How to Build Wealth While Living Abroad

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Moving Abroad Resources:

👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Roadmap Guidebook that walks you through the five phases of moving abroad ($27): https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/relocate

👉 Moving Abroad Relocation Blueprint Course which offers step by step guidance on everything from choosing the right country to immigration to taxes and everything in between: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/blueprint

👉 Want us to handle the details of your move abroad? Apply for our white-glove relocation services here: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/consult

👉 Free Moving to Mexico Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico

👉 Free Moving Abroad Checklist: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/abroad 

Remote Work and Online Income Resources:

👉 Expat Income Accelerator course which shows you the multiple ways you can make money globally based on our 15+ years of experience in online business, investing internationally and living in multiple countries: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/income

👉 Get Your First High Paying Client Online Bootcamp which walks you through the first four foundational steps of creating and monetizing an online business based on 15+ years of experience in online business: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/firstclient-yt

👉 YouTube Mastery Workshop which shows you how we’ve built two YouTube channels that bring clients and passive income from digital course sales (including turning Entrepreneur Expat into a six-figure business in six months): https://www.YouTubeMasteryWorkshop.com

👉LinkedIn Mastery Workshop which shows you how to use LinkedIn to find remote work, clients and connect with recruiters based on Justin’s experience building a six-figure business and finding remote work on LinkedIn: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/linkedin

👉 Free Make Money From Anywhere Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/money-guide 

V I D E O S    T O    W A T C H    N E X T :

Online Business Tips to Working and Traveling In Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGH0voCyOc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j&index=2

Moving to Mexico: 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in Guadalajara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK23vD8_xjc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_LAY7UV78YMgms-f2e1UcwN&index=23

Tips for Moving Overseas: Top 5 Remote Work Skills That Make Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzjCrlNAL8&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j

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Inquiries: community@entrepreneurexpat.com

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Transcript

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Here's the truth, most people never hear. Wealth is easier to build abroad than it is within the us, Canada, or Western Europe. Not harder, not because you're making more money, but because you're no longer bleeding cash just to survive. When your rent drops by 50%, your healthcare drops by 70%. Your stress drops by 80%. Your nervous system finally calms down. And you suddenly have space, mental, financial, and emotional to build real wealth, amazing things start happening. Most people don't have a wealth problem. They have an environment problem. And when you change the environment while everything accelerates today, I'm breaking down step by step, exactly how to build wealth while living abroad, even if you're just starting out. If you're new to this channel, I'm Justin Kelner, and this is Entrepreneur Expat. And here we help freedom minded professionals build global lives without sacrificing comfort, income, or security. If you're tired of feeling squeezed financially and want a path that actually works in 2026, check out this video and make sure that you subscribe to this channel and hit that notification bell as well, because this is going to be a game changer for you. Let's dive in. Wealth building in high cost countries is hard because cost of living just keeps rising. Wages are not keeping up. Taxes are increasing every single year. Housing is unaffordable. Healthcare is unpredictable, and lifestyle creep is unavoidable. Stress levels are absolutely through the roof. When you move abroad though, especially to countries like Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Portugal, Costa Rica, Uruguay, and more, the baseline changes and wealth, well, it's built on those baselines. When your baseline expenses drop, your lifestyle quality increases, your mental clarity returns, your income stretches, your savings multiply, and your investment window expands. Your environment really goes from your enemy to an accelerator. Wealth abroad is really built through four simple levers. Number one, earning its strong currency. Maybe that's USD Euro or British Pounds. This is the real cheat code because$3,000 a month in Mexico or Thailand is a very comfortable life versus if you're in any major city in the us. You would be struggling to get by or at least live decent on$3,000 a month. We spend less than that every single month. My wife and I as a couple, we have a beautiful condo with a Lakeview. We live in an amazing, safe, uh, town in a gated community, and that includes massages every couple weeks, getting our hair and nails done, mostly at home, uh, and all of our groceries. Having a cleaning lady cook and clean and, and help us with the house, like all of it. We don't have to worry about a single thing. We can just focus on our business and on making money. Number two, spend in a weaker currency. So when you do that, your expenses are going to drop by 40 to 70%, depending on the location. Number three, eliminate financial stress. So without constant pressure, your ability to save, invest, and create increases exponentially. Number four. Use that margin to grow assets. This is what we've been doing. We've been investing not just in the US, but primarily actually in Mexico because we've had a lot more margin from all of our projects and other ventures online. So when you have more margin, you have more options. Margin is where that wealth actually multiplies. Here's what a lot of people get wrong about this process. Number one, bringing us spending habits with you. If you recreate your old lifestyle abroad, you won't build wealth. You'll just live cheaply. Number two, choosing countries based on fantasy. You need affordability and stability and infrastructure, not just an Instagram ready postcard type of destination. Uh, we love the beach, for example. I mean, I love going to the beach. I love spending time at the beach. I don't want to deal with the humidity of a beach town all year round or all of the crazy drunk Americans there, right? So I don't live by the beach. I live by the lake instead. That's. Actually what? What fuels me and what gives me a lot of stability? So trap number three is not having a plan for the extra money. Money, energetically speaking, really needs a place to go. So saving a loan does not make you wealthy. Actually allocating that wealth does. Number four, believing you need to make more before you start investing. No, you don't need to make more. You need margin. And being abroad gives you more margin because you're making more than your spending. So here's how to actually build wealth. Step by step number one, choose the right home base. Some of the countries that we talk about on this channel a lot because of how good they are for entrepreneur, expats include Mexico, Malaysia, Thailand, Portugal, ua, Albania, Greece, Panama, Costa Rica, and Columbia. Each offers a different blend of affordability, stability, and quality of life. So you want to pick based on lifestyle and cost of living as well as the residency ease. Step two, keep earning and a strong currency. Maybe that's remote work, consulting, digital products, freelancing or online services. You do not need a local job. This is one of the common misconceptions that people have. They say, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna move to Mexico. Who's gonna hire me to be able to earn well in Mexico? And it, the reality is nobody because best case scenario. You are somebody who's coming in, probably doesn't speak that local, local language, doesn't have connections, may not have education or certifications in that country. You don't. You don't have that network of people there. And more importantly. Even if you were to land a job and get work authorization and everything else, which is almost impossible to do because the government does not want to give Mexican jobs away to foreigners. Even if you got through all that, you're still gonna be competing with locals for local wages. So you do not need a local job. You can make money from abroad. We do have a lot of courses on that. You can actually check out our free Make Money From Anywhere, guided entrepreneur expat.com/money as well as that Expat Income Accelerator course, which is below this video to help you get started and understand the actual step-by-step process in depth of how to turn your remote income dreams into a reality. Step three is establish a real financial margin, so you want to calculate your new monthly savings potential. It's going to shock. Step four, build a simple wealth plan. Maybe that's three to six months of runway. That always takes the stress outta situations when you know exactly how all of the bills are going to be paid. Investment accounts, real estate, maybe that's at home or abroad. You can start investing in real estate, a scalable income skill and an optional second residency or banking options before you're even necessarily ready to move abroad if you haven't already. At least start looking into some of those. Residency plans that you can have in your back pocket. Sometimes you do need to have the residency before getting a bank account. As is often the case in places like Mexico, sometimes you don't. There's countries in the world like Georgia for example, where you can just go there. You can fly in, you can open a bank account. There's others like Estonia where you can even open an account remotely and have sort of a paper digital, uh, entrepreneurship type of residency be able to open an account there. You wanna start diversifying. Step five is stick to a regulated, peaceful lifestyle because when your nervous system is calm, your creativity and discipline skyrocket. I'll give you like a micro example just of what's happened to us in the last couple years as we moved from a big city here in Mexico, which is Guadalajara to the small town that we live in by Lake Chip, and it was a much smaller leap than, for instance, moving from la. To Guadalajara and being in a different country where the pace of life is already more chill, but just by moving to this, this lakeside condo, we have so much more calm, so much more peace, random ideas that we're getting the ability to work even longer and even harder when we need to because we're not distracted by all the sort of hustle and bustle of the city. So that's just one small example that we've been through ourselves recently. That shows that when your nervous system is more calm, everything is easier in terms of running and growing a business. Step six is you want to reinvest your surplus consistently. This is where compounding does its magic. So some countries make wealth building dramatically easier because they hit all of these ingredients that's low cost, high quality, and emotional regulation. Some of the top contenders, like we mentioned throughout this video, and others include Mexico, Portugal, Malaysia, Thailand, Uruguay, Albania, Costa Rica, Greece, Panama, and Columbia. Okay. These places don't just lower your expenses. They shift the entire emotional foundation you're building on. Wealth becomes easier because life becomes easier. Now, if you're serious about making 2026, the year you finally create the clarity, income, and lifestyle you actually want, then you need to be inside your Freedom Year Bootcamp. It's a three day life challenge starting January Where I'll show you exactly how to build your income plan, your relocation plan, and your Freedom Roadmap, step by step. Live with myself and Amanda. You can join us for that@entrepreneurexpat.com slash freedom. Reserve your ticket there. Don't wait. We have absolutely limited spots available. We're only doing this for the first 30 people that sign up because we are coaching you guys one-on-one live in that group format. So make sure you book your spot before it's too late. And we will see you again very soon like and subscribe for more. And thank you so much for being the best part of this community.