Ok, so you want to work out of the US. You don't have a degree, so that is going to make it tougher. "No marketable skills" is subjective and debatable but will be a barrier. This makes you goal tough, but doable. First, get a passport. That runs $160 per person or so, more if you want to expedite. Second, you need to assess what you own, what you owe and what you posses that you cannot live without. How can you sell your junk? How long will it take? What is it worth versus what are people willing to pay for it? Property will need to be sold, debts paid off and cash hoarded. How much do you have left? Debts are something you don't want to leave if you are moving to a country with an extradition treaty or reciprocal banking laws where your assets can be grabbed. That and being debt free is like +10 to mental health and you are going to need the lack of worry when you move. Once you have a Passport, start contacting embassies of the countries you are interested in and see what work skills they are fast tracking for visas. Canada, when I worked regularly in Canada pre 9-11, required you either worked for a Canadian-based company, were married to a Canadian or had a "high demand" skill/degree to get a work visa. I also had to sign that I was not intending to become a Canadian national to get my Visa, promise to not use my visa to buy property and sign a waiver that marrying a Canadian national voided my work visa. That has almost certainly changed since this was 20+ years ago. While talking to the embassy, schedule a vacation to their nation. Spend at least two weeks there, leave the tourist areas, find the expats, find the people hiring and see them in person to ask them questions. Can you as a non-national own property? What is it like renting property/homes as a non-national? What are the work requirements. What are taxes like (remember that as a US citizen you need to declare foreign income and file taxes as well). So, you went on a vacation, you got your shit together, and are ready to leave. Sell everything that you can't fit into a POD style shipping container. Open your bank accounts in banks that give you access in the country you are looking at. Have a shipping address, a place to lay your head, and go. The reason I say this is that you are not going to just up and move. I've a few liberal friends who threatened to bail when W got reelected then saw how hard it was, so they stayed in the US like all those people did. This is the hard point. Most ESL places I looked into way back in the day required a Bachelor's degree. Since you guys are young-ish, look at places in the middle of the country. Rural America is sort of like our own third world country where it is cheap to live and if you can find work you can have a great life for not a lot of money. Sounds like you need a change of situation, and that is not a bad thing at all. Rural Arkansas, Rural Ohio, Rural Illinois, Rural Kentucky are all starting to grow again due to call centers and auto factories. And they are still cheap to live in. And you can drive through them, eat lunch at a diner and have a nice conversation with the locals all for the cost of gas and no passport needed. There are some places like this within a 4-5 hour drive of anywhere in the USA. And you don't get the complications of extra-national living, language and culture. But if you are serious, get the passport. Save to travel somewhere, and go. Come back to this question when you get back and see where your headspace is.Neither my wife nor I have completed college or have what are considered any strong marketable skills, so job hunting in another country might be a bit of an issue as would potentially securing work visas or whatever you call them.
Letting go of what we own wouldn't be much of a problem. The big stuff would be easy enough to sell and the small stuff would be easy enough to give away. Debts are something that I don't take lightly and would not, under any circumstance, be able to handle hanging over my head. I literally would not be able to sleep at night if I knew I left a debt behind, both for moral reasons as well as the fear of having to deal with the financial and legal repercussions. So yes, handling any debt would be at the front of my mind. One of my friends married a Canadian and moved up North. He said before he could get his citizenship or whatever, he and his wife had to go through interview sessions with the government to make sure they were legit. He said at one point he forgot her birthday and started freaking out and the interviewer laughed it off saying something to the effect that it's the perfect sign that they were a legit couple. Yes, we will definitely visit, probably multiple times, any place we visit before moving there. We will probably also make sure at least one, if not both of us, have jobs lined up before leaving. Taxes'll be a pain in the ass. They always are. In all honesty, I've been harping on her for about two or three years now that we should move to a flyover state or some where rural as fuck. Probably not Appalachia, because they're having a hard time right now, and probably not one of the flyover states because they really are like a third world country sometimes, but I could see Wisconsin or Minnesota work out for me, and while I joked with _refugee_ about it in this thread, I really have heard nothing but nice things about Wyoming.
thenewgreen and I have soft spots in our hearts for the Mizz... it's a lovely city with much better weather than you would think. Oh... and... having spent plenty of time in Wyoming... the only places worth living are the ones that are as expensive as where you are now.
. . . what if my Wyoming goal is to live in a van, down by the river? It'd be awesome to have this as a backyard. Yes. Even in winter. Wool socks exist for a reason.Oh... and... having spent plenty of time in Wyoming... the only places worth living are the ones that are as expensive as where you are now.
if you're in to windswept plains with a horizon that just falls away into the distance..... you're a wyoming man at heart. I don't mean to trash WYO either... I love it. I just know I couldn't pull it off. It really is too cold, too remote, and too... I don't know... both times that I've seriously considered it, there just was something missing for me.
The remoteness is what gets me. I think rural New England is what I want. I'm certain I can find a house in Adirondack Park under $100k that's very close to a state highway, less than 30 minutes from I-87 and is about two hours from Montreal and Albany. That's the kind of remoteness I think I can handle.
I live 35 mins from downtown yet it is rural as all fuck here. The neighbors' windows are about 70 feet from mine. I'm five mins from the expressway; the entrance to said expressway has three big box stores, one in each quadrant, and if I want to not deal with that I drive 10 mins the the grocery store which has a better meat department. 20 mins in the other direction I can go to an Amish butcher and get better food than you can anywhere outside of a good restaurant for about what you pay at the normal store. Yet, there is a thriving art scene, lots of culture philanthropy, a good symphony, two decent colleges, several hipster-style coffee chains, tons of restaurants, and they just announced we have an unemployment rate of about 5.5% and are worried that there are not enough people to hire in the skilled positions that need to be filled. According to the Census Tracts, I live in the City, and am technically in the suburbs. My mortgage is, including escrow (taxes and insurance) $502 a month. Car insurance is higher here do to weather being a factor, and some utilities out here are more than I expected, notably electric. I'm not going to see any art movies in a theater, nor are niche music acts going to play every year. But my quality of life is so much better than when I lived in California, the commute is easier, there are places to go and things to do, there are actual honest seasons out here. If I was not in the Ohio Valley, I'd be looking at Upstate New York as well, as upstate seems to be the exact same place I just described, only in New York and not the Ohio Valley. I hate to sound like a paid shrill, but my opinion is that the coasts and the "hot beds" are becoming over rated and are ready to peak, then burst hard. Paying $72,000 a year to rent a two bedroom apartment is not sustainable. My house may only go up in value 2-3% a year, but I'm also not going to crash 30% like my parents will when the SoCal real estate bubble pops. I'm hoping more young smart people move out here to the second and third tier cities to help push out some of the ancient old people who don't want to deal with the world changing around them. And two people earning $25,000 a year ($12-13 an hour) puts you in the $50K a year category, or in better terms, over the median household income for Kentucky. Remove NYC and that is roughly the median for Update New York as well. A couple can live very well out this way if they are willing to.
That sounds pretty great. Where I am in southern Wisconsin, prices for land are pretty high. Starting at Milwaukee, it's high because you're close to the city, then it stays high going west because you're either close to Milwaukee, close to Madison, or sort of close to both. Suburbs are expensive, too. The closest I've found to something I consider affordable is an older part of town that isn't close to downtown. If I stay in town, eventually I'll look for a house there. In my exploring in Upstate New York, I think once you're that far from the coast the prices stay low. In December I stayed a couple nights in Newcomb, New York. I think this was a former mining town, but I'm not really sure. It's pretty much just buildings along the two lane highway. There were some cross streets, but I don't think there were any streets paralleling the highway. There was no Verizon or AT&T mobile service, and there was just one restaurant twenty minutes away that was open midweek. There's another only fifteen minutes away that's open weekends. It's very affordable, but that's because the economy is so weak. So while you might be able to buy a little house on a couple acres of land for $70,000, it's really hard to find much for work. I look at it as a retirement goal before being a place to relocate to. The Ohio Valley, though, has more work opportunities for me. I've probably turned my nose up at it, but now I'm not sure why. Each year it feels like there's less holding me to Wisconsin.
Montana is gorgeous. Missoula is a college town so you get the benefits from that with the Rocky Mountains, the Blackfoot River, Glacier National park only a couple hours away, Flathead lake. Some of the best hiking and camping in the US. Plus it's inexpensive. LOTS of people living "off the grid." Great music, art and food despite the seclusion. 
I've hear it's the faster growing startup city in America at the moment but then again, I heard that on the internet so it might be BS. I know a couple of my favorite YouTube people are based there, they say it's good value and a fun enough city where you can live really well if you make money on the internets.
I dunno, man. A favorite shooter of mine bought herself a piece of turf in rural West Virginia and built herself a solar cabin. Her lifestyle looks awesome. Buy this book and leaf through it. Then splurge on a subscription to Mother Earth News. See if that catches your attention - it's hella cheaper than moving to Singapore. Wyoming/North Dakota are in an interesting spot at the moment because they were fracking boomtowns but with oil as low as it is right now they're kinda fucked. I have sort-of family that headed out to one of the Dakotas and they love it... but the economy, from what I understand, is not one you'd want to move into at the moment.
Appalachia is a bit of a gamble, what with coal as an industry dying a painful death and lumber and steel not being what they used to be. The mid-west is almost as inexpensive as francopoli points out and probably has a better economic safety net, Detroit being a depressing statistical outlier. That book is going on the list though. It's a good thing summer is coming around, I'll be able to spend plenty of time outside catching up on everything you're recommending me. I don't know what the rest of the economy looks like out in the Great Plains. Regionally though, it's appealed to me a ton, if only because it has such a beautiful landscape. I half think francopoli should take some of his equipment out there for a vacation sometime for star gazing. The lack of light pollution from the cities coupled with a clear night would make for some great shots. An honest part of my unhappiness comes from city living and while I'd love to get away from it, I wonder if some place like rural Wyoming might be a bit extreme. On the other hand though, if I could find myself a decent paying job out there, it might be worth it.
The fact that you want to move deeper into the Flyover States indicates beyond a reasonable doubt that you should follow your heart, not mine. given my druthers...
Two weeks. Deadliest road in Canada to get there. Primarily because it's a double-yellow 2-lane for about 200 miles and it all looks like this And you have to break the speed limit because it's so fucking fun and then you swing wide into oncoming traffic and oops there's a logging truck.
Houses in Cincinnati are cheap. In a decent area of town you can get this house for about $500/month. You are still in a city with a good solid economy, 20 minutes from fuck all of nowhere, less than 10 hour drive to Phily, Chicago and Washington DC and can actually LIVE on two 24,000 a year incomes. Same for a lot of the Ohio River Valley. Tennessee is a bit pricier, but the economy is a bit more varied and if it exists and you can get good at it, you can find someone willing to hire you. The big cities out here like Louisville, Lexington, Indianapolis, Cincinnati have everything you can get in the big cities on the coasts to a pint but you can afford to live out here and follow some of your passions. You are not going to make 500K when you sell your house, but then again you are not spending 70K a year in rent, either. Good call. Awesome country, simply beautiful, but the people who live there are getting screwed by factors out of their control and the reality has not sunk in just yet. Appalachia is basically the same implosion of families, communities and politics we saw in the inner cities in the 70's and 80's only rural and in slower motion. Back in the '02-'03 dot bomb I got the chance to move out here and took it. I figured I'd wait for the job market in California to recover and move back. Turns out, my mortgage including escrow is $450 a month for an acre, I get paid enough to fully vest my 401K and I get to do the fun stuff that keeps me sane and happy. I'm serious about the whole "take a drive" thing. If nothing else it gets you away from home for a few days and allows you to reset yourself. And don't worry about venting, it helps to get this stuff in writing so you know where your head is at.Probably not Appalachia,
One of the best things about the Mid-West is how affordable it can be while simultaneously being convenient if you're able to make a few concessions. If we were to uproot and head somewhere else in the country, it would indeed be a major focal point for that factor alone. The wife enjoys random drives and I enjoy driving period. I'll see if I can't find a dog friendly hotel somewhere nice, load the two up, and go for a small trip.