Will Bridges

I know… I know… But for real. I want to move to Uruguay. On the trip home from Thanksgiving Yendis and I talked about it and we want to move out of the country. I can do my job from anywhere with a good broadband connection. Here’s some good points I came up with about Uruguay. I’ve been researching this for a couple days between working.

• Uruguay speaks mostly Spanish. That’s great because I wanted a good excuse to learn, Yenids wants to learn, and I want my son to be bi-lingual.
• It’s not too far out of the US time zones which is where most of the people I work for conduct business.
• It has a stable economy and democratic government.
• Crime is extremely low for that part of the world.
• The health care system is great and it’s free to citizens & residents who have been living there for 3 years. Further, if it’s not free it’s extremely cheap for great private health care and they have most of the modern equipment we have.
• Public education is free all the way up to the Doctorate level of the university! But further, private education is fairly priced and diverse.
• Montevideo is only 3 hours by ferry from Buenos Aries which would be a cool place to visit every now and then.
• Citizenship is easy to get. You only have to live there for 5 years if you are single or 3 years if you are married.
• The climate is perfect. Equivelent to Long Beach, CA.
• The public officials seem easy to work with and responsive as well as the rest of the businesses in the culture from the reports I’ve seen.
• Montevideo is a city of 1.5 million people which is a great size.
• Broadband internet is available and not extremely expensive.
• It’s a fairly modern society. They even have a couple grocery stores online that will deliver to your house.
• It’s about a 40-60% cheaper cost of living than most places here in the US.

That being said. There are some small cons. Here is a list.

• The sidewalks are in terrible condition in some areas from reports and some areas of the city look like they have went unmaintained for years.
• It’s far away. It’s between Argentina and Brazil in South America on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s about $900 for a round trip ticket per person to Washington DC and it’s an overnight flight.
• It’s an adventure. I have an extremely low knowledge of Spanish. Yendis has almost none. I’d have to learn some before I went.
• To be comfortable in a foriegn country I would like to have about 25k worth of money saved up and it’s going to be difficult to save that over the next 12-18 months.
• While there are tons of resources it’s hard to know if it’s going to be right for me. But, from everything I’ve read it seems right for me and my family.
• My son is very young and will still be very young before we move. There’s a good chance we will only get back home 1 or 2 times a year. I intend on going to become a citizen so I will have to be there for 5 years, at least. So, he won’t get to see his family very much.

We looked at many other options including Norway, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, Austrailia, and some of the islands. Overall the pros for Uruguay still outweigh the cons. There was some serious or major drawback to all of the other countries we considered. So, I’m going for it but I need to be as frugal and as motivated as I can be so I can save a large enough amount of money to be comfortable. I have enough clients that I’m comfortable now but that could always change. However, I doubt it will. So, I intend on moving in the next 12-18 months. Yendis wants to wait but I’m pretty sure I can convince her because I know she wants to leave the country. We may visit next year to see how we like it before we go. If you would like information on the resouces and knowledge I have obtained please follow these links.

Uruguay Living - An American living in Uruguay who has lived in many remote places in the world. Tons of information here and all very recent. Plus, he sells a book that anybody considering a move there should buy. A real good book.

Sociedad Southron - They guy who created the blog above created a society to help people trade information about moving to Uruguay. You have to join the forum but it’s free and there are tons of posts there about everything from dozens of people. A really great resource as well.

Uruguay Human Development Report - Tons of stats on the situation of human development in Uruguay.

Uruguay CIA World Fact Book Report - Genral information about Uruguay and it’s people.