This is something I ponder on a regular basis. I have lived outside of my home country for nearly 20 years now and the decision to leave it was something that happened rather abruptly and at least initially was for a very stupid reason.
I had met some dive instructors when I was traveling in Thailand and I saw how amazing and care-free their lives were. I compared it to my own hectic life of only a few weeks off per year, commuting every day, and a life on the road living out of hotels. Even though I was very aware of the fact that these dive instructors made very little money, I saw that they were a lot happier than I was in an overall sense. Therefore I decided to quit my job that I had spent a lot of time building and move away from the country that my qualifications were going to be valuable in, at the ripe young age of 27.
I was enamored with the fact that these people that I had just met had rather care-free lives. Even though they didn't make very much money, they also didn't need very much for their lifestyle. They also did something they enjoyed for a living and I don't think many people can claim that about their office jobs. I know I didn't feel that way about my own: I dreaded basically every day of my work and was only working for the weekend. These guys wanted to go to work - which is something that is difficult to fathom.
I eventually became a dive instructor as well and I also enjoyed waking up and genuinely liked what I did for a living. The only problem was that it didn't take long for me to realize that this lifestyle was financially infeasible. You can only work 5 days a week or so and at the end of a 8 hour shift you normally only make around $30. After a few months of doing this for work I started to realize that I was regularly dipping into my savings and this seemed unlikely to change.
Thankfully, I saw the light pretty quickly and started doing other things for work, eventually realizing that no matter what I did in Thailand, I was going to need to curb my spending since the high-paying jobs in SE Asia for foreigners are few and far between and normally are for people in specialized trades like the oil and gas industry.
I found out that financial responsibility was the name of the game and if I was going to make it, I was going to need to focus on limiting my expenses. This is something that I was able to pull off but I have witnessed many people that couldn't hack it and ended up needing to boomerang back to their parents, which would be a very embarrassing thing to go through, I 'm sure.
Something that people need to come to terms with is that in this lifestyle I had chosen, I was never going to have a lavish life. I was going to have to live simply all the time, which isn't as bad as it sounds because we don't feel the pressure here as expats to constantly purchase stuff the way we were back in the USA. For starters, I wasn't spending much on clothes whereas my job and the city I lived in before moving to Thailand kind of demanded that you be up to speed on fashion - A process that I absolutely hated participating in and kind of delegated to the salespeople at Structure stores.
When I look back on my choice to move over here I feel as though I was one of the either very lucky, or very smart people. Most of the people that I met when I first got here in 2004 are long gone and back in their home countries stopping by every couple of years for a visit. I didn't want to be one of those people and I'm happy to say that I haven't become one...yet.
It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows over the past near 20 years. There have been plenty of mishaps and even certain times when I felt that financial ruin was just around the corner. Somehow I managed to pull through though and then I made a bunch of money on a very lucky and very drunk decision to ironically purchase a bunch of DOGE. That helped a lot 6 months later.
I can't say that I have no regrets, but I really believe that this was the right choice for me to move here in the first place. Some of us just weren't meant for the rat race back in our home countries and I am very happy that I don't have to do that anymore. I went to college for a long time, did a good job and worked my way up the corporate ladder, kissed bosses' asses and went to work socials and basically hated all of it. If I could change one thing about my decision to move here it would have been to have waited for 4 or 5 more years before having done it. That extra bit of savings, if I kept my eyes on the prize, would have been very helpful in my initial move.
I encourage people who are thinking of moving to SE Asia to be very careful about their finances before taking the plunge because aside from retirees who didn't decide to move here until after a lifetime of work and a guaranteed pension, MOST of the expats that have moved over here have ended up needing to run away after a number of years. I was one of the lucky ones.
There is also the question of my family members being so far away and therefore it is nigh on impossible for me to visit all of them. It is extremely likely that I will never see my extended family ever again. I have something like 12 cousins that I have only ever met once in their lives. They are getting close to being adults now and some of them have kids of their own that likely have no idea who I even am. My immediate family is a group of people I used to see every year around November or so but Covid mucked all that up and I haven't seen them in 3 years now. Hopefully that will be something that can change soon.
The biggest problem with anyone deciding to move over here to SE Asia, and I think a couple of the other expats in here can agree with this, is the illusion that you will make enough money over here. More often than not, this is not the case at all and financial failure and the need to run back home is something that happens all the time. Just because it is a lot cheaper than the west, doesn't mean that you are going to be making enough money to just do whatever you want. Careers aren't really a thing over here and I have spoken many times about how most of the jobs available to foreigners over here are ones that you should do as a means to extend your vacation and they should never be considered something financially viable in the long-term.
Generally speaking I regret almost nothing as far as my decision to come over here is concerned and this is a good thing seeing as how it is too late in my life for me to change it at this point. I hope all of you have "no ragrets" as well!