester, and I get a free apartment which would be my biggest expense. I spend about £250 a month, not sure what that is in dollars but its about your budget and I dont even try to save. Chinas not for everyone but you could probably swing something similiar somewhere else if you are a qualified teacher.
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Jan 17, 2016 06:11
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Just so you know, if you did any sort of Intelligence work for the military you are permanently unable to join the Peace Corps. From what I've heard they are pretty liberal with what they consider "Intelligence" also.
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Feb 1, 2016 07:30
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Tequila Sunrise posted:Just so you know, if you did any sort of Intelligence work for the military you are permanently unable to join the Peace Corps. From what I've heard they are pretty liberal with what they consider "Intelligence" also. Interesting. Does that restriction come from the Peace Corps or from the military? pig slut lisa fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Feb 1, 2016 |
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Feb 1, 2016 07:56
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pig slut lisa posted:Interesting. Does that restriction come from the Peace Corps or from the military? Peace Corps I'm pretty sure. Back in the 60s and 70s the CIA/Peace Corps got in a lot of hot poo poo because the CIA just started planting assets into batches of Peace Corps groups in countries for intelligence gathering. As usual, their plan got discovered and a shitload of countries flipped out so this rule got instated. It's so serious that you're not even allowed to have anyone in your immediate family who has worked in intelligence. If I remember it's not even limited to national intelligence agencies, so any kind of contracting work that you did that falls under the immense of umbrella of "intelligence work" could disqualify you.
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Feb 2, 2016 00:36
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