Expat Exchange Community
7 years ago
The Earth Awaits: An Expat Budget Generator
7 years ago
Hi All,
I joined this evening after being a long-time lurker to share a tool I spent the last few months building, which folks here may love.
It's called The Earth Awaits: https://www.theearthawaits.com
Background: I write a small personal finance blog called The Frugal Vagabond, which focuses on early retirement to slow travel the world. One of the post series that has always been really popular is the "Retire Abroad" series, which is about a series of places that one can retire on a limited budget. I used a standard budget to compare a similar lifestyle across many countries.
The problem was that the data was always almost immediately out of date. So, I spent months building this tool that takes your inputs about family size, lifestyle, housing needs, and maximum and minimum budget to custom-build you a budget for almost 600 cities worldwide. The cost of living data is detailed and up-to-date at all times. The site then takes your preferences for things like pollution, crime, and quality of life, and filters the list to just the ones that suit you.
So basically, you end up with a series of cities to explore and consider, with custom budgets built just for you! You can dig in and learn about each city and country, edit the budget line-by-line if you don't agree with how it was generated for you, and download it as a CSV to pull up in Excel later.
The site is free. I'm hoping that the idea is interesting enough to people that the ad income is enough to support it. I'm grateful for any feedback, which you are welcome to post here or reach out to me using the site's contact form.
If you like it, please consider sharing it in the country forums where you participate, which I don't want to spam. Thanks, and enjoy!
I joined this evening after being a long-time lurker to share a tool I spent the last few months building, which folks here may love.
It's called The Earth Awaits: https://www.theearthawaits.com
Background: I write a small personal finance blog called The Frugal Vagabond, which focuses on early retirement to slow travel the world. One of the post series that has always been really popular is the "Retire Abroad" series, which is about a series of places that one can retire on a limited budget. I used a standard budget to compare a similar lifestyle across many countries.
The problem was that the data was always almost immediately out of date. So, I spent months building this tool that takes your inputs about family size, lifestyle, housing needs, and maximum and minimum budget to custom-build you a budget for almost 600 cities worldwide. The cost of living data is detailed and up-to-date at all times. The site then takes your preferences for things like pollution, crime, and quality of life, and filters the list to just the ones that suit you.
So basically, you end up with a series of cities to explore and consider, with custom budgets built just for you! You can dig in and learn about each city and country, edit the budget line-by-line if you don't agree with how it was generated for you, and download it as a CSV to pull up in Excel later.
The site is free. I'm hoping that the idea is interesting enough to people that the ad income is enough to support it. I'm grateful for any feedback, which you are welcome to post here or reach out to me using the site's contact form.
If you like it, please consider sharing it in the country forums where you participate, which I don't want to spam. Thanks, and enjoy!
