Archive Page 7
September 2019
Miserable in the USA
Sept 30, 2019
Story at Business Insider - "The 50 most miserable cities in America"
This article concentrates its disdain on the cities of California (making 10 of them part of their "fifty worst"), along with New Jersey and Florida, each with multiple locations characterized (in the article) for devastation, crime, addiction rates and abandoned houses.
Oman bans expats from new list of business areas
June 6, 2019: story at iexpats
Profile of Kyoto
June 6, 2019: A look at the Japanese city - story at SCMP
What can you do with $2700 in Nice, Florence, and Barcelona
June 6, 2019: Article at International Living with this line: "...at first blush, staying in Nice, Florence, or Barcelona screams “expensive!” But it needn’t be..."
The 20 USA Cities people are leaving
June 6, 2019: Article at Moneywise on the exodus from badly performing urban areas. Particularly mentioned is violent crime as the culprit for getting away/staying away.
Deutsche Bank survey - Zurich is #1
Best cities in the world for quality of living
May 24, 2019: Article at CNBC News - The CNBC article examines the cost of living around the world, the "quality" of life in that locale, and compares the cost of consumer basics in each.
Specific focus on Zurich at Market Watch
Details about Frankfurt at Wall Street Journal
Analysis specific to Athens, Greece at Protothema
Focus on San Francisco at Live Mint
American cities continue to lose population
May 23, 2019: "39% of Americans live in cities" - story at Yahoo Finance gives a statistical breakdown of the top 15 urban living centers.
The best Expat pay in Asia
May 23, 2019: Story at MSN News looks at the pay averages.
Tourism to USA on multi-year downturn
May 23, 2019: "Tourism is vital to the US economy, representing 11 per cent of the country's total trade surplus of $77.4 billion. Last year, international tourism generated $197 billion for the US economy." - story at UK Telegraph.
Singapore Expat average pay shows increase
May 23, 2019: Numbers and details at Yahoo.
"Top Ten Retirement locations" in USA
High investment retirement location rankings: 1. Prescott AZ 2. Venice FLA 3. St Augustine FLA 4. Beaufort SC 5. Myrtle Beach SC 6. Abilene TX 7. Austin TX 8. Boise ID 9. Palm Springs CA 10. Salt Lake City UT
Tenting across Europe
List with details at Yahoo
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
Expat visits in Washington DC
H Street and 17th - just before Farragut Park
A very brief overview of the main tips for a quick touristy visit- - eating and sightseeing - - to Washington DC at traveller.com.au
More: Expats in Washington DC
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 expat places to live, 2019 edition
Story and details at Yahoo - the information is compiled from internations.org
Here's how the list works out, top five (they have a "top ten")
- Taiwan
- Vietnam
- Portugal
- Mexico
- Spain
Lists like this reflect what is emphasized, for example earning power of an average working expat, costs for healthcare, etc. What's always best to do is to look at regional information, for example homicide rates (in which case Mexico ranks at 3 times the rate of the USA) and all other aspects that are important to a person. What you think is important can vary from what the list-makers have emphasized in their data to create the ranking.
USA takes beating in rankings for expat livability
Sept 2019
Story at Yahoo and at internations.org
The comment section on the Yahoo article is quite ascerbic.
AMAZON: The Expert Expat: Your Guide to Successful Relocation Abroad