Well said Megan. I recently spent a month in Nepal where I met up with someone who reads my blog who’s actually from and lives in Kathmandu. He was kind, well read,whip sharp. We were kindred spirits. He makes $150usd a month working a full-time job in social media marketing. About a dollar an hour. Previously, I was working a minimum wage job in Flagstaff, AZ at $12/hour. Twelve times what he made for an entry level job that was largely downtime… This was a shocking, eye-opening encounter for me.

It can also be argued that things are more expensive here — they are. Braces, for example, cost about $5,000usd on average in the United States. They’re $250 to $400usd in Nepal.

People will use such examples to argue we aren’t all that much better off, but we definitely are. I watched a father celebrate with his son when he killed a pigeon with a rock for dinner in a river of garbage in Kathmandu. In the USA, we would never consider that an option. Also, with all the money we make, we have the opportunity to forgo our comforts and carve a massive gap between what we make and what we spend. Or, as I often do, to make money in the States and go to another country where things are fractionally expensive. We have options, and are very, very fortunate for them.