How Leaving the West Changed my Life

around 1 and 1/2 years ago I quit everything to leave the Western World and become a digital Nomad mainly in the Middle East and Asia and I have never looked back since and in this video I'm going to tell you why by the way at the time my net worth was pretty much zero yet I still left my current home city of London and moved myself to mainly Dubai where the idea is that I'm going to live in Dubai for around half the year and then travel around especially Asia in the summer I had a great job from a very prestigious University I was set for a very above average life in the Western World standards yet I still decided to leave to live life on my own terms and I'm so glad I did that for example right now I am here in Bali most of my year I spend in Dubai where I have my business setup and my main residency and I cannot stress just how much making this change has changed my life making this change has given me first of all a lifestyle that everyone I speak to back in the western world like the UK or Finland are completely envious about everyone I speak to once the life that I have and I get to have it but on the other side of things what might surprise to you is is that I'm actually not making any kind of sacrifice financially you might think that living in the western world that's where the opportunity is that's where I should live no no no my finances are much better I.E I am making a lot more money but most importantly I am saving a lot more money because I'm not having to pay the crazy taxes and the crazy cost of living off the Western World so everything for me started from the realization that the average person's life in the West these days is not desirable in any kind of way this might have been different like 50 hund years ago back when we had the American dream and all these kind of thing but these days with everything going on in the west this dream while it still exists it is nowhere near as desirable as it perhaps used to be and there are simply so many better options for not only your life but also your finances these days I remember getting out of University into the corporate world and just thinking every single day that this cannot be the rest of my life because this was sort of the script that I was leing according to just like everyone else around you go to school go to university get a good job and basically work until you're 65 and then you can maybe retire if they even have retirement funds left at that time but for me this kind of life never resonated with me I didn't enjoy the cities in the west like London El sinki all the cities I have lived in I did not enjoy the attitudes of the people around me everyone's just on the grind 9 to5 blah blah blah even though I had a prestigious like a good salary it didn't seem like I was able to save any money at all especially in London the cost of living was crazy the salaries really they're not that good especially in Europe people think they are simply because that's the only concept of money that they have they don't see the opportunities that are out there because these opportunities are not something that anyone talks about into sort of normal person circles I just thought that it was very sad that myself like everyone else around me at this time was sacrificing 5 days of the week working in some job that they hate in some City that they definitely don't want to live in only to have 2 days of the week to enjoy their life or like 2 weeks of vacation where they can actually travel somewhere where they actually want to be I thought to myself with this online world and everything like that why not build an income Source online so that I can make money wherever in the world I am and then simply choose where I want to live based on where I actually want to live where I actually get the most for my money so that I could essentially live on vacation all of the time not that I'm vacation all the time but you know what I mean like after I'm done with work I can go outside and be in the kind of place where most people would go on holidays so this led to my decision to quit not just a corporate world in the west but the Western World all together I was seeing what was happening around me taxes were slowly creeping up everyone's brainwashed to think that we're just supposed to pay these taxes but increasingly I was seeing and people around me were agreeing with me that it's just not worth it to pay these taxes for most people simply don't have any other choice because their job or whatever ties them to that location so they came a point where I started making a lot more money from my online business than my full-time 925 job at the time my net worth was still pretty month zero like I hadn't had enough time to accumulate that much money but I was seeing where my business was going so I made the decision to leave London move myself to Dubai because I knew that with the tax savings that I was going to be able to make while enjoying a much better lifestyle for my preferences in Dubai I would be able to build that wealth much much quicker even though I didn't anymore have the 95 income from London at the time it felt like the scariest thing I had ever done but again as I will explain in a bit not making this change would have actually been a much bigger risk so now we get to exactly how my life improved and later on the video we'll talk about exactly how my finances improved so I move to Dubai mainly but my goal here was never to make Dubai my only home I've always been an adventurer I've always been the type of person who wants to experience a lot of different places around the world so I was never excited about the idea of just having one place to live like more people the kind of life I wanted to build for myself is where I have multiple bases around the world I wanted to have one main base where I have my business and my main tax residency and then spend like 6 to 8 months of the year there or however long I want to spend there and then the rest of the time I want to divide my time in other places around the world where I also want to live so I landed in Dubai as my main residency for several reasons and by the way this is all subjective for everyone I find that for a lot of serious online entrepreneurs Dubai is an extremely strong choice chice that's why you see basically everyone who does things like me moving there but that doesn't mean it's right for everyone so you need to make your choice based on what are your preferences and what are your values but for me what was important is number one the lifestyle in Dubai you have great weather apart from the summer amazing food for every type of cine so many things to do not that I actually do that many things there but we have them great location for travel around the world an amazing infrastructure for basically everything despite the fact that you don't have to pay any tax and then you have the finances I don't actually have to pay the new 9 % corporate tax that Dubai has implemented because I'm below the small business threshold but even if I had to pay the 9% tax that for me would be completely fine for what I get in Dubai and then thirdly you have the business and the networking opportunities so it's was also very interested in places like Thailand or like Bary where I'm in right now but I wanted my main base to be in a location that attracts very serious entrepreneurs people doing the same kind of things that I do and this is certainly paid off I made so many great business connections I've been able to start an entirely new new business because I was based in Dubai and because I was able to meet these people there by the way if you're looking to make a similar setup if you're perhaps someone who's looking to leave the UK Australia Canada whatever and you want to base yourself mainly in Dubai to live the similar lifestyle that I do I can hook you up with my two business partners who can help you set everything up for you what they're offering is a free 45 minute consultation which you can book from the link down Bel in the description so you can talk to them first see if the buy is right for you what the process entails and then go from there so that link will be the first link Down Below in the description but rine is only half of this lifestyle that I've been able to build for myself the other half is being able to essentially be a digital Nomad and go wherever I want whenever I want right now I'm doing essentially a six-month bout of just digital nomading around the world I was just in Hong Kong I've been in Vietnam and I in Bali and I'm going to Thailand Philippines Malaysia basically all the different places around Asia because my goal right now is to also find a second base that could be my main essentially summer home or summer base and what this simply allows me to do is optimize my life around when each location is the best around the year Dubai I think is the best place in the world to be around the winter months the weather is perfect it never rains apart from the floods that were just there but usually it never rains but Dubai is not a place where I want to be in the summer so in the summer I can be in places like this in B for example where I get amazing food very cheap you got the sort of Island Chill Lifestyle it also allows me to sort of have different Vibes at different times of the year Dubai is great for most of the year but at some point sometimes it can get exhausting because it is very intense it's a very sort of business of busy environment sometimes I want to be in an environment like B where it's more of this like surf sort of Chill Lifestyle not to mention the weather now maybe some people like the cold weather of freaking places like London or something like that but to me there's just something amazing about waking up every single morning with warm weather where you can wear a t-shirt where it's Sunshine outside like to me that just increases my quality of life so much so when I was in the west I just could not imagine leaving eight months of my year in Gray cold rain or snow in the case of Finland like I was literally spending most of my year in the west simply waiting for the summer when it would finally be nice outside but when I live like this I can just be in the perfect weather for me the entire year round but enough about the lifestyle let's talk about the finances so if you're watching this from somewhere in the west it's very likely that you have High Cost of Living and high taxes and most people will think think like oh it's worth it because I get all these job opportunities and business opportunities and all of that and sure if you're into the job 9 to5 World absolutely the West is still the best place to be because the best jobs are still there if you need to be tied to that location but what I would urge all of you to do is to find an income Source online because the 9 to5 job incomes and the kind of wealth and the kind of life you can build with even the best jobs out there is simply not at the level where that it used to be in the past by detaching your income from the location where you live you're to be able to essentially optimize your finances to a degree that you simply cannot otherwise I think when I left London I was making around $15,000 a month even if my income just stayed at the completely same level just by moving to a lower tax jurisdiction or a zero tax jurisdiction in the case of Dubai suddenly I was saving an extra whatever $6,000 simply by not having to pay taxes to the UK government and on top of that my cost of living actually went down like people don't realize this Dubai is much cheaper than a city like London I was saving perhaps an extra th000 a month du to on not having to pay the crazy rent and cost of living of London so simply by making this move out of the western world I was able to suddenly with the same income same work same effort have so much more money in my bank account at the end of each month you can even fully optimize by spending the minimum amount of Dubai which is usually around 3 months and spend the rest of the time around Thailand Bali like Eastern Europe perhaps where your cost of living is also going to be much much cheaper than Dubai and as long as you don't spend too long in any given country you're not going to be taxable in any other country other than the UAE you can have your residency in the UAE while still living around the world now a caveat of this you do need to be careful you do need to really plan this to make sure you're not actually spending too long in any other country to trigger the tax rules of that country so this always works in case by case bases if you want help again with everything like this and you want to understand what kind of life you can build what you are able to do what you're not able to do I just recommend you book a call with my business partners below they can help you with all of this they have contacts in all kinds of different countries where they can help you not only set up in Dubai but figure out what it means from your home country perspective when you need to do everything like that but all in all not making this move not leaving West would have been the biggest risk of my life because on one hand I had the choice where I had a guaranteed path to a life I hated while Building Wealth so slowly because of the cost of living and taxes that I would have been stuck in that life for a very very long time before I could escape and on the other side I had an opportunity to potentially very quickly get into Financial Freedom or very good Financial Security while also living the life that I love at the same time and the thing is if I failed first of all I would already have so much wealth built up because of my tax savings that I would have a very long time to figure out something else and I could just go and live in Vietnam for 800 bucks a month while I figure out something else and even if I still don't succeed in building something else online I could could always just go back to the shitty life in the UK it's always an option so really there was almost no downside I hope you enjoyed this video I hope it perhaps inspired you I hope it gave you some just food for thought perhaps that just because you were told the West is the best place in the world is not necessarily true maybe this for your preferences maybe you actually like it it's completely fine but chances are if you're watching a video like this then perhaps it's not so talk about Dubai a punch in this video if you're now curious if you're now interested in what does he entail to start a business in Dubai how does the tax work what's the deal with this 9% tax what's the process like is it right for you everything like that and I recommend you watch this video right here it's actually a full podcast that I recorded with my business part the ones that I mentioned that you can book the call with where we discuss all these questions so you can get answers to all the questions everything you need about moving to Dubai and then if you're interested then you can consider it the further so go watch that video next I hope you enjoy this one I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Tuomas

Views: 2,023

Keywords: leave the west, left the west, leave usa, leave uk, why i left the west, move to dubai, move to asia, life in dubai, why i moved to dubai

Id: dskZ8PGOBF8

Length: 12min 58sec (778 seconds)

Published: Tue May 14 2024