Dealing with labeling as an expat

One of the most difficult challenges facing the majority of Americans when they travel abroad is learning how to get past the never-ending chain of people who automatically assume you are nothing more than a vending machine which disperses dollars like a broken ATM. It is an unfortunate reality that the government of the United States has done an exceptionally good job at spreading the lie that most Americans are flush with thousands and thousands of dollars of surplus cash. The reality is that most of the things that Americans supposedly have - house, car, furniture, and lots and lots of material possessions - are nothing more than borrowed from the bank, and in fact they are living on credit.

Unfortunately, this has led to the belief that Americans traveling abroad are worth far more than they actually are. The reality is that many people living in countries that are considered poverty level by most Americans actually have a greater net worth than their US counterparts, because unlike Americans who are living on debt and borrowed credit, people in countries like Bulgaria, South Africa, Colombia and Mexico actually own all of their material possessions, as well as their houses, which means they are not living on borrowed credit.

If you want to avoid being labeled as a typical American when you are traveling abroad, where most people are making the assumption that you have tens of thousands of dollars to spare and are thus continually being bombarded by beggars, you have to blend in with the locals. If you ask any long-term expat who has been on the ground for a sustained period of time, they will tell you the same thing: if you want to blend in and avoid being hassled for spare change, you have to be able to look like the locals, speak like the locals, and act like the locals if you want to be treated like a local.

The other thing to think about is that when you are back home and you need to go grocery shopping, you don't end up going to the store with a video camera and a digital camera and a knapsack/backpack and hiking shoes. Instead, you are usually in casual attire with nothing more than your car keys and your wallet/purse. You aren't on a site-seeing trip when you are living in suburbia, so don't treat your time on the ground as a digital nomad as a site-seeing trip. Blend in as though you are just another local going about your business and you shouldn't have any issues. If you need pictures and the like try and save it for the weekends when the locals are out doing the same and you won't have any issues blending into the background. If you speak the language on top of that, your life as an expat just became the most relaxed and peaceful existence you will ever know.

Residual income for expats

Traveling abroad as an expat leads to a life of continual adventure and excitement, but it has to be tempered with at least some measure of responsibility, because unless you are someone who is independently wealthy from winning the lottery or having rich parents, you'll have to have some way of bringing in income that you can continue to fund your nomadic lifestyle. Professional expats are those individuals who have set up a variety of online businesses that bring them residual income on a monthly basis so that they can continue to travel around the world without spending their life savings like a retiree.

Setting up online businesses isn't as hard as one might think. In the past it was more challenging, but in the current era there is so much free information available on the Internet that it is literally an impossibility to avoid educating yourself if you just take five minutes to research something. It is an unfortunate reality that too many people are sheep who prefer to be led around by their noses, so they have been trained to believe that the only way to be productive is to join the workforce and follow someone else's lead, working for any minimum-wage salary and allowing a corporation to keep the lion's share of the profits.

The professional expat understands that this is not the only reality that exists. There are literally hundreds of different ways to generate income on the Internet, ranging from creating websites to becoming a freelance professional to doing consultations or selling products. All it really takes is a little ingenuity on your part and a little bit of hard work to get your business off the ground, but once you spend a few months building your business up you can guarantee that it will generate at least enough money to pay for your traveling expenses and cost of living while traveling. 

The best part about having residual income coming in while you are traveling is that once you get those income streams established it's like a continual stream that feeds your traveling fund. You can always do contract work for spot cash, but for a good, steady source you want to use some type of online business so that you can keep traveling. That's what it's all about, in any case. Pursuing the expat lifestyle means that travel is an inherent aspect of the journey. 

Organic produce for expats

Another of the many benefits of the expat lifestyle is the fact that you can enjoy true organic produce without some sort of misrepresented label on it. While in the United States the supermarkets like to put a label on foods which claim it is organic while charging you four or five times what normal produce costs, it's really nothing more than a gimmick. All that an organic label really means is that the produce was created using FDA-approved pesticides and fertilizers that are supposedly "safe", but they are still chemically-based toxins being used to cultivate the produce. If you want true organic you have to be willing to go to places around the world where the food actually is organic by its default nature, because the farmers aren't using any sort of pesticides or fertilizers at all.

A good example of what real organic production means is in the country of Argentina. Specifically, the meat that is produced there, which is known around the world for being some of the purest, most organically grown beef in the world. The cattle are raised completely on raw, natural grass in the fields around Argentina, and not a single droplet of fertilizer or pesticide is used on the grass. It is simply grass as nature intended it, and the cattle are eating the grass as nature intended them to. You can do the same thing by going to a place like Mexico and or Chile where you can shop at the local markets. Here, the farmers are selling produce that they have grown on their own farms without the need or use of special chemicals. When you go to the market to buy produce it is sold at local prices; pennies in comparison to what it costs back in the States, but here alongside other expats you are able to buy food that is organic by its very nature, and it doesn't need a name tag to define it.

However, you can also find larger quantities of food while living abroad, such as in Cancun. The cost of produce in these other countries is significantly less, with the average savings of someone choosing to live in Mexico being a minimum of $5,000 per year back in their pockets as a result of buying produce on the ground as an expat. 

Medical tourism for expats

Another major benefit of living abroad is certainly the cost, but what many people do not realize is that part of what the cost of living entails is your medical coverage. While in the United States you are expected to pay separate health insurance for your medical coverage, in other countries around the world the private healthcare system does not exist. Instead, universal healthcare is the norm, and your coverage is included in your taxes. There are also separate health insurance policies for those who wish to visit the private doctors, but you can go for free if you use the federally-funded hospitals and clinics so long as you are paying taxes for access.

But even if you don't have the local universal care, you can still save potentially tens of thousands of dollars per year utilizing medical tourism. An example of this would be having your teeth cleaned in Bulgaria. Without any form of dental insurance or coverage at all, you can walk into a dentist office and have them clean your teeth for a mere $25. This includes plaque removal as well as the actual cleaning of the teeth. Meanwhile, if you were try and walk into a dentist's office in the United States for the same thing you would be paying upwards of $400.

While it might not seem like a lot, when you can save 400 dollars or more on a simple dentist visit, think about the types of savings that you can see if you are talking about invasive procedures that go beyond the normal, everyday routines that most people need to visit a regular doctor for. How about a heart transplant costing $60,000 less in Mexico City than in the United States, or a heart surgery costing 83% less in the United States versus Mexico.

This is just a small example of medical tourism for expats. A Time.com article by Sarah Tung stated that while a liver transplant in the U.S. costs an average of $300,000, you can have the exact same procedure done in Taiwan for a mere $91,000, which means you are saving over $200,000 on the cost of the procedure. That's a lot of money, and it's one of the major reasons why medical tourism is becoming such a high-power industry on a global level. When people can have the exact same coverage and care for pennies in comparison, why pay obscene rates?

Public transportation for expats

One of the biggest myths for expats living abroad is that public transportation is inferior to what exists in the United States. It's an unfortunate aspect of the brainwashing most Americans have dealt with their whole lives, because they've been told that anything foreign is by default inferior. Greyhound has one of the worst reputations on an international level, and it's only natural that most Americans assume that all public transportation is similar or worse than their own, but this just isn't the case.

The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world where public transportation is at a minimum. There are only a handful of cities in the U.S. which have metros and train systems, and if you live in the Midwest you can forget about it. For the vast majority of Americans the primary route of transportation is their own personal car, which is also why the addiction to oil exists. But once you step foot outside of the States you find a reality that almost no American realizes: public transportation and cross-country buses are not only clean, reliable and safe, but they are the preferred method of transportation for almost the entire world.

Not only that, but the cost of gas in other countries is usually four to five times higher than what it is in the States. While it might cost $4 per gallon in California, when you go to a country like Bulgaria where you are paying in liters and the cost is $2.25 per liter, you are actually paying closer to $8 per gallon to fill up your car. Naturally, the locals in Bulgaria are opting for public transportation, as will the savvy expat, due to the fact that it can save you tens of thousands of dollars in fuel costs. When you can take a clean, reliable tram, bus, train or metro for a mere dollar in comparison, it's hard to justify driving a car.

Transportation is one of the easiest ways to save money while living abroad. There is no substitute for a 50 cent bus ticket, especially when you consider the hassle and cost of parking a vehicle in some of these places such as Paris, Rome or Mexico City. Thus you have most expats living abroad choosing to utilize the most common sense method that all the other locals are using: public transportation.