Put a plan together. It takes time but do it. If you have to bend the rules then do so. Get your butt to Canada or the US.

Probably all you mentioned. The biggest was schooling for my boys (4). I moved around quite a bit in the Far East over 40 years. My family were the winners, I think.

Well. You can be easily robbed, mugged or beaten up in some sections of the safest countries. Or, conversely, you can live crime-free in just about any place in the world as long as you keep you wits and make good decisions. It’s not a black/white proposition.

A friend of mine made a ton of money via crypto. Before he cashed in he moved from Japan to the US to avoid Japan tax. He’s an American and he wanted to clear the IRS before he cashed in.

I bought a replacement cellphone yesterday in Yokohama. The sales lady talked twice as loudly as anyone in the shop. She was Chinese.

American living in Japan, previously in Manila and Saipan.

I noticed that everything suddenly got expensive in the US, especially food. I had world-class ramen here in Yokohama last night. $6.00 equivalent. I also won’t complain about the price of beer in Japan. The US is catching up quickly.

When my friends and my brother started having grandchildren that kinda changed their priorities…more time spent and communicating with them other than myself. The wives seem to devote their lives protecting and nurturing their grandkids. I guess that’s what life is about.

I left home in rural WA state when I was 18 for the Navy. Later, I went to school in Japan, and started my job there. I built a house back in the US to retire eventually but in later years I found out that the situation(s) had changed over time. Thomas Wolfe wrote the book “You can’t go home again”. It was taken from the writer Ella Winter to explained to Wolfe that “you can’t go back to your family, your friends, your childhood dreams.” People change including yourself. But knowing this, you can return with an open mind…and not colored with the memories of an expat who made the decision to start a life separate from his previous one. Interestingly enough, I still love to go back to my place in WA state and though my personal relationships may have changed…the river, the forest, and the animals that inhabit them are the same, unchanged world that I left back in the day.