American expats in Ecuador
May 2019: Story at Forbes Magazine
This article examines the point of view of Americans in Ecuador and talks to Matthew Hayes, in New Brunswick, Canada, author of the book Gringolandia, and this is from the interview with the author: "...what showed up was what they were moving from. They wanted to get off the rat wheel."
Expat ideas for finding work in France
May 2019: Tips concentrate on seasonal employment - story at The Local
New tax laws for expats coming in Thailand
May 8, 2019: More detail at The Nation
Expat Canadians voting from overseas
May 2019: Story at The Star
American expats returning home from China
May 2019: Story at Financial Times concentrates on Ford Motor Company
Leadership skills sharpened by expat experience
May 2019: Story at IAMEXPAT
Over 800,000 naturalized citizens added to EU
March 6, 2019: Story at New Europe about the numbers, with details on where the people came from and where in Europe they were able to naturalize into citizens.
Spain has plan to protect UK citizens in BREXIT
March 3, 2019: Issue of residence rights and health care appearsto have been settled - Story at Bloomberg
Greece is "worst for women" in survey - Czech Republic comes out first
March 2, 2019: Story at UK Independent. Survey uses data from 180,000 expats and concentrates on career prospects and view of the overall economy, which unsurprisingly, is rather dark on the possibilities for the debt-laden Mediterranean country where a negative view of the economy is rampant and the current governing party is far behind in popularity as an election cycle is heating up. The alarming headline at the Independent though, seems rather misleading since it implies a working condition problem perhaps reflected by the culture, versus the economy. The story itself is straightforward and is an overview of the data.
Italy came in #2 on the list, which is also suffering a battered economic situation with the EU commission beginning to hover (as it has done over Greece for close to a decade).
HSBC survey on best destinations for Expat Careers
Feb 9, 2019: Story at Huewire mentions the basic reason for Bahrain's being at the top: earning potential.
Here's the HSBC survey incorporating a whole list of worldwide locations compared and ranked.
USA's Fifty worst cities
Feb 8, 2019: "Lists of worst places" and "lists of best places" stories appear regularly in the media. The better ones rely on a mix of statistics and actual anecdotal information from people who live there, the pro forma stories rely only on stats. This story at USA Today is the latter, a list of places qualified as 'worst' by statistics.
The problem with this is pretty clear right from the beginning of the list, which is Beverly Hills, Florida, which is presented as awful by virtue of home cost averages, poverty rate (high at 32.9%) and population total. By way of explanation, USA Today provides this added information: "The city has a far lower concentration of bars, restaurants, theatres, and museums than is typical nationwide."
We can tell by the population size that Beverly Hills, Florida is a town, not a city, and to highlight how arbitrary this ranking is, the issue of lack of museum offerings is only going to impact a certain percentage of any typical American population group because only a minority of Americans go to museums in the first place. (Viewed on a map, it looks like Beverly Hills, Florida may lack the size to have even a movie theatre, let alone museums and 'theatres' of the live staging variety. This makes me ask the question, is USA Today using a system of ranking that should only apply to actual cities?)
Since this USA Today ranking of Beverly Hills, FL, lacks information on violent crime rates (which they do provide for other locations) it seem rather superfluous to concentrate on the number of cultural institutions that do not lie within this small town instead of an analysis of the more obvious: violent crime, crime in general, rate of divorce, numbers of kids (or lack thereof), employment rate, numbers of businesses (large and small) within the commuter range, and how many people own homes, or automobiles, etc. There's so many more factors in play that could constitute a better articulated portrait of a town (or city).
The USA Today ranking system includes fifty locations, the number 1 with the dubious title of "worst in America" is Mendota, California.
Low budget Expat retirement
Feb 2019: Barron's article covers 5 destinations: Portugal, Ecuador, Italy, Bali and Vietnam, with basic numbers on renting or owning.
Challenges of No-Deal-Brexit
Feb 2019: Story on the difficulties facing Brits in Greece at Bloomberg [English]
Software for filing taxes
Feb 2019: Software promotional article describes software MyExpatTaxes and how it can help with filing. Article describes some benefits for getting the paperwork in on time and the problems facing no-filers (i.e., fines).
"Taiwan the best" for expats
Feb 2019: Article at iexpats summarizing data from a internations.org survey . The iexpats piece is full of praise for Taiwan, and goes to the trouble to take digs at some other popular locations, and in particular quotes a survey respondent as saying Malta has extreme corruption at every level of government.
Travails of Swiss expats in France
Feb 2019: Story describes the issues surrounding cross-border education for children of parents who pay Swiss taxes but live in France - at expatica.
Top Passport? Japanese
Jan 2019: Visa-free travel to 190 countries, the Japan passport is ranked number one in power to cross borders, with S. Korea and Singapore next. UK and USA a little further down the list - rankings at MSN News.
Gallup: Most Americans ever want to exit USA
Jan 2019: Top destination isn't far, with many citing Canada as their choice of destination. Gallup attributes the numbers to political issues with Pres. Trump, and refers back to similar numbers (though lower) that manifested under Pres. Obama and Pres. Bush.
Taxes in 2019 for expats
Jan 2019: The Global Times has a guide for tax issues and challenges for expats.
Going to Russia
Jan 2019: Expat experiences examined at Russia Beyond
Residency and passports - 23 countries
Jan 2019: Informative story at UK Standard which lists 23 countries and their requirements for obtaining a second passport/legal residency. The list shows the highest at £2 million (the UK) and the lowest at $15,253 (Thailand) with the other countries listed at graduated steps according to their fees.
Forbes: inexpensive places to live in for 2019
Jan 2019: Survey with the premise of living cheaply (total cost estimates by the month are given for a variety of locations, often the numbers are between $1,700 - $2,500). Emphasis either for retirement or for less stressful working - Forbes Magazine
Best "low wages" - Australia high; Greece low
Dec 2018: Story at European Sting on minimum wages around the globe.
Turkey gets lauded for safety for retirees
Dec 2018: Story at Emigrate UK on the plus side of Turkey as a destination, with places that are English-language savvy detailed a bit, with emphasis on beach areas and cultural atmosphere.
Tax Havens (as listed by the EU)
Nov 2018: In 2017 a "black list" was created of 17 countries that were deemed uncooperative in working with the EU regarding tax evasion, among other financial matters. That list now consists of only 5 countries (Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, American Samoa, Guam and the American Virgin Islands), though some other nations were moved to a "grey list" for lacking transparency. More on this at Reuters.
Singapore listed as "best for expats" again
October 2018: New survey from HSBC (survey here) listing the top thirty-one locations for expat success. Brazil is #31, and Singapore is (again) number one. United States comes in at #23. An analyzes of the results at Forbes discusses how the USA was ranked higher for earning power, but lower for the "long hours." South America and Africa placed poorly, and this is also mentioned in the Forbes piece.
Retiring to Greece
Oct 2018: Generally informative article which hits all the main points, especially what it takes to stay legally in Greece (i.e., a permanent visa). Has cost of living figures (significantly lower than USA or Britain for example) and other bits of information - Story at Smart Asset
That story from Smart Asset hints at the one of the main hurdles of staying on permanently in Greece, which is the bureaucracy. For an older article which covers this in more detail (and describes some of the pain that can be incurred from having to make every form perfect, and then some, see this 2007 article at livingingreece.GR)
Spain and Brexit
Nov 2018: Bookings for holiday travel out of Britain into 2019 is down due to fears about what happens after Brexit - story at BBC.
This UK Mirror article describes general tourism was off for 2018, and expats were leaving out of BREXIT fears, too.
Expat terminations
August 2018
Expat Coach Katia Vlachos Provides Detailed Roadmap for Expat success - Broadway World
There are currently over 57 million expatriates worldwide and research shows that international assignee levels are expected to rise a further 50% by 2020. However, between 4 and 10% of expatriate assignments get terminated early. Such an alarmingly high failure rate begs the question: Why?
Denmark
August 2018
Living in an Expat World: What is Danish summer?
The three topics: temperatures, cycling and ice-cream.
Saudi Arabia
August 2018
More Than 1.6 Million Expat Violators Caught in Saudi Arabia - albawaba.com
"The Nation-Free of Violators campaign announced on Saturday that it has netted as many as 1,625,018 expatriate violators of the systems of residency, work and border security."
Bahrain
August 2018
Expat suicides toll rises to 23 - gdnonline
"...another expatriate employee took his life yesterday taking the toll of reported suicides among foreign workers in Bahrain to 23 this year."
A perusal of Bing or Google news over the last few years shows many news stories about expat suicide rates in Kuwait, UAE, and other countries. Family and money problems seems to lead the suspected causes.
The Expert Expat: Your Guide to Successful Relocation Abroad - Amazon.com