Is there anything more wonderful than being able to travel and live overseas? Getting to see new places and experience new things is one of the greatest privileges in this life. Of course, no matter how much you’ve fallen in love with a place, you’re always going to need to come home again. Or will you? There are some people who are happy living in the same place for their entire lives. Those who appreciate the comfort of the familiar and don’t want to spread their wings and experience somewhere new. Then there are those of us whose wanderlust is simply too strong to contain. Those who want to get there and see the world as soon as possible. Well, why not really commit to that feeling and spend some of your life living somewhere completely new? That way you not only get to experience the adventurous thrill of travel but you don’t have to deal with the pain of leaving. But that all being said, is living in another country is really worth it? After all, you’re away from your family, your friends, and everything else that’s familiar. Well, if you’re not sold on the idea, here are some great reasons why living in a totally new place can be the best thing that you’ll ever do.

Learn about a new culture

It’s a real shame just how often so many people assume that their particular country is the center of the world. Because we often don’t speak more than one language, it can be hard to see things from a different cultural perspective. This leads a lot of people to see things that happen in other cultures as weird and unusual. Whether it’s customs, food, clothing, media, or anything else, there’s almost always something and interesting that you can learn from a new and unusual culture. It might seem intimidating at first but the best thing that you can do is just to dive in head first and experience as much as possible.When you live overseas you spend time actually living as a part of a totally foreign culture, then you’ll often come to a much greater understanding of it than you would ever have otherwise. You can come to understand why people do the things that you do and it might even give you the chance to think a little more about the things that you so often take for granted in your own culture.

Save yourself some money

There was a time when being able to move out and live on your own was pretty much the expectation for most adults. However, thanks to constant rising costs of living paired with stagnant wages, it’s now more like an impossible fantasy for a lot of people. Even rent prices are too high for some people, let alone the idea of buying a house. However, if you wanted to live overseas (talking from and US/UK perspective here), then you’re going to be in a much better position to make your money go further. Not only is it cheaper when it comes to buying or renting a house but a lot of the smaller costs of living are cheaper in other countries as well. You’ll be amazed at how much food you can buy in other countries with what you might consider to be a pretty meager amount of money.   

Get to know who you are

One of the hardest things in the world is being able to figure out “who you are.” Sure, that might sound a bit cheesy or like it’s incredibly simple but when it comes down to it, knowing who you are might be one of the hardest things there we can do. One of the main reasons for that is that it’s often incredibly hard to remove yourself from your present context. What that means is that everything from your home, your family’s expectations, your friends, and everything else that you’ve built your life around can color your perceptions of who you really are. By being able to break away from all of that when you live overseas, you’re going to be able to get a much better idea of who you are when it all comes down to it. That kind of thing can be pretty scary for a lot of people, but as you start to create your sense of self in a totally new place, you can understand the things that mean the most to you, totally free of any outside influence.

Meet people you’d never otherwise get to meet

There’s one thing that can help open your mind and broaden your horizons better than just about anything else, and that’s talking to people from a different background to you. The reality is that most people tend to gravitate towards those who are similar to them in some way. There’s nothing wrong with this. After all, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend time with people that you have something in common with. But it does carry with it the risk that people can become insular and start to think of people that they don’t connect with as different or inferior in some way. It’s amazing how fast those kinds of preconceptions disappear as soon as you start actually interacting with people from different backgrounds. Being open-minded and listening to the things that they have to say can not only help you understand them and their culture better as well as helping you make some amazing new friends.

There’s no doubt that when you live overseas, being somewhere new can be incredibly scary at first but the truth is that fortune really does favor the bold and if you really want to get the most out of your life, then the best thing that you can do is to really get out there and experience everything that it has to offer. Sure, that means that there are going to be times when things might feel scary or risky, and sometimes things aren’t going to work out the way that you might have wanted. But the truth is that the only way that you won’t have a good life is if you don’t try your best to live it to the fullest!