The Bougie Expats
Welcome to The Bougie Expat Podcast, a show for Black women over 40 who are ready to imagine a different kind of life abroad.
Hosted by Sable, your bougie girlfriend, this podcast speaks to the woman who has spent years showing up for everyone else — family, friends, work, and responsibilities — and is now asking, “What do I want my next season to look like?”
Through honest conversations and lived experience, Sable shares what it really takes to relocate abroad with clarity, confidence, and intention. Having lived and worked in more than seven countries across four continents, she brings real insight into the emotional, financial, and practical side of building a life overseas.
Each episode will cover topics like relocating abroad, planning your money, managing fear, leaving behind familiar routines, building a clear vision, and creating a life where you are thriving instead of simply getting by.
If you have been quietly thinking about moving abroad, starting fresh, or choosing yourself in this next chapter, this podcast is for you.
Subscribe to The Bougie Expat Podcast and join Sable for conversations about freedom, relocation, reinvention, and living abroad with purpose.
The Bougie Expats
Ep 10: The $100K Relocation Mistake Black Women Over 40 Make
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What if the biggest mistake you make when moving abroad isn't choosing the wrong country, but moving before you're financially and strategically ready?
In this episode of The Bougie Expat Podcast, Sable breaks down what she calls the "$100,000 Relocation Mistake" that many smart, successful women make when pursuing life abroad. It's not a mistake caused by a lack of intelligence or ambition. It's a mistake driven by overwhelm, burnout, frustration, or the fear of missing out.
Too often, women make emotional relocation decisions before building the financial foundation, income strategy, and lifestyle plan needed to sustain their new life overseas. Sable explains how relocating without a clear plan can lead to costly mistakes, from choosing the wrong country and visa to draining retirement accounts and living off savings that were meant for the future.
She also shares practical strategies for avoiding financial pitfalls, building a strategic exit plan, rebuilding income streams before relocating, and designing an international lifestyle that aligns with your personal goals, values, and long-term vision.
This episode is for Black women over 40 who are considering moving abroad, retiring overseas, or creating a strategic plan to build a financially secure and fulfilling life abroad.
In This Episode
- Why smart and successful women make the "$100,000 relocation mistake"
- How burnout, frustration, and FOMO lead to emotional relocation decisions
- The many reasons women choose to move abroad
- Why relocating before rebuilding your income can become a financial disaster
- The hidden costs that make relocation far more expensive than expected
- Why choosing the wrong country can cost thousands of dollars
- How selecting the wrong visa creates long-term financial problems
- Why shipping the wrong belongings wastes money
- The dangers of relying on retirement savings too early
- Questions you must answer before choosing a country
- How your desired lifestyle should determine your relocation destination
- Why travel preferences and accessibility matter more than you think
- How to determine exactly how much money you'll need abroad
- The importance of creating an income strategy before relocating
- Real examples of people who moved impulsively and paid the price
- The tax implications many expats fail to consider
- How to build a strategic exit timeline before moving abroad
- Why businesses should generate income before you relocate
- Why relocation should be your third step, not your first
- How to avoid becoming lost after arriving in your new country
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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Country focus. Figure out why you want to live in that country. I don't care that international living said that so-and-so country, Panama, is the best country for retirees. Is it the best country for you? Is that the best country for you and how you want to live? Ask that question of yourself. Ask yourself how do I want to live? Do I want to live in a country on the beach? In do I want to live in the city? Do I want to live in a high rise? Do I want to live in an apartment? Or do I want to live in a small bungalow? Do I want to live in a big mansion? Do I want to live up in the mountains? Do I want to live near jazz festivals or music festivals? Or do I want to live someplace where there's a lot of art shows? All of these things about your lifestyle, you need to be answering those questions. How do I want to live? What is my travel experience? Do I want? Do I want to live someplace and I'm central and I can travel to so many different places? And so I can now connect, right? 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, if you're tired of environments that no longer feel aligned, you are quietly planning your next move. Hosted by disabled 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. There's something I see a lot happen when people are moving, smart women, uh successful women, they start to move abroad. And I'm gonna call this the hundred thousand dollar mistake that they're making. Not because they're not smart, not because they're not capable, but because they became so overwhelmed with their current situation, or perhaps FOMO got them, right? The fear of missing out, they saw other people moving, that they made an emotional and not a strategic decision to relocate. And when you start to do that, you kind of put things out of order, right? You don't know why you're moving, you relocate, and then you get there and you're figuring out, okay, now what am I gonna do? But if you kind of have some structure and order to it, you can avoid this mistake. Now, I know that there's many reasons why you could possibly move moving. Um, corporate, your job, you're just burned out, you're frustrated, you know. You're you know, you're tired of getting passed over for promotions, you're tired of explaining yourself over and over again, you're tired of being in rooms that you know that you belong and should be leading, and people are even asking why you're in there. You could also be exhausted of the pace that you've been living at. You know, you're burning uh the candle at both ends and you're looking for a slower pace. It could be even the cost of living is choking you while you're making a great salary. The cost to even maintain the lifestyle that you know that you love is just burning you, and you're just figuring, like, where's all my money going? I'm just working just to live. You know, it could be so many, or you could just be really just curious. But there's also a group of people who are like, I am relocating because I want something new in my life, I want something different, I want a sense of freedom that I cannot get here because there are so many responsibilities and entanglements and pressures that I am have here that I can't do it, and so that is why there's a difference. So when this person moves out of that, I just gotta go right now, I'm gonna go right now, that emotional. This is where I talk about the hundred thousand dollar mistake. The hundred thousand dollar mistake they make because they move without rebuilding their income stream. And what happens is you start living off of money that was supposed to have been retirement money or future money today. I love how one of my friends um said they're eating their dinner for breakfast, and you don't want to eat your dinner for breakfast, but that's gonna be what's gonna happen if you don't have a plan. And so, why is a hundred thousand dollar mistake? Because let me tell you some of the things that you can spend that money on and you won't even realize it, right? So, first of all, you relocate and you're not even sure which country you should go to. So now you go to a country, you are in the wrong country, and so now you try another country. That costs money. The airline tickets, the visas, the apartments you got, the moving your stuff or whatever, that costs money. So, all of that, just the all the logistics and relocating, that costs money. They're temporary housing. You're living in an Airbnb, which is a far more money than if you were living in um some other kind of housing. That is where you're throwing money away. If you had permanent housing, visas are always a lot cheaper than temporary housing, throwing money away there, throwing money away on visas, getting the wrong visa, right? You get a visa because everybody else gets that visa and you're like, oh, me too. I should get that visa too. When in fact, you might have needed a different visa because of the investments or whatever you plan to do in your life, throwing money away, throwing money away because you're shipping stuff to a country that you're not even gonna stay in, or shipping things that you don't even need because you don't even know what you need because you haven't taken the time to figure it out, or perhaps you're losing money because now your lifestyle totally adjusted, right? So you were planning to, or you weren't planning, right? So you just kind of thought your life was gonna be the same way, and when you got there, you realize it's totally different. I have so many friends, like literally, I don't think I have one friend if I've ever seen him in long pants. He just wears shorts all the time. Can you imagine if he had bought a suitcase full of long pants? He would have had to now start buying shorts because that's all he wants to wear. So your lifestyle changes, or you find out that oh whoa, whoa, the money I thought I was gonna be living off of, or the money I thought I was gonna be having coming in is not, and so now you have this income gap, and again, you're now eating your dinner for breakfast because the money that you're gonna have in the future, annuities, or now you're drawing down on your 401k before you're even 59 and a half, and they're paying penalties, all those things are costing you money. That's a hundred thousand dollar mistake, and let me tell you that you think, oh, I'm over-exaggerating, you have not tried to pack up and move. When you try to pack up and move, you will see the costs can go up. By the time you move out where you are, take that stuff where somewhere or sell it or whatever you do, your your money is being spent. By the time now you're living off your savings instead of living off your income coming in, you will see that could be a hundred dollar hundred thousand dollar mistake. You don't have health care, the right health care to protect you when you're in that country. So I'm just saying all those different things. I want you to focus on these things before you start moving. Country focus. Figure out why you want to live in that country. I don't care that international living said that so-and-so country, Panama, is the best country for retirees. Is it best country for you? Is that the best country for you and how you want to live? Ask that question of yourself. Ask yourself how do I want to live? Do I want to live in a country on the beach? In do I want to live in the city? Do I want to live in a high-rise? Do I want to live in an apartment or do I want to live in a small bungalow? Do I want to live in a big mansion? Do I want to live up in the mountains? Do I want to live near jazz festivals or music festivals? Or do I want to live someplace where there's a lot of art shows? All of these things about your lifestyle, you need to be answering those questions. How do I want to live? What is my travel experience? Do I want? Do I want to live someplace and I'm central and I can travel to so many different places? And so I can now connect, right? So that might be also something to consider. When you think about that, how you want to live, then you understand how much money I need. And you kind of figure out while you're doing that, where's my money going to be coming from? How am I going to live? How am I going to feed myself? You want to kind of think about that. So when women are thinking about relocating, to avoid that hundred thousand dollar mistake, answer those questions up front. Answer those questions. And when you do that, you don't have to worry about it. I see how people have moved impulsively and not really done things, and they have moved from place to place to place. They've moved to countries and they're expecting everybody to be there to be relating to them, and they realize that no, this country is not like that. Or they thought that more people spoke English there when they got there and they didn't realize that. They didn't realize that that there were not a lot of expats or English-speaking people there. And that is costing them money because now they have to move someplace else. So I want you to think about where do I want to go and why do I want to go there? So you don't make that mistake. I don't want you to go just because you're exhausted or you're frustrated with your company. I know things can be really tough sometimes, they can try your nerves in that place. But I want you to go because you know that your next step is one that you want to take for a better life for yourself. And that would help you avoid the $100,000 mistake. When you understand why you're moving, what you're going to be doing, what your earning strategy is, when you're moving and you understand the country that you want to go to and what the implications could have for you in that country. And that even includes tax implications. You move to the wrong country, you're going to be paying double tax if you didn't expect to do that. Or a lot of times people are still earning income. And so maybe you have your income strategy down, but you thought you were not going to have to pay tax on it, but you didn't do the research and found out that you can't be going back and forth every other month and still get that benefit of that tax credit. So all of these things you want to figure out before you make the move so you don't have a hundred thousand dollar mistake. 100K, that's money. Okay. I don't care what your income looks like, that is actually money. And so what I want you to do is to build yourself a strategic exit timeline. And what that looks like is rebuilding your income, understanding where your income is coming from, having a savings. So this way you know what you're you have a safety net that is waiting for you. Also, if you decide that you want to do a business, let that business get up and running and have some consistent income for you before you know move. Don't move and like, oh, I'm gonna start the business now because that business is gonna need a lot of money, it's gonna need a lot of attention. So you want to be able to do that for you, and that would help you avoid a financial crisis if you kind of sort that out. So, relocation, I would say, is not the beginning for most of us. As I'm listening and talking to more and more women, relocation is the third step. Reinvention of who you want to be in that place is your first step. Figuring that out, rebuilding that life, working towards rebuilding that life, and then you can relocate. So this way you don't get there and be like a little beach bum. And I say a beach bum in the sense of not because you shouldn't be relaxing and enjoying your life, because you don't know what you should be doing, because you don't know why you're there. So you're just kind of like mosing around, following everybody else. Have your own plan and then live out your plan. That's what I want for you. I'm Sabo, I'm your bougie girlfriend. Until the next time, live 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 at the Elevated Exit Masterclass. You'll find the link in the show notes. Until next time, make your next move a bougie one.