Why Work Abroad?

One of our favorite strategies for making travel more affordable and interesting is to live and work in another country. Whether you have a UK working holiday visa, an Australia working holiday visa, it’s your gap year, you pick up travel jobs, or you plan on volunteering, when you work abroad it makes for an incredible overseas experience.

The opportunity to work in another country gives you the greatest immersion into its culture. You will develop a deeper understanding of the people and their day to day lives, you’ll get a real feel for the heartbeat of the country and what drives it, you’ll get out of your comfort zone by trying different and unusual jobs, and it’s a great way to meet the locals and form life long friendships.

Another bonus is you’ll be earning the local currency which makes things more cost effective as far as your day to day expenses and living costs go .e.g. living in London and earning the British pound is more economical and your money goes a lot further than merely traveling through there on the Aussie dollar!

Obviously this scenario will depend and where you decide to live and work, and where you originally come from and the strength of that currency, but if you play it smart, it can be very beneficial.

Also, working in another country makes going on adventures in that country more affordable, and it makes it easier to save for bigger adventures in and around the continent.

If you want to make your gap year travel experience more affordable, the working abroad can assist with the funding, or volunteering overseas can help you save on living costs as many volunteering companies, such as WWOOF provide free accommodation and meals!

My students in Bangkok, Thailand

We personally love living as a foreigner in another country. There’s just something about it that can be hard to fully explain unless you have lived it. Day to day living takes on a new meaning. It’s a unique and wonderful experience and you gain a whole new perspective on how others live, think, and behave.

You could also do something very worthwhile like learning a new language, and they say the best way to do that is go and live where it is spoken fluently as the native tongue.

We have so far had the good fortune to have lived and worked in Bangkok, Dublin, London, and North Carolina, and it has created treasured memories. And without the opportunity to do this, our traveling life would have been much more limited due to lack of finances.

Traveling obviously costs money, and working in a foreign land can help fund your adventures for a much longer period of time. By the way, working overseas is not always easy.

There can be many hoops to jump through as far as getting the right visas, what type of work do you want to do, relocating, finding more permanent accommodation, setting up bank accounts, language barriers, filing taxes etc but all this helps you to get out of your comfort zone, grow as a person, and make for a more complete adventure!

Dinner with our life long Thai friends in Bangkok

For many people like us, traveling to foreign countries just isn’t enough. The thought that you’re simply on a trip, and that your counting down the days till your return home, can be a little  depressing sometimes! So, the obvious solution is to live and work there.

There are many options available these days to be able to do this, and the rest of the information under the Work Abroad section will outline some options for you.

Be like Nike….Just Do It!