Choosing a country to move or travel to may seem to be a daunting task at first. Especially when you have people to consider other than yourself who will be taking the journey with you. People often ask “What is the best country to live in?” or “What is the freest country?” These questions are impossible to answer because they are full of individual subjective judgements that only you can answer for yourself. Is it more important for you to have great medical care or a great beach? Which freedoms are the most important to you? There are no perfect places on earth so you will need to do some soul searching to find out exactly what type of place you are looking for. It would be a good idea to take the time to brainstorm and find out the things that are necessary and the things that you would like to have in a new place to live. Find the places that have the necessities you are looking for and then move on to the preferences. You should narrow your search down to two or three locations that you would feel comfortable with. Here are some things to keep in mind as you narrow down your search.
1. Climate
2. Language spoken
3. Cost of living
4. Food preferences
5. Geography(beach or mountainous area)
6. Medical facilities
7. Distance from family
8. Available flights
9. Activities that you enjoy
10. Security of the area.
11. Reliability and speed of internet available
12. Education
13. Transportation
14. Culture
15. Cleanliness
16. Crime
17. Employment opportunities
18. Internet connectivity
Here are some websites to use when picking out a destination country.
When planning a trip I like to start by checking out my destination on Wikipedia and Wikitravel first to get a general idea of the area.
Expat Blog: An expat blog written by expatriates for expatriates. The main idea is to make expatriates share their experience. Everybody can participate!
Virtual Tourist: A worldwide travel community where real travelers and locals share real travel advice and experiences.
Lonely Planet: is a great site for information on different areas around the globe. Discussion forum for global travelers levitra online prices with threads separated by region.
Family Travel Forum: This is a website for those who have kids and still travel. It is dedicated to the ideals, promotion and support of travel with children.
World Travel Watch: Cover worldwide safety issues for travelers that are not being covered sufficiently by the mainstream press.
CIA Factbook: Has lots of great statistics and background info on each country.
Know your country: Look up a country on this website to get AML reports, country tax rates, international sanctions and geographical anti-money laundering reports reports.
Economic freedom Index: This is a yearly report put out by The Heritage Committee on the economic freedom of each country. It is not easy to come up with an objective index to measure this type of thing but I thing they have done a pretty good job. This information is irrelevant if you are simply looking for a place to travel to on a one time visit or a playground.
Corruption Index: This will give you an idea of how inept and bribable the officials are in that country are. A very corrupt country may not necessarily be a bad thing depending on your motives. If a country has high corruption it is usually sign of a bad economy but you may be able to get more things done there if you know the right people.
VAT/Sales tax: It is good to take a look at this when considering a place to spend you disposable income i.e. playgrounds.
Global Black Market: This is a website that records black market data for each country. You can get the total size and percentage of the black market as well as average prices of controlled substances.
Numbeo: Numbeo is the world’s largest database of user contributed data about cities and countries worldwide. Numbeo provides current and timely information on world living conditions including cost of living, housing indicators, health care, traffic, crime and pollution.
Global Property Guide: Great stats for investors interests in buy foreign residential property.
Global Tax Guide: An in depth look at taxes from country to country.