Ep 5: The Financial Side of Moving Abroad Nobody Talks About

You’re dreaming about moving abroad, but before you choose the country, the beach, the language, or the lifestyle, there’s one question you need to answer first: how will you support yourself financially once you get there?

In this episode of The Bougie Expat Podcast, Sable explores one of the most important parts of any relocation plan: your income strategy. She shares why moving abroad is not a vacation but a life transition that requires thoughtful financial planning, especially for Black women over 40 who are considering leaving corporate life and creating a new chapter overseas.

Drawing from her own relocation journey, Sable discusses the importance of understanding your finances, evaluating your skills, and creating a plan for earning income before you relocate. She explains why emotional decisions can lead to financial stress and how a clear strategy can help you move abroad with greater confidence and security.

Whether you're considering remote work, consulting, coaching, entrepreneurship, fractional leadership, or building a business that isn't tied to a physical location, this episode will help you start thinking differently about your next chapter and how to fund it.

This episode is for Black women over 40 who are thinking about relocating abroad, leaving corporate, reinventing their careers, building a business, creating location-independent income, or designing a financially sustainable life overseas.

In This Episode

• Why your income strategy should come before your relocation plans
• The dangers of making emotional relocation decisions
• How to assess your savings, investments, and current financial position
• Why understanding your numbers creates confidence and clarity
• How ageism can impact career opportunities later in life
• Using your existing skills to create new income opportunities
• Consulting, coaching, and fractional leadership as relocation-friendly career paths
• Why location-independent businesses create greater flexibility
• The benefits of building a business before you move abroad
• How a hybrid model of employment and entrepreneurship can reduce financial risk
• Creating a business or career that is not tied to a specific zip code
• Why your relocation journey is an opportunity for personal and professional reinvention

Thank you for listening to The Bougie Expat Podcast.

If this episode spoke to you, subscribe to the podcast and share it with another Black woman over 40 who has been thinking about relocating abroad, retiring overseas, or designing a new chapter with more freedom, peace, and intention.

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Transcript

Sable Ryan 0:00

But I want you to just take one more step back and ask yourself, how are you going to make money once you get there? Because remember, this is not a vacation. This is your new home. You were moving somewhere else, and now you're gonna have to support yourself financially in this place. And so I knew that in corporate there is ageism. Absolutely. Ageism is exist. So when you're sending your resumes out that people are looking, you graduated with, yeah, I'd appreciate that you have 25 plus years of experience. But my God, how old are you if you have that many years? Do not make an emotional decision. Do not allow the pressures of what's happening around you to cause you to jump before you're ready. Because it's not gonna always end pretty. She's done waiting. She's done shrinking, and she's done building empires in rooms that were never designed for her. This is the Bougie Expat, the podcast for black women over 40 who are ready to reinvent their lives, rebuild their income, and relocate with intention. If you're done settling in corporate, tired of environments that no longer feel aligned, or quietly planning your next move, you are in the right place. Hosted by Sable, live from Panama City, Panama. Seven countries, four continents, one move she made in five months flat, income strategies, exit plans, a life designed to actually fit you without starting over broke. Let's get into it. When you're talking about moving and real estating, there's something bigger, way bigger, than you really should be thinking about before the country, before the beach, before the language, and all the things that I hear people talk about first. It's the lifestyle that they're imagining how they want to live. And I love that for you. I love that you are really seeing yourself on the next chapter, doing something totally different, living in a way that you've never lived before. But I want you to just take one more step back and ask yourself, how are you going to make money once you get there? Because remember, this is not a vacation. This is your new home. You were moving somewhere else, and now you're going to have to support yourself financially in this place. So, how are you going to do that? What are you thinking about as your income strategy, your earnings strategy? What are you thinking about how you're going to support yourself? Because before I moved abroad, I realized one thing I needed to figure out. And that was the money. I needed to know where my money was coming from. And as I share with many of you, for me, my move was so sudden. I didn't have this long runway that I could plan this very long earning strategy of what I was going to do and where money was going to come from and build up a business or put out resumes for a remote job. I had decided I was going to move and I looked at what I had on ground because I realized the stage that I am in my life, that things may be a little different. Really, after you're 60 plus, the things that you're doing in your 40s are a whole lot different and definitely different in your 20s, right? And so I knew that in corporate there is ageism. Absolutely. Ageism is exist. So when you're sending your resumes out that people are looking, you graduated with, yeah, I'd appreciate that you have 25 plus years of experience. But my God, how old are you if you have that many years? It always reminds me of the television show The Younger, when she was looking for a job and everyone was just shocked about her age, and she found no opportunities because of her age. And then she adjusted her age and found a job. Now, don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting you do that, but I'm just telling you what I knew I was about to face. And so, because of that, I realized that you know what? I needed to do something different. I needed to find a different way to earn a living. I needed to find a different way to produce income. And I needed to understand how much money I had right now and how long was that money going to last me. And in doing that, I started to think about okay, what skills do you have? What knowledge do you have? What savings do you have? What investments do you have? What real estate income? How much is that? How often does that come in? What happens if it doesn't come in? So those are the kind of things that I had to start figuring out. And for me, understanding my money really helped me in my moves. It why is why I was able to move so confidently within five months, because I knew what I had on ground. And so the realization of my approach, of even though it was so quick, made me really say to my clients, think about how much you're going to earn and how much you're going to need before you need it and before you start your relocation. It's one of the things that we should do in the very beginning. And I know this environment is so chaotic, it almost feels like we're choking. I know for myself, I felt like many a day I could not even breathe. I felt like I was dying and I was suffocating in my own breath. There was just not enough oxygen in the air, because the things that were coming at me at the time were just so overwhelming. It was overwhelming because I didn't know what my future held because the government was just in such an upheaval. But if you're in that kind of situation as I was, I would also say to you, slow down. Because too many of us move emotionally. And as much chaos that was going around and how I felt, I knew I had to center myself to understand what it really meant if I was going to leave now. And so I want you to do the same thing. I want you to, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling stressed out, if you feel like I have got to get out of here right now, I'm not telling you not to. I'm telling you to look at your numbers and make a numerical factual decision and not an emotional decision. Because when people make that emotional decision, they just move quickly. They're not thinking about it. They get out and they find out that wow, maybe my money wasn't as tight as I thought it was. They find themselves living off the money that they were going to use for the future, their 401ks. They find themselves turning them into annuities and facing penalties. Or they find themselves drawing down on investments that they weren't ready to do, or cashing in investments in that they weren't going to do that. And so your savings could run out. I know you may have sold your house because you were going to move, but that money will work out if it doesn't have something coming in to replenish it. Money should not just be going out, it needs to come in and go out. I always say it needs to be like a river, it has to flow. And when it doesn't, the pressure starts to build. You start to get really nervous. Because let's tell the truth, depending on what country you're in, you may not be able to get a job there. And now you're going to be forced to think of other ways to make money while you're in some country outside the country, online. So it's definitely different when you run out of money in the United States. You're running out of money in the United States, heck, it's the gig economy. You can do Uber, DoorDash, Instacart. There's so many things you can do as a little gig job, work at a retail store, but you don't have those options when you start to move abroad. And so therefore, you don't want to just jump out there and leak before you are financially ready. Now, financially ready is not having everything perfect, but if you understand what you have, you understand what you need, then you can now create a strategy. Because once you have an income strategy, you know where your money is going to come from, you know how you're going to earn money, then the pressure is lessened. Because I am here to tell you that there are so many things financially you probably have not thought of that's going to hit you. You want to make sure that you have a solid foundation when it comes to actually moving. So when I think about this, I want to say, start thinking how can I earn money before I leave, before I sell my house, before I pack up the boxes and have my passport standing at the airport going through TSA. Have your income strategy before that. And so one of the things I knew, I had been actually doing HR consultancy for a very long time. I had consulted in various countries before I was working in the United States. So I worked in the United States first for a private company doing HR. And when I moved on my very first international move, I was able to open up an international relocation, not even relocation, an international human resources firm because I had that background. So my background in HR allowed me to open up an HR business. And so having that in an environment where human resources was not fully developed really gave me a push. It really gave me an opportunity to actually be able to earn income really quick in various different ways. So I want you to look at your background. I want you to look at your skills and think about how do you want to earn money as you're going differently, right? And so I decided that no, I wasn't going to look for a job in my new country because I understand the fact that when you get a job in those countries, when you get work there, you're paid on local currency. And local currency usually doesn't nearly equate to what you were earning. And so I thought, let me open my own thing. And that's what I did. Right. So having that ideal of I had a skill, I knew I had a skill that was transferable. I knew that I had an entrepreneur spirit and had owned businesses before then. And I knew that when I was there, that I also had a spouse. So I had some financial support as well. So that's how what I did my first move. This particular move, I didn't have all those same things in a row. I still had my HR experience, I still had that skill. But this time, you know what? I also had a coaching. I had a coaching education that I had just finished as well on my way to certification. So I had that. And I also had investment, I had savings, I had so a small business that I was starting. So all of that kind of went into my planning. So I want to talk to you about how you can think about your own reinvention of your career or your own new way of making money. I want you to think about one, do you want to open a business? Do you want to work remote? Or do you want to do both? But whatever it is, I want you to start working on that now. Not, oh, I'm going to move, I'm going to get settled and then. No, you don't want to do that. You want to already start taking care of that money part because there's a whole new set of things that you're going to have to face once you land in that country. So let's think about this. What are you doing now? And how could you do that role internationally? Is there an organization that would hire you, an international organization? Do you work for an international organization? Are there remote positions that you can do? I see so many new remote positions. So it doesn't even mean that you have to do the same thing that you're doing now. You could do something different. Perhaps you want to work remote. And remote could be that you're entering a new field. Maybe you want to do consulting. You may be at a certain level that consultancy is definitely something that's in your path. Perhaps maybe you want to do fractional leadership. I talk about a lot about how you could be maybe a CHRO, a CLO, because if you are already doing those things, absolutely a CFO. So many of you have lots of years of experience and you can use them in fractional leadership consulting roles. And that is reinventing who you are with the same skills that you have. Or take those skills to a business. Maybe you want to coach now in the very thing that you've been doing all along, helping people. I don't know how many things that I see where people have opportunities. And these opportunities could, there's so many sites where you can look for how you can use your skills. There's also consulting opportunities. Maybe you want to start a consulting business and the same services that you were getting paid nine to five. Now you're using that services to consult. Or maybe you want to have a professional service organization. But whatever it could be, or maybe you just say, you know what, I don't even want to do what I used to do. I want to do something different. Maybe you want to have an AI business, you've never done anything before, where you're teaching people AI. Perhaps maybe you want to have a product business, maybe you want to sell things online, whichever way. I'd love to hear how we can take our skills and our knowledge and use it differently. The other night when we were in our master class, I asked women, hey, what are your skills now? What do you think the skills that you have marked up? I heard everything from mental health to engineering to vegan food. These are things that people not only are doing, but things that they would love to do. And each one of those things could be a business. Could be a business, not just for later, but right now, they can start an independent location business, a business with no zip code. That is what you need to be thinking about. A job with no dip code or a business with no zip code. Now, or you can say, you know what? I want to start my business now and still work. And I think really that is the best, that's the best way of doing it. Because you're going to hold on to your job, you're still going to collect your salary and you start your business. It could be a business that eventually will take over your job, or it could be something that even as you move, you're going to have that still hybrid model of working somewhere and having a business. Whichever way it is something that you could do, but it's something that you want to do before you actually relocate. And so when I was working full-time, I also was consulting. I had a lot of consulting opportunities. I would do trainings and get contracts and do different trainings. So I was in the hybrid model, and it was great. So I got to earn this extra money and do whatever I wanted to do, whatever, and still had my income is also. That is something that you also can consider in doing. Whichever way you want to do it. Change your career, keep a remote job, open a business, do both. What I want you to think about is this. One, do it now. What can I start now? Two, whatever I'm doing, it needs not to be tied to any particular zip code. And three, is this something that I'm passionate about, or am I doing it just because this is what I've always been doing? I don't want you to be in this next season still doing the same old, the same old things that you've always been doing simply because this is what everybody told you you were good at doing. Now, this is your opportunity to do what you've always wanted to do. Think about that. So if you are a black woman, high-earning woman, over 40, and you're looking to relocate, and you know that reinvention has to be a part of your strategy because income is not certain right now. Then I want to invite you. I'm gonna drop a link in the comments and let's get on the phone and let's figure out what would be your next best step. You may say I'm not ready for that yet, and you want to come to our masterclass. I love to see you there. Whichever way you make a decision, what I want you to do for short is think about it thoroughly. Do not make an emotional decision, do not allow the pressures of what's happening around you to cause you to jump before you're ready. Because it's not gonna always end pretty. I've seen it happen here where people are done downsizing because they no longer could afford what they thought they could afford. I don't want that for you. So what I want you to do right now is think about your skills. Think about what you can do right now to make money. And remember, I am here to help you. I'm Sable, your bougie girlfriend, and keep living an elevated life. That's a wrap. And if this episode resonated with you, go ahead and follow the podcast and share it with another woman who's ready for her next chapter. And if you're ready to move beyond thinking and start building your exit strategy, I invite you to join me inside my live experience, the elevated exit masterclass. You'll find the link in the show notes. Until next time, make your next move a bougie one.