The cost of living for the expat lifestyle

If you have ever had the dream of traveling the world and exploring everything that it has to offer as a digital nomad, there is no time like the present. While most people will relegate themselves to only experiencing the world through the Travel Channel or National Geographic, entrepreneurial expats are individuals who choose to trade in a lifetime of abject slavery and 40 hour work weeks for a life of continual travel on the road where they take their Western jobs and their Western salaries and use them to perpetuate a lifetime of adventure and excitement in other countries around the world.

Living abroad as a digital nomad isn't anything new. People have been choosing to live in foreign countries for thousand of years. It's just that now, with the advent of global Internet and the world being completely globalized, the world is accessible at a level that wasn't previously available. Now, you can work anywhere in the world you want to be so long as you have Internet, which means you can work from an office in San Francisco just as easily as you can the beaches of Varna on the Black Sea. Why worry about 30 minute lunches and suits and ties when you can be kicked back on the beach with a margarita and your shorts?

One of the best aspects of living abroad as a digital nomad is how easy it is to access. The days of needing a million dollars to enjoy an early retirement are long gone, replaced with a lifestyle of absolute freedom where you control every moment of your destiny. 40 hours a week and 40 years of your life in a cubicle are nothing more than distant memories when you trade up for a digital nomad adventure where the entire world is your home. Once you go on the road beyond the only limitations are your imagination.

One of the easiest comparisons to make is to look at the difference between New York City and Mexico City. While both cities offer the same number of creature comforts and modern amenities, the cost of living in Mexico City is only $10,000 a year for an upper middle-class existence. If you live in New York City, on the other hand, you can expect to pay a base line $30,000 a year for a poverty level existence and $50,000 a year if you want to enjoy the upper middle class amenities of a modern city. When you do this comparison side by side, it's easy to see why digital nomads are choosing Mexico City and countries outside of the United States.

The power of the digital nomad lifestyle is in the simple math. The median salary for American citizens is $36,000 a year before taxes, or around $30,000 a year after tax. If you live in a median cost of living city in the United States of America you can expect to spend your full $30,000 a year on the cost of living, which means you are never getting ahead and never putting any money in the savings. But when you choose to live in another city such as Mexico City like other expats around the world, you can actually put the lion's share of profit back into your bank account and see returns that are a minimum of $15,000 a year.

By Benjamin Harper