Uncommon Guidebooks: Getting Out

Are you interested in living and working abroad, but aren't sure how to go about it? Or, are you just plain fed up with where you live and want to get away? Getting Out - Your Guide To Leaving America, by Mark Ehrman, is a great resource to answer all these questions and more. It guides you through a a range of topics, including how to leave, obtaining visas or foreign citizenship, working abroad, choosing a country, and even gets into the fine details of finances once you're there. Basically, if you've ever seriously considered moving to another country, this book is great one to get you started.

While the title suggests this book is all about getting out of the United States, in reality, it is a guide to becoming an expat, no matter where you live. There is an excellent section on visas: what they're for, common types of visas, working with one, how to get them, and even living on the edge without a visa. This section, along with all the others, are peppered with expats' real world experience with this process, so you won't be bored to tears with dry facts and regulations. Want to go a step further and get foreign citizenship? You'll find that many of your questions are covered, as you can learn the different paths to becoming a citizen in your new home country, how to get dual citizenship, even how you can inadvertently lose your citizenship.

Working abroad is a popular topic among travel addicts, after all, who wouldn't want to extend their trip by earning a little extra money here and there? Unfortunately, it's not as simple as you might hope, as in many countries there are copious laws and regulations restricting foreign workers. There's an ample section covering ways that you can work abroad: from volunteering, teaching English, joining the foreign service, being self-employed, and even working under the table (if that's how you roll.)

But what if you love the idea of being an expat, but don't even know where you'd want to go? The author has done a great job of breaking down the decision process, by covering different deciding factors: language, cost of living, crime & safety, health care, as well as drug laws and gay/lesbian life abroad. You can analyze statistics and rankings based on whats important to you, and then dive into the real meat of this book: the top 50 countries for expats. This section alone makes the book worth the entrance fee, as it lets you do some leisurely initial investigation of new home countries, without having to do all of the painstaking research. It won't replace real, hard-core research down the road, but it gets your started on the process of investigation.

If you've been daydreaming of "getting out," but haven't done anything about it, this book is an excellent resource to get you started and inspired for how you too can live the expat lifestyle.