Personal-finance columnist Charlotte Cowles asks the nosy, revealing, sometimes uncomfortable questions about money so you don’t have to.
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images
Last year, a record number of American citizens moved out of the U.S., citing better affordability and quality of life abroad. (In fact, more people moved out of the U.S. in 2025 than moved in, which hasn’t occurred to this degree since the Great Depression.) It’s not hard to understand why: Other countries offer cheaper housing, education, and health care, which comprise the biggest pain points for many American households.
But it’s not all smooth sailing. Starting over in a new country requires up-front costs (plane tickets, for starters), not to mention plenty of unexpected ones. Here, three American citizens who moved abroad for financial reasons share the unanticipated costs of doing so and how they’ve made it work.
— a 40-year-old woman who lived in Turkey by way of Ann Arbor, Michigan
After college, I taught abroad in a few different countries, and while I was teaching in Turkey, I met my husband. He came back to the U.S. with me on a fiancé visa, and we lived together in Ann Arbor for five years. I started my own business coaching people in intercultural relationships. But the business didn’t grow like I’d hoped, and I was working part-time jobs to pay our bills.
My husband also felt stuck, professionally. He was working initially as a preschool teacher and then as a full-time babysitter. Thankfully, neither of us had student loans, but we were renting an apartment that cost $1,200 a month. There was a real mismatch between our income and expenses, and it didn’t seem like things were going to change. So in 2021, we decided to go back to Turkey for a little while. Our hope was to get out of our paycheck-to-paycheck situation and save more money than we’d been able to in the U.S.
The timing worked out. My husband’s job was coming to an end, and one of my part-time teaching jobs was winding down. Our lease was ending, too. And my husband had gotten his American citizenship, so we could travel more easily. We sold our car for a couple thousand dollars, used all our credit-card miles to buy our flights, and moved in with my husband’s family in Turkey for a few months.
The move created space, financially and psychologically, for me to start a new career as a fiction writer. I wrote two romance novels during that first winter in Turkey. We were staying in my in-laws’ one-bedroom farmhouse that wasn’t insulated, so I wrote every night huddled up next to the heater.
I also got a remote job in ed tech, a part-time contract role for an American company. I made about $700 a week before taxes, so I took home about $400 or $500 a week. I still had to pay American taxes. With the exchange rate when we first got there, we felt great just on that income. My husband didn’t get a job — he took care of all the home maintenance, car maintenance, and groceries. Everything seemed so cheap. When we eventually got our own apartment, it cost about $300 a month, and that was for a private villa near the coast with three bedrooms and its own pool. Compared to our place in Michigan, it was incredible.
We also got state health care, because my husband is a Turkish citizen, so I was able to get it too. It was free, which was amazing, even though we didn’t wind up needing it. One other thing that was very cheap was veterinary care. We adopted four cats while we were in Turkey, because there are so many strays, and we were able to get them neutered and spayed for a fraction of what it would cost in the U.S.
One thing I didn’t anticipate was that cars in Turkey are extremely expensive. We spent about $4,000 on a car from 1997. That’s about how much money we got for the car we’d sold in the U.S., which was from the early 2000s. Plus, most older cars in Turkey have been retrofitted with propane tanks, because propane is cheaper than regular gas. If you’re at all inclined to be paranoid, like I am, you’re always worried about blowing up.
Eventually, inflation caught up to us. People talk about how it’s been bad in the U.S., but in Turkey, inflation was over 70 percent at one point. Rent was still much cheaper — by that time, we were paying about $500 or $600 a month — but we were saving less than we wanted to, and there were more job opportunities back in the States. So the advantages started shrinking. We’d been thinking about buying a house there and staying for longer, but then we realized that might not be the best decision. We decided to move back to Michigan about five months ago, stay with my family for a while, and save up for a house here instead.
All together, I self-published 14 books while we were living abroad. I haven’t been able to earn a full living from them, but that’s partly my own fault, because I haven’t put a lot of time into marketing. I earn a couple hundred bucks a month from them, probably. They’re always sort of ticking along in the background.
Moving back was expensive. We had to fly back twice because we wanted to bring our cats with us, and you can only bring one animal per person at a time. It wound up being about $6,000 total to do that, which ate up a chunk of our savings. We still had about $12,000 left over, though, and we’ve been staying with my family, which has enabled us to keep saving. We’re hoping to be able to buy our own place around here someday. So far, it’s going well. My husband got a job that he likes a lot as a driver. I am still job-searching because the market is terrible. I keep a spreadsheet of all the applications I’ve sent out. But I’m continuing to write as well. Moving abroad was definitely the best decision, financially and otherwise, for that time in our lives, but I’m also glad we came back when we did.
—Evelyn, a 33-year-old who lives in Turin, Italy, by way of Middlebury, Vermont
I moved to Italy about 15 years ago because the college tuition here was so much more affordable. I’m from Vermont, and even in-state tuition was three times the cost of tuition plus my rent and living expenses in Rome. I wanted to study archaeology and history, and Italy seemed like a great place to do that. I went to the American University of Rome, so I have federal student loans from the American government, but much less than what I’d have if I went to school in the U.S.
When I finished my bachelor’s degree, I had about $18,000 in loans. Then I decided to get a master’s degree in business, which was another $25,000 for a one-year program. So in total, I owed about $40,000 to $45,000, which is significant, but people I know from back home owe much more than that. I consider myself pretty lucky. I’m on an income-based repayment plan, which has given me a lot of flexibility. I have years when I’m not making a lot because I’m freelance, and it’s never been a problem. My loans have also been in forbearance for much of the past six years, partly because of the pandemic and also because so many of the federal repayment plans are up in the air. I’ve paid off about $10,000 so far, and I’ll take care of the rest when I can, but it’s not something I lose a ton of sleep over.
I pay taxes in Italy, so I have state health care, which is free. But sometimes I’ve paid for private health care. I get migraines, so in one case, I got a referral to a doctor who didn’t have appointments available for months. Instead, I paid for a private neurologist who did some scans. But it was only about €200 (about $235). All of my prenatal care has been totally covered, but I did pay out of pocket for a DNA test, which wasn’t cheap — about €650 ($765). Still, that’s a lot less than what most health insurance costs in the U.S.
Right now, my husband and I are considered decently well off by Italian standards. Together, we make the equivalent of about $50,000 to $60,000 a year, after taxes, and we’re about to have our second child. My husband is Italian and owns rental properties that he inherited from his family, so we don’t have to pay for housing because we live in one of the apartments. We can afford to pay for what we need and go on vacations occasionally. But by American standards, we’re almost poor. In fact, even if we wanted to move back to the U.S., we couldn’t afford to. We considered it during the pandemic, but once we researched basic costs, it was a nonstarter. We wouldn’t be able to afford a deposit on an apartment, and at the time, we’d never even had a credit card, so we couldn’t get past the first step of a credit check. Credit cards are much less common in Italy. Car financing wasn’t even widely available until recently.
We can barely even afford to visit the U.S. these days. A few summers ago, we went for two weeks, and we spent over €3,000 on the flights, groceries, car rental, and travel health insurance. That’s a huge expense to us. So I definitely don’t think about moving back anymore — it’s just not possible, even if we wanted to.
— Kate, a 22-year-old woman who lives in London by way of San Francisco
I grew up in a suburb of St. Louis, and I didn’t know anyone whose family set up a college fund for them. It wasn’t part of my family’s reality, either. So when it was time for me to go to college, I either had to take out huge student loans or go to the University of Missouri, which gave me a scholarship. I didn’t like it there, so I went for one year and then moved to San Francisco and finished school remotely. I was able to graduate early, at 19, by testing out of introductory classes and applying my AP credits.
Moving to San Francisco was a cultural and financial shock. I’d always wanted to move there and get out of the Midwest, and I’m glad I did. To afford it, I had several part-time jobs. I did college consulting and worked part-time for multiple nonprofits. And because I no longer had to pay for the dorms at the University of Missouri, they credited me my scholarship amount for room and board. So they wrote me a check for $14,000, which was nice.
Even still, the cost of living in San Francisco was hard to keep up with. After a year, I moved in with my boyfriend, and we were each paying about $1,650 for a two-bed, one-bath apartment. My car payment was $350 a month, charging it cost $150 a month, and the car insurance was $450 a month. After that, I spent about $250 on groceries. So my average monthly expenses were almost $3,000, just for the basics. And I was making $70,000 working for a nonprofit, which in the Bay Area is abysmal.
I decided to go to grad school when I realized that I was never going to get a bonus or any kind of raise at my job. So I looked at master’s programs in climate-change management and finance. Columbia’s program cost about $120,000. They offered me a $20,000 scholarship, but that was negligible compared to the price difference with the program I’m doing in the U.K., which is about $55,000. It’s still a lot for one year, but it’s a prestigious program, and I’ll be qualified for much better-paying jobs after I complete it.
The U.S. government does offer student loans for my school in the U.K., but the interest rate was so high that it didn’t make sense to go that route. So I went with Sallie Mae, which had a slightly better rate, and I took out a $90,000 loan to make sure that I had enough to cover all of my living costs and the tuition. I won’t need all of it. I’m very diligent about saving. But I wanted to be sure that I could cover everything I needed, and London is very expensive.
It’s true that health care in the U.K. through the NHS is free, but if you’re here on a student visa, you still have to pay an enrollment fee. I think it was about £700 (almost $1,000). The medical care is not great, and there are extremely long wait times. Nobody has dental care. I had to get a crown replaced for my teeth, which cost the equivalent of $500, and I had to wait multiple months for an appointment. Then I lost my hearing aid. Theoretically, hearing aids are supposed to cost about $70 through the NHS, but then they told me, “You are literally never going to get through the queue to get a hearing aid, so you should just go through a private service.” The private service quoted me £1,500, about $2,000. So this “free” health care is not really what it seems.
I ran all the numbers before I took out my loan, because I needed to know how I’d pay it back. Starting salaries for the type of jobs I’ll be qualified for are closer to $100,000–$120,000 in the San Francisco area, which would enable me to pay off the loan fairly quickly. It has stressed me out knowing that I have to find a job with that salary, but I already have a summer internship lined up, and I’m interviewing too.
A lot of people in my program plan to live in the U.K. afterward, but that’s just not possible for me. It costs almost as much to live in London as it does in San Francisco, but the salaries aren’t as high, so I won’t make enough to repay my loan. I live in South Kensington, in London, and I pay about $1,800 a month in rent. I thought I’d want to stay here, but I can’t.
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