Life Abroad as an American: A Window Into a Global Life
March 20, 2026
What life abroad actually looks like for American expats and dual citizens: cost of living, healthcare, community, and the banking and tax practicalities worth knowing before you move.
Most Americans who move abroad don’t do it for the postcard. They do it because a slower Tuesday afternoon, a shorter commute, or a healthcare bill that doesn’t arrive with four digits starts to look like the better trade. The romance of it (the market stalls, the language, the different rhythm of a workday) is real, but it’s not the whole picture. The part that actually determines whether the move works is quieter: what things cost, how care gets delivered, who you know, and what paperwork still follows you home.
The daily rhythm is different, and that’s the point
Ask any American who’s lived in Lisbon, Mexico City, or Bologna for a year what surprised them most, and the answer is rarely the scenery. It’s the pace. Lunch is a real break, not a working meal at a desk. Shops close on Sundays. Neighbors know each other. None of this is exotic so much as it’s a different set of defaults about what a day is for.
That shift isn’t automatic and it isn’t free. It usually comes with a smaller apartment, a slower bureaucracy, and a learning curve on everything from grocery shopping to registering with a local clinic. The people who adjust well tend to be the ones who expected friction and budgeted time for it, not the ones expecting a permanent vacation.
Cost of living: real, but not universal
“Cheaper abroad” is one of the most repeated claims in expat forums, and it’s true often enough to be dangerous as a blanket assumption. Housing and everyday groceries can be meaningfully lower in much of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and parts of Southern and Eastern Europe. But costs vary sharply by city within a single country: Lisbon is not the Alentejo, and Mexico City’s Roma Norte is not Mérida. Imported goods, international schooling, and anything priced to tourists (short-term rentals, English-speaking clinics) can quietly erase the savings.
The honest way to evaluate a move is to price out your actual life, not the country’s average. Rent in the specific neighborhood, a realistic grocery basket, a local gym, one or two nights out a month, and whatever healthcare or insurance premium applies to you. That number, compared against your current spending, is the only comparison that matters.
Healthcare looks different, and often works better
Most countries that attract American retirees and remote workers run some version of universal or heavily subsidized healthcare, and the out-of-pocket experience can be startling in a good way: a specialist visit or a course of medication that would run into hundreds of dollars in the US often costs a fraction of that, sometimes near nothing, depending on the country’s system and your residency status.
The tradeoffs are real too. Access to a national system usually requires a residence permit or a minimum stay, not just a tourist visa, and enrollment rules vary by country and change over time. Specialist wait times can be longer than what private American insurance buys, which is why many expats carry supplemental private insurance alongside whatever public system they’re eligible for. None of this is something to guess about: verify current eligibility and enrollment rules directly with the destination country’s health ministry or a licensed local insurance broker before you rely on a system to be there when you need it.
Community: the thing people underestimate
Isolation, not cost or paperwork, is the most common reason expat moves don’t stick. Building a social life from scratch in a new language, in a place with different norms around friendship and hospitality, takes longer than most people plan for. It’s common to feel fluent in the practical logistics of a place (transit, groceries, banking) well before feeling anything like at home in it.
What helps: local language classes taken seriously rather than as a formality, joining something recurring (a sports league, a choir, a professional association) rather than relying on expat meetup groups exclusively, and giving it a full year before judging whether it’s working. The expat communities that exist in most popular destinations are genuinely useful for logistics and moral support, but leaning on them exclusively tends to recreate the same bubble the move was meant to escape.
The paperwork that doesn’t go away: banking and taxes
This is the part that gets glossed over in lifestyle-focused writing, and it shouldn’t be, because it’s the part with real financial and legal consequences.
Banking abroad as an American is harder than it should be. Many foreign banks are reluctant to open accounts for US citizens because of the compliance burden the US imposes on foreign financial institutions under FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), which requires those institutions to report US account holders to the IRS. Some banks accommodate this without friction; others decline American clients outright. It’s worth confirming with a specific bank before assuming an account will be straightforward to open.
US citizens owe federal taxes on worldwide income no matter where they live. This is the single most consequential fact in this entire piece, and it surprises people who assume that leaving the country means leaving the IRS behind. It doesn’t. Every US citizen and green card holder is required to file a US tax return each year reporting worldwide income, regardless of residence, and in many cases must also file an FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts) once foreign account balances cross certain thresholds. Mechanisms like the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and the Foreign Tax Credit can reduce or eliminate double taxation for many filers, but they require active, correct filing, not passive assumption. This obligation exists whether you’re a long-term resident, a digital nomad, or a dual citizen through descent, and it’s independent of whatever tax obligations your destination country separately imposes on residents.
A citizenship or residency by descent, investment, or naturalization changes your rights and options; it does not change your US filing obligations. Anyone planning a move abroad, temporary or permanent, should talk to a tax professional who specifically handles US expat returns before the first year abroad closes, not after.
Where dual citizenship fits in
For a meaningful share of Americans, “life abroad” isn’t just a lease and a visa; it’s a second citizenship they already qualify for through a parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent’s nationality, or through a country’s investment or residency-based naturalization path. A second passport doesn’t erase the tax and banking realities above, but it can remove the visa clock entirely, open EU-wide work and residency rights, and give children and grandchildren a claim to citizenship that only gets harder to establish the longer it goes unclaimed.
Eligibility rules differ enormously by country and change over time, which is why guessing is the wrong approach. A short, structured set of questions about your ancestry, current residence, and citizenships can surface pathways that aren’t obvious from a quick search.
Take the Second Pass eligibility quiz
Informational only, not legal or tax advice.