There’s a wide range of jobs that globe trotters may consider. Of course, there’s the possibility of accepting contract assignments from former employers. And there are often positions available to teach English, work as a translator, lead English-speaking tours, or work at hotels that cater to English-speaking travelers, according to Betsy Burlingame, founder of ExpatExchange.com, a leading Web site on international living.

Increased I.R.S. scrutiny of bank accounts abroad under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which began to take effect this year, means foreign banks must report more information on American account holders. Mr. Comisky, [partner at the law firm Blank Rome and co-author of "Tax Fraud and Evasion"], said he had received calls from people with undeclared overseas accounts who asked if they could transfer the money to a friend who was not an American citizen and have that person transfer it back to them as a gift to avoid the penalties from years of not paying their taxes.

“I said, ‘You can do it, but it’s illegal,’” Mr. Comisky said. “That’s pure tax evasion.”

“You get excited being back and say, ‘I lived away — I should be able to treat myself,’” Mr. Crew said. “You can, but you need to look at some of these things and their impact on the long term and do that without the emotional element to it.”

A decade of a weakening pound has left many expat pensioners with up to 50% less buying power from their retirement income now than when they first retired, research from Equiniti has revealed.

Equiniti Paymaster currently administers the payroll and international payment of pensions for over 50,000 expat pensioners, many of whom are former public sector workers receiving an average pension of around £5,600 a year.

The largest single group of these 50,000 pensioners, 12.45%, has retired to the eurozone where someone who retired in 2003 will have seen the purchasing power of their pension fall by 22%. Someone with a £5,000 pension would bring in just under €7,300 (£6,212) ten years ago, whilst the same pension amount would now bring in only €5,692 (£4,843).

British expats with savings under £85,000 have been spared from being taxed by the Cypriot government in a last-minute EU deal.

But it means that any of the island’s 60,000 British expats who break the threshold will be subjected to the compulsory one-off levy.

Cyprus was saved from a banking system collapse and bankruptcy in the early hours of Monday morning when eurozone ministers agreed a draft rescue package of £10 billion euro (£8.5 billion).
The UK Government has previously said it will only compensate British armed forces personnel left out of pocket.

British expats in Cyprus and the British press have reacted angrily at proposals to force depositors to share in the bailout costs for Cyprus banks.

Britain has close ties to the island nation and Cyprus was a crown colony of the British Empire until 1960. Roughly 3,000 personnel from the British Armed Forces are based on the island for strategic reasons.

British expat Jean Stark said: “It was a huge shock. We hadn’t expected it all as it hasn’t happened in any of the other countries that have been bailed out.”

The deposit levy is set to hit 60,000 British expats and around 170 million pounds ($255 million) in their savings.

While holidaymakers might take a short, sharp hit from a weakening pound, a change in the strength of sterling may be more of a lingering issue for expats…

Financial advisory group deVere has calculated that many UK expats in Europe have seen their monthly retirement income reduced by an average of 8% since the start of the year…

“With this in mind, and to avoid being subject to further volatility in the currency markets, those who are living abroad and claiming a UK pension should consider the various ways to mitigate the fluctuations with their financial adviser,” [says the group's chief executive Nigel Green].

The recurring motif of this weekend’s Working Abroad Expo at Dublin’s RDS was the maple leaf, with many attendees saying they were looking for the chance of a new life in Canada…

Michelle Noone from Caltra in Galway, who was there with her husband Declan, said they were going because “we can’t see things getting any better here.” But there were also those who said they were going out of choice. Ruth O’Neill (25) from Dublin, an employed chemical engineer, said she was looking forward to the chance to live and work abroad.

Johanne Doucet, of building company LaFarge, said they had received over 100 applications for 10 assured jobs, adding that the company’s “big problem” was that it had too many applications.

For more than a century unskilled Italians have gone abroad to escape poverty, but these days the people running for the exits are among the country’s top brains.

A growing wave of technologists, researchers and entrepreneurs is flowing away from the motherland. Few think this weekend’s elections will do much to alleviate the gloom.

“I am Italian and I love Italy. But every time I come back to visit, I see the country is sliding a little further back,” said Andrea Ballarini, an economics graduate who left for the U.S. West Coast nearly three years ago…

“My business partner and I bought a ticket for San Francisco. We just wanted to check Silicon Valley out. We never came back,” said Ballarini, who was won over by the pro-business atmosphere of the West Coast and now runs a virtual business fair platform called HyperFair.

“The purpose is to help companies who are moving staff to work in other countries to know how much they should pay assignees so they’re not losing out – to make sure they’re no better or no worse off by going to another country to work,” said Steven Kilfedder, ECA International’s London-based cost-of-living manager.

“It might be useful research for American executives who are going to work overseas and are paid in dollars,” said Tann vom Hove, a senior fellow at the City Mayors Foundation, a London-based think tank on urban life and economics. For local residents, “the research is more or less meaningless.” He added, of the city rankers, “I’m sure their research is good and honorable, but it’s aimed at a very limited client base.”

More than 65 million Americans travel overseas each year –mostly without incident. But as the recent case of Sarai Sierra –the New York City woman who disappeared while vacationing alone in Turkey shows –just about anyone traveling overseas can be at risk.

Despite having offshore accounts, expat savers are still feeling the effects of the UK government policy of providing banks cheap money to lend in mortgages.

To low interest rates, add inflation – still high at 2.7% – and making money on saving becomes nigh on impossible.

Savings rates are also being affected by the Funding for Lending scheme: banks have less need for savings because they can borrow money cheaply from the Government to lend in mortgages.

All of these factors add up to a toxic mix for savers. And for expat savers, it’s even worse as there are a diminishing number of providers keen to take your savings anyway, so there is less need for those still in the market to be competitive. As a result, expat savers are now lucky if they can get more than 2%, even if that ties their money up for several years.

China’s world-beating growth has been built on the backs of hundreds of millions of people willing to work for wages low enough to make a labor boss in the West weep. Economists in and out of China have warned that model is bound to play out as China eventually runs out of surplus labor.

But when?

Two International Monetary Fund economists say China will become a labor-shortage country sometime between 2020 and 2025—and there isn’t much China can do about it.