147: Do you really have to take a pay cut to move to Europe?

One of the biggest things I hear from Americans who want to move abroad is this: I would love to move to Europe but I cannot afford to take a huge pay cut.

And honestly? They are not completely wrong. If you move from New York to Portugal and take a local job, you are probably not going to make your New York salary. But that is not the only way to build a career in Europe. And today we are busting that myth wide open.

In this episode I am walking you through six concrete strategies for moving to Europe without sacrificing your income.

Here is what we are covering:

• How to keep your US salary while living in Europe and why this should be your first question before anything else
• How working for a multinational company could be one of the most overlooked pathways to moving abroad
• Which European industries and countries actually pay competitive and sometimes exceptional salaries
• Why you should never confuse salary with purchasing power and how that changes everything
• How to make money from American clients while living in a more affordable European city
• Which countries to target depending on whether your priority is maximum salary, US company opportunities, or lower cost of living with foreign income

You do not necessarily have to choose between making good money and living in Europe. You just have to think differently about where your income is coming from.

👉Take the free quiz: Which European city should you move to? 🤔

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Website: jordangiberson.com
Instagram: @jordan.giberson

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Moving abroad. Does not mean sacrificing your career and income. You still can have a really great career, a really great income It's just reframing or it is implementing some of these strategies so that you don't necessarily have to choose between money and the lifestyle that you want in Europe. Hey, my name is Jordan Giberson. I'm a Texas girl living and thriving in London. The best thing I've ever done? Moving abroad, hands down. And I'm passionate about helping others do the same. Are you curious about finding a job abroad? You're in the right place, friend. I'll teach you the tried and true secrets of how to make moving abroad a reality for you and how to live a fulfilling life once you get there. We'll cover topics like choosing the best visa for you, how to get a job offer in another country, how to get over your fear of moving abroad, and how to live a life you love once you get there, this is The Move Abroad Podcast. Welcome to another episode of the Move Abroad podcast. One of the biggest things that I hear from Americans who talk about moving abroad is, "I would love to move to Europe, but I can't afford to take a huge pay cut." And honestly, they're not completely wrong. If you're moving from New York to Portugal and you take a local Portuguese job, you're probably not going to be making the same New York salary that you're used to, but that's not the only way to build a career in Europe. There's actually a lot more ways that Americans can move abroad and still make the same amount or at least, be making more than what they think that they could be making if they move from the US to Europe. So today, we'll be talking about the six strategies that you can implement so that you don't necessarily have to choose between making American money and living in Europe, but you do have to be strategic about where your income is coming from, and that's what we'll be discussing today The first strategy that you can implement to not have to necessarily take a pay cut if you move abroad to Europe is to keep your US salary while living abroad. This might be one of the biggest opportunities. So if you're already working for an American company, your first question shouldn't necessarily be, "What European job can I get?" It might instead be, "Can I take my existing career abroad with me?" There are people that are working remotely for US companies while living abroad in Europe, although I do want to emphasize that remote does not necessarily mean work from anywhere in the world, because your employer will care about policies, tax, payroll, and immigration rules. But it is possible to move your career abroad. I have known people that have done that, where they have a US job, and they've talked to their companies, and their company allows them to take that job abroad to Europe, but they get a visa that allows them to do so. So there are options where you could get a a visa, like a digital nomad visa for instance, where you bring your salaried job abroad to another country, and you get a visa so you have the right to work there. So I think it's a discussion that you could have with your company This strategy might work really well for people who are software engineers, maybe product managers, marketing, sales, customer service, finance, design, consulting, recruiting maybe like project or program management, data analytics, maybe certain healthcare or technical roles. So if I didn't list out your job here, it doesn't mean that it doesn't qualify. But I think that, if you do have a job and you could potentially take it remote to Europe, then I think this could be a really great option for you. So you don't necessarily have to quit your 120K job and move to Europe hoping you'll find another 120K job. First, investigate whether you can bring that 120K job with you before you explore other options. So I think this would be a great option to try first, and then if this doesn't work, then you can try some of these other strategies. So one of the second strategies that we're going to talk about is to work for a multinational company. This is another route that I think would be good to spend your time on. So you could think of companies with offices that, are in the US as well as the UK and Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, France, Spain. So you could potentially join the company in the US and then later transfer internally. I've seen a lot of people do this strategy successful. So you could try to transfer and I think that could be a lot easier than trying to convince a random European company to sponsor you from scratch. So if you're already at a multinational company, look internally before looking externally. So ask, does this company have European offices? Are there internal transfer programs? Are there European roles that I could transfer to? Does the company have an entity in the country that I'm really interested in, that I wanna move to? Do they have an office in the Netherlands, if that's where I really want to move to, for instance? Could you relocate after establishing yourself? So after you establish yourself in the company, could you try to weasel your way into potentially getting a job abroad and taking that job to another country or joining another office? And if you're in an international company now, then you're already a step ahead. But I think this could be a great strategy to already start looking for a job that has a multinational locations and to maybe see if you can get your foot in the door that way. So I've definitely seen people do this successfully as well A third strategy for not taking a pay cut if you move to Europe and, still be paying high is to target Europe's high-paying industries. So I think, people have this idea that European salaries are low, and the answer with a lot of things in life is that it depends. So the latest figures shows that Switzerland, Iceland, Luxembourg, Denmark, and the Netherlands are amongst Europe's highest average wage salaries for the countries. So if you wanna check that out, I can include the link, but it's in Euro News. So you can get high-paying jobs abroad in Europe. Will it be as high as your American job? I'm not exactly sure. I couldn't tell you, but I think, there are industries that can pay higher than some other industries. And I also if you're choosing your location strategically for a European country that has higher pay, you have a lot higher of a chance to have high salary. I think on average, if I'm being really honest, the US typically has higher salaries overall. I think if you wanna make the most money of all time, then I think the US is a really great market. But if you say I'd like to make really good money. I'd like to be really comfortable with my life. I don't wanna be, poor. I wanna be really comfortable." You can still make great money in Europe. You can still have very high pay. You might not be paid 500,000 for a role, but you might be paid maybe 200 or 300,000 in Europe, for instance. I'm literally making this up, so please don't take those figures. Maybe I shouldn't even say this. But please don't take those figures to heart. What I'm trying to explain is that you can still make a very high salary in Europe, and you can still have a great quality of life, and it depends also on the cost of living in that country. But you still can have a very high-paying job, and that's what we're trying to accomplish in this episode. But let's talk about some of Europe's high-paying industries, and maybe you can see if one of these fits into the role that you are working in So some of the high paying jobs might be in tech. If you're a software engineer working in AI, cybersecurity, data science, maybe product, cloud, technical sales. I think things in tech in general, I think you can probably get a higher salary. If you work in finance, investment banking, private equity asset management, wealth management, fintech, risk I think those roles like within finance you can make really good money. If you work in engineering in energy, automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, chemical engineering, like really any engineering consulting like strategy consulting, management consulting, technology consulting, I think those roles will be pretty high. Senior roles as well, like I think if you're earlier on in your career, the pay might be a little bit lower than it would be in the US, but senior corporate roles, the further you get in your career, the more portable your earning power is going to become. So if you have really strong corporate experience then you will probably be paid really well. So like a senior product manager, a marketing director, sales executive or consultant. If you don't have one of these roles that we talked about, it does not mean that you won't have a high salary, but some of these are the higher paying industries in Europe, and you have a higher chance of being paid really well. Also doctors and in some healthcare professions if you're a surgeon, you might be able to have a really high salary. So anyways, there's a lot that I haven't mentioned, but my point is if you have a high paying salary in the US for a high paying industry, it's probably gonna transfer pretty well to Europe, and the same thing with a senior role. Strategy number four is to choose your European country strategically. So we did touch on this a little bit, but I think that if maximizing income is your priority, I think you might not necessarily want to look at only Portugal, Spain, and Italy, because those are very popular with the Americans, they're great places to live, but you're not gonna have the highest salary if you're looking to work for a company, for instance. So some companies that you might want to look for would be probably more in the north, like Switzerland, for instance. Switzerland has Europe's highest average gross wage. They have 107,000 gross wage, like average. So I think, compared to a lot of the other European countries, you can expect to have very high pay. So these would be in cities like Zurich, Geneva Basel. Those are some cities like in Switzerland that you could, have a very high salary. Switzerland also is extremely expensive, so you can't always look at salary alone. You could, however, say, "I really wanna move to Portugal, it's been my dream." And it has a lower cost of living, so you don't need as high of a salary. Some other examples of some really high paying European countries are Luxembourg Denmark. The Netherlands has high salaries. I think this is a great country to consider for Americans. Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht have really strong international job markets, especially in tech, finance, engineering, marketing, international business. They have a high wage salary that's about 80,000 per person per year. That's also just the average, and if you have a lot more work experience, then you'll probably get paid a lot more than that. If you have lots of work experience, this is just an average. But my point is go look online and go look in the Netherlands, for instance, or go look in Switzerland, for instance, and see how much you might be paid. See what the average salary is because if you do a little bit of digging, you can probably get an idea of what the salaries might look like. Ireland is another country that would have pretty good job opportunities too. They have English, obviously, so it's a great option for us Americans who speak English. They have a lot of major US tech companies. Good in pharma, finance. They have a lot of international companies. So they have a very strong US-Europe business connection there, and they have a pretty high average wage as well. And Dublin is a particularly strong concentration of multinational employers, so Ireland might be a really great option for you. Germany is another really good one, particularly in Munich, Frankfurt... Berlin maybe Hamburg. It's really strong for engineering and automotive tech, finance, manufacturing, consulting, and they also have a pretty high average wage there compared to other European countries. So if you're looking to get a job in Europe, and you wanna work for a company and apply for a job in that country, then I think some of these countries might be some of the better ones. And I think it's looking more in like Northern European countries because typically Southern European countries, while they're warm and sunny they typically don't have as strong of job markets. I think it's worth doing a bit of research. Maybe you've narrowed it down to maybe two or three countries that you're considering, and just do a little dabbling to see, how much the salaries are for the country that you're planning on moving to and for the type of role that you can get with your work experience Strategy number five is don't confuse salary with purchasing power. I think that this is a very important conceptual point because someone might be saying I make 120,000 in Europe, and I can only make 80,000 in Madrid." Okay, but does your life actually look like each one based on salary? My point is, there are, lifestyle costs, and you have to be able to pay for those lifestyle costs. But the lifestyle in Madrid is probably a whole lot cheaper, I know that it's a whole lot cheaper, than New York. Like way, way cheaper. So my point is you need to look at the cost of living and compare that to the salary as well. So you might, have to consider things like what is the salary that I'm getting, but what are the taxes that I'm paying? How much is the housing? How much is the transportation? How much is my healthcare? That's a big one. What about childcare? What about my lifestyle costs? And not just be looking at the salary because someone making 70,000 in a European city with a substantially lower housing and transportation cost, for instance, can potentially have a very different financial reality than somebody that's making over 100,000 in a very expensive US city because life is very expensive in the US, and it's gotten a whole lot more expensive in the past few years. So this is something that I think it's just something to pay attention to because I think sometimes we do confuse salary with purchasing power, and we need to pay attention to what the purchasing power is in the country that we're moving to not feel discouraged and to think that "Oh, I, I can't afford my life there because I'm only gonna be making 80,000 in Madrid," for instance. But I think, it's a bit of a different conversation here. So don't confuse salary with purchasing power And strategy number six is that you could consider making money from America while living in Europe. So this is a little bit different than having a US employer, but you could build a business where your customers are American while you live in Europe. You could think things like freelancing, for instance. Freelance in marketing, in design, copywriting, consulting, development coaching, photography, video, virtual assistance. There's a lot of freelancing opportunities, and you might be able to think of, how to turn your current job into a freelancing or consulting type of role. Or building an online business like potentially memberships or digital products or courses or newsletters or, consulting or coaching. So you could build an online business as well, and something that's really interesting is that you could have international clients. You could, deliberately build a client base in countries where your services command a higher rate. This is very powerful because you're no longer limited to the salary structure of the country where you live. There are some, several examples that I can think of where people have done this successfully I can actually think of an example that I've personally dealt with where someone did not handle this successfully. So I remember in a previous role, I was working with a, a guy who did our digital marketing. He did a lot of our advertisement, and he charged us peanuts. We were a UK company, and this guy was charging us such a low amount. He could've been easily charging us four times the amount. So I think, it's just knowing what the purchasing power is in another country, and I think that there is a way to build a business to charge, what you deserve in that country. Maybe he had some local clients but he lived in an Eastern European country where the, the cost of living was very low, and the salaries were very low there, and so he charged what locally he would be charging. He could have probably been charging us much more. I know he could have been charging us much more. Like I kinda wanted to tell him because I felt bad, and my boss loved it. He was like, "Yes!" "We're saving so much money by working with him." "He could be charging us way more." So my point is, you could be building a business abroad. And I think that you probably have a lot more connections than you think, and you could build up a freelancing or an online business now if you wanted to, and start doing that on the side, and then move abroad with that money, and you can get a visa to do that. You can get a freelance visa or a digital nomad visa, and you can move abroad with that, and then be able to build the salary that you really want. So this is also another interesting possibility, and if you've been working 9:00 to 5:00, maybe this is a different mindset shift, but maybe it's something you've been thinking about for a while anyways. And I think this could be a really interesting opportunity for you as well if you're concerned about, the possibility of having a pay cut in Europe. And you could say, "Actually, no, I don't have to have a pay cut in Europe." And going off of what we just said a little bit, you might even end up making more money abroad. Hear me out. I think that this could be really exciting for you because instead of having a US salary and US cost of living or a European salary and, a European city abroad where, you're making the salary that fits the cost of living in that country, you could potentially create high income, and make money abroad in the US or maybe other countries, I don't know and then have a lower cost of living in a European location. For example, you could keep your US international employer, and you could move to a more affordable European market, like moving to Portugal or Spain or Italy, Croatia, Slovenia Poland, Hungary. So to answer our question of do you really have to take a pay cut to move to Europe? The answer is really it depends, which is not an answer, but it is the answer. It really just depends. I think that if you implement some of these strategies like we talked about, I think that you can definitely make a really high salary abroad in Europe. So I think if you keep your US salary and you take that US salary abroad and you take that job remotely, and you work that out with your employer, I think you could also Have a really high salary. If you also work for a multinational company and try to transfer, that's our strategy too. I think you also have a chance of not having a big pay cut. If you're working for Europe's high-paying industries that we talked about, also a great strategy. If you choose your European country strategically, so you make sure you're choosing a country that has high salaries in general, I think that's also, a really smart thing to do. And then I also think not confusing salary with purchasing power. I think we do that a lot of times. We say, "Oh, we expect to have $100,000 a year, and we expect that lifestyle, but oh, in this country, I'm gonna be making less." But the purchasing power is different, and you actually might be living more like a king than you would be in the US even though the salary is a little bit lower. And then what we also talked about is making money from the US while living in Europe. So working for yourself and doing freelancing or building an online business of some sort, and you can actually, be making even more perhaps abroad with all these strategies, but with the one that I just mentioned as well. So it is absolutely possible to make just as much money in the US if not more money than in the US. But I do think the answer is it depends, and I would say that every single person should expect to make a US salary abroad. It does depend. So I think that you need to be realistic. I'm not trying to build up a myth in your head, but I also think the myth is not everyone can make as much money in Europe as America. I think the myth is that moving to Europe automatically means sacrificing your career and income. I think those are very different statements, and we need to shift this rhetoric in our minds that, if I move to Europe, I'm gonna have a big pay cut. It's not necessarily the case. Moving to Europe automatically, it does not mean sacrificing your career and income. You still can have a really great career, a really great income if you are moving abroad. It's just reframing or it is implementing some of these strategies so that you don't necessarily have to choose between money and the lifestyle that you want in Europe. You just might need to think a little bit differently about where your income is coming from. So instead of asking, how much does someone in my job make in Spain? I think you can ask, can I take my current job with me? Can I transfer within my company? Can I work for an international company? Can I work in a higher paying European market? Can I work remotely for international clients? Can I build a business? Can I live somewhere where my income goes further? If you've been thinking like, "I'd love to move abroad to Europe, but ugh, the salaries are just so low and, I like my lifestyle and I wanna continue having my lifestyle, so Europe might not be a good choice for me," I think let's think about some of these strategies and whether we can make this work for ourselves where we're not sacrificing one or the other, but we're also being realistic. And I think it's just saying, "Okay, are you willing to take a little bit of a pay cut, like just a little bit, so that you can have this life in Europe and live there for one or two years, and then go back to the US? And let's find a way to, have a good salary that we feel comfortable with, that we feel excited about, so that we can also enjoy life abroad in Europe And if you're still trying to decide, which city you should move to, if you do have a couple in mind but you're like, "Ugh, I don't know," "which one might be the best for me?" I do have a quiz that might be helpful for you. It just helps you determine which city might be a really good fit for your vibe, and it's kinda fun. It's a quiz. It takes under two minutes. So you can actually go click on the link that's in the podcast description to take the quiz, and you can see your results. It's kinda fun. Or you can also go to jordangiberson.com/quiz and go take the quiz there. So with that being said, we'll go ahead and close down today's episode. I hope that this episode was helpful for you and gave you a bit of clarity on whether you might need to take a pay cut in Europe or not, and I hope that we blew that myth out of the water and you now have some strategies to use so that you can, feel like you're not sacrificing money to be able to move to Europe, and you can figure out the strategy that works best for you. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Move Abroad podcast. I will catch you here again next week, same time, same place. I'll catch you then.