The following transcript was generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Carlie: Hello there. It’s Carlie with the Expat Focus Podcast. How much thought did you put into the new country and city that you moved to? Maybe the decision was made for you due to work or study or a relationship, or maybe like today’s guest you left due to political turmoil.
Vasily Yurenkov left Russia just five days into the war with Ukraine. Vasily is a numbers man, and he’s channelled his passion for data into Greener Relocation, a service that helps you choose your next country and city based on your goals, your values, the risks, and the opportunities.
Vasily, your own international relocation came at quite a tumultuous time. So what can you tell me about your decision to move and where did it take you?
Vasily: The initial plan for my wife and me was to move from Russia to the UK somewhere by the end of 2022. That was our initial plan. Then February came in, things changed and we left right away. We left in five days and because we had started some of our preparations, but they didn’t go through just yet though.
We had to improvise a bit. And in the process, we actually changed the destination too. We ended up moving to Amsterdam, not London. This is where we are now. So it’s been three years and I’m actually quite glad that this is where we ended up.
Carlie: So you were planning for the UK until things got a little bit heated in the world where you are from, and you had to quickly pivot that plan to Amsterdam during that time. I’m sure you had to make a lot of compromises just to be in a safe place for you and your family.
But what sort of considerations did you have in mind when the UK was the plan and what have you discovered since you’ve actually ended up in the Netherlands and been there the past few years?
Vasily: The main thing why we were thinking about the UK – we both speak English. It’s a common working language for us, so this is easy and what is also very important, my wife has a degree from London School of Economics and from Oxford.
She used to live in the UK. She used to work in London. And because her career was considerably higher than mine – so moving – and I was just starting this business of my own, Greener Relocation, helping people figure it out, which countries to move to. So I could technically do it from anywhere, right? So I wasn’t linked.
And for her, career in finance and strategy linked with innovation, London did sound like a perfect fit. And also at that time, the number of friends that we had living there was probably no other city would compare.
Now it is a bit different. Definitely different. But back then in ’21 when we were thinking about it, yes. Then when we started the move, we were still not ready with the UK Visa because we were thinking of moving based on UK global talent visa, which technically my wife would qualify for.
Carlie: Should have qualified.
Vasily: Would qualify for, right. Because she was building innovation hubs in banks as part of what she was doing.
Carlie: Sounds very talented, quite frankly.
Vasily: Yeah. It was very funny because we got three responses as to why not. We applied, we appealed twice. They, this doesn’t happen usually, so they usually just yes or no, and then you appeal.
We appealed and they said, yeah, you were right on all accounts, but here is the new excuse, the new reason of why not. And you can appeal again. But by that time we had already moved to European Union because I had residence permit from Italy. And so we were already on the move.
At some point when we figured out that UK starts stumbling somewhere, we decided to actually run my model. London is probably number one, but let’s see what’s out there for us. We do have the model, kind of help others with this. Why not us? So we did it for ourselves and it was very funny, Amsterdam was number one.
Carlie: Yeah, objectively, by data made it ticked all the right boxes.
Vasily: It did tick all the right boxes. It ticked all the right concerns because cost of living obviously is outrageous. We were actually thinking more of going – if we were to go there, we would probably be living in Oxford, not in London per se.
But then Amsterdam showed up on the map and it was pretty high up, so it was in top five. And on our travel, we spent some time there for a month and we figured out that surprisingly, we actually have quite many friends there.
And by the model, it kind of ticked boxes, not everything to the top, everything that we were looking for, but it was pretty good. And we decided we should give it a go. And eventually, I would rather say that we are pretty happy that we did, because after we settled here.
So things in UK got a bit worse in many respects, also career wise and everything. So yeah, that was definitely the right move.
Carlie: You mentioned Italy and being in the European Union – did you do sort of a tour between leaving Russia and landing in Amsterdam?
Vasily: Yes. We were actually on the move for five months. Because we drove in a car. The thing is that we had two cats. One of them a huge Maine Coon. They’re great.
So we couldn’t fly because the direct flights were canceled. So we just packed everything in the car and we just drove off. But that also meant that we had to drive for quite a while. So basically for five months we were moving slowly towards Italy, Spain, with our friends.
Carlie: I’m from Australia where we are very used to the long road trip, but even for me, the sound of a five month road trip is a bit intense.
Vasily: It is, but if you set aside the background to which it was done, it was actually a fun trip. We were very tired by the end of it. But also the thing was that while we were moving towards Italy, we also both understood quite well that for my wife, there would be no career there, right?
So that’s not really possible. Not in her area.
Carlie: Was Italy in your top five? Is that why you were heading there first?
Vasily: No, it was actually just because I sort of had the residence permit.
Carlie: Right. So how important is data? Why is it so central to choosing a new home abroad?
Vasily: The thing I noticed when I started this – I spoke to many people, to some of my friends, some colleagues, some people somebody introduced me to who moved abroad from different countries. And there was one thing I noticed.
Nobody ever approached this decision as a rational choice. The thing is, I’m an economist by trade. I used to work in finance and strategy most of my career. So this is where you actually analyze what options do you have. You measure everything.
You kind of calculate the risks, and you try to figure out what is the rational thing to do. What is the second best, third best? What are we actually doing?
And the funny thing I noticed is that even people with a similar background or entrepreneurs, people with who are way better strategists than me or way better finance guys than me – I’m not a very good finance guy. Don’t give me – I’m not going to ask you for financial advice for investment.
Don’t ask me for financial advice. No. I know a guy. I know a guy, but don’t ask me. Nobody did make the choice. They were always like, why? Why did you choose London? I mean, where else? What do you mean where else that is like France, Germany, France, no taxes.
Germany, France, probably not. Luxembourg. I never thought about Luxembourg. I don’t know. Just everybody went to London. I went to London and then somebody who went to the US way through the US. London didn’t work out, so I just went to the US. Why? I don’t know.
Carlie: It’s like a heart versus head decision. Are you telling me that most people are making decisions to move abroad based on heart feeling and not logic?
Vasily: Absolutely. They make it based on chance. So there is an opportunity that presents itself. It can be an ad they see – you can make, you can get your residence permit in three months time. They’re like, wow, that’s cool.
You can make residence permit in three months time, almost anywhere. Back then, now it’s a bit more complicated. But why there? I don’t know. I have a friend who moved there or a job offer something.
And the thing is that you may end up in a place that you absolutely love, but you just don’t fit. Or you may end up in a place that kind of fits the boxes, right? But you just don’t feel it.
Carlie: Oh, you make it fit Vasily.
Vasily: You can make it fit. But then again, the main thing – I’m not saying it’s the best choice, but it’s true. It’s absolutely true. The main thing is why you move. So it’s like what makes you move? What are you looking for?
Carlie: Vasily, just before we started recording, I was telling you about where I am in the city of Strasbourg and a lot of the expat, foreigner women that I meet are in my city for love.
And possibly they wouldn’t have chosen this city if they were making their decision to move here based on other factors such as career opportunities or tax rates or life or whatever other goal they have in their life or whatever type of lifestyle they’re prioritizing.
So how important is that sort of thing if you are not making that heart decision, but to factor into what is actually a good fit for you?
Vasily: When I have single clients who come over to me, I always recommend them first to choose at least a place where they will be fine from that perspective.
Carlie: Were they going to have a lot of swiping the right direction on Tinder? Is this what you’re saying?
Vasily: Let’s put it this way. I still didn’t manage to measure that. We’re always dancing around this parameter because it’s tricky. But yeah, dating market, the percentage of singles in a city – I don’t know. Maybe.
And also thinking of Italy, maybe the average age when the boy leaves the family.
Carlie: How many people are still living with them. Yes.
Vasily: Yes. But another thing that is actually very handy, so in our national culture aspect, we now add some of the questions that are covered by global polls, like World Value Survey.
They cover, for example, relation towards women. Should women have equal education with men? Or for example, what do people actually say about abortions, about LGBTQ, about how to raise your kids, and so on and so forth.
And you can actually see the distribution and see where you are in this distribution. So you may be close to this country, but what you think is right only 5% of the population agrees with you?
That may be a good thing to know beforehand, before you move there. I mean, if you’re moving to a capital to a big city, that’s usually leveled out, right? So this metropolis, they do have more in common between themselves than they have with their rest of the countries.
But if you’re moving to a small town or to a smaller city. Thinking about Strasbourg now. Strasbourg is a very different story.
Carlie: We are small. We are small, but we are mighty.
Vasily: I actually love it. I have some friends who work there in Council of Europe, so yes.
Carlie: That’s what makes us mighty. We’re deceptively international.
Vasily: It’s a European city. It’s not French, it’s a European city.
Carlie: So what sort of data is going into your algorithm when you are working with clients and helping them establish, for example, their top five list?
Vasily: Practically, almost anything. So right now we have more than 600 parameters, I think maybe more already that we in one or the other way, kind of combine and put inside, not all of them at the same time, of course.
The main thing is that I talk to each of my clients for like an hour and a half and sometimes more, and to their partners if they’re not alone. And we try to establish what are the key drivers? What is it that they’re actually looking for?
Do they want improvement? Do they want to avoid certain risks? Why are they moving? Why, so what are they looking for? And then we try to narrow down to a few key factors because what many people don’t realize is that, for example, even those who actually do try to do this analysis themselves, right?
So they open Numbeo – wonderful website. Awesome. Yeah, look up the crime rate index by country. Crime rate index by country. Make sense? Why didn’t I look up the crime rate?
Carlie: Does make sense? I never thought about that. If I did, maybe I wouldn’t have moved to London.
Vasily: It is a bit notorious now. Not as scary as people tend to believe, but yeah. And for example, some aspects it doesn’t make sense to analyze on the country or on city level. You can sort them out when you move by choosing the right neighborhood by studying a lifestyle. So it depends.
So not everything should be put into this model, but those things that are really important, it makes sense to assess them because otherwise you risk ending up in some kind of an abusive relationship with your city or country where you kind of like it, you already settled, you have some friends.
You learn the language. You’re there, fine. Then you find out that, oh my God, what’s happening to the politics there? Or whatever.
Carlie: There’s always something, and if it’s a key value for you, then that’s something you possibly should have considered earlier. Right.
Vasily: And many people, they just go, oh, I had this wonderful job offer. It’s what I was dreaming of. And also maybe I will work this, maybe not.
Carlie: So can you talk me through a client profile and some characteristics that might come up for a client that does prefer this more data driven approach to making this decision?
Vasily: So usually the people I get are – they usually qualify as skilled migrants. Very often with either IT or finance or usually they are a bit of a STEM background, so they are into numbers themselves because this is how they think. And so –
Carlie: And people in STEM are in demand worldwide really, aren’t they?
Vasily: Yeah. It’s also a bit easier for them to move around though. Generally, yes. This is one profile. The other is quite often it’s either startups or entrepreneurs or founders of businesses, freelancers.
Those who just move around. They can basically, especially when they are tired of moving around every year and they just want to finally settle somewhere. And they’ve seen quite a few countries and they don’t know – they know what they don’t like.
They just don’t know where to find a place without all those things they hate. And also I get sometimes the retirees, so those who have already earned for nice retirement and they are looking of maybe moving out to somewhere, somewhere southern.
They obviously all think about Italy. It’s not – Southern France, Italy, Spain. It’s not always Italy. No. But after my analysis, no, not necessarily. So –
Carlie: Give me a surprise. I would be so interested, Vasily, if you analyzed me where I should have – if where I should have gone versus I ended up, but has there been a surprise for any of your clients in terms of like, they had a top five list in their mind and after you did your data-driven analysis, it was a completely different set of countries?
Vasily: Yes. As a matter of fact, there is a certain percentage of my clients who come to me who do this exercise, they do the road trip. One of the things I recommend to people if they can afford it, because it costs is after you get your top five, the top three years –
Carlie: Drive to them all.
Vasily: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try going there at least. I can help you figure out what to look at, some tricks and things, what to do – take a subway in the rush hour. Pretend you’re going to work. So take a metro in the morning to the business center, look at the people, look what’s happening.
Do you feel that it’s kind of cool, or do you feel that you don’t want this, you want something else? You want to bike to work, for example, whatever.
Carlie: Sit outside your ideal apartment on a Saturday night and see how noisy it is. Like that sort of approach, right?
Vasily: Oh, yes. Yes, definitely. Like check the neighborhoods, check the suburbs, figure out whether you really want to be there. So there is a quite stable percentage, not very big, of my clients who choose not to move altogether.
Carlie: After doing this exercise, right?
Vasily: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because one of the things we do is not just show you which is the best place, we show you the trade-offs. You will have very lovely personal freedoms. Rule of law. Awesome.
But the crime rates in the capital city may be a bit not very good. This is the reverse side of the habeas corpus. Right. So, I mean it’s very hard if you have to say that.
Carlie: And so some decide the grass is greener after all, and they’re better in their passport country.
Vasily: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have quite a few people who just – we’ve seen it all. You know what? We’re better off staying here. Maybe if things deteriorate, okay, we’ll know where to go, but for now we’re kind of okay.
And it’s always funny. I try to reach out to my clients a year, a couple years after to see how they’re doing. Where are they in the world? How are they?
Carlie: Where are they in the world? Still in your recommended country?
Vasily: Some are, some are still planning to go, some all of a sudden gave up the whole idea of moving and they’re like – it’s a very funny conversation usually, but for example, people were thinking for 10 years that it was just in the back of the mind. Yeah. At some point we’ll move abroad. Everybody moves abroad.
We’ll move abroad at some point, and then they come to me, then we do this thing, then they do the trip. And then I find out, oh, they actually bought a house. They have a small kid now and they’re not moving anywhere. They don’t plan –
Carlie: Is it sometimes they –
Vasily: They stopped this obsession of maybe we should go abroad. No, they kind of figured it out. They want to.
Carlie: And why have they decided to abandon that plan? Is there a common thread?
Vasily: It’s different, but usually it’s the trade offs. So people think, for example, people think that they want to – if they come from some country where there are certain political instabilities, let’s put it this way, so maybe freedoms are slightly tricky, right? So it’s kind of –
Carlie: I can think of a few.
Vasily: It’s not a civil war – quite a few. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not a civil war, but it’s getting – some things may be not tried, but so far so good. And then they said, okay, we want to move, I don’t know, to Europe, to Nordics maybe.
And then they go there and they figure out that, yeah, but you know, your salary will be half what you get and your lifestyle. I mean, the people of the same social level as you, they will not be having two cars per family. Not because they just don’t use it, right? They need two bikes, but they will not have those two cars.
They probably will not have anybody coming to clean. They will not have a couple of babysitters for their kids because it’s just too expensive. They will be working part-time then, I don’t know, part of the week both, and they will be spending a lot on babysitting and whatnot, and it’s just different.
Or maybe they move and they see and they figure out, you know what? I kind of don’t want that degree of freedoms and rights for everyone. I want my streets cleaner and nobody stealing my phone from me.
Carlie: But I don’t need any more freedoms. No, I’m joking. Well, some people don’t. Okay.
Vasily: But actually it’s true.
Carlie: It’s actually true. Good. It’s better the devil, you know, sometimes, right.
Vasily: Yet also some people just look around and they figure out that, yeah, okay, maybe where they are now, something is not ideal, but they can kind of sort things out by changing the work, maybe moving to another location, maybe something, but they have network there.
And when they look at other countries that they felt that may have been like a dream. They figure out that you will be an outsider who will have to actually build a life new and they just don’t want it anymore, for example, because they’re well off. So –
Carlie: I guess these are some of the downsides that may go against the algorithm. You know, algorithmically it might be a great country, or maybe not. Or is this where the personal values data really comes into play here?
Vasily: Oh, personal values. I’ll come to personal values in a second because this is, I love this topic, but actually the idea of this algorithm, this model really is to help you show what is it that you are looking for really looks like.
And then quite a few people, they come back to me and they tell me – we looked at all this and we figured out that we want something entirely different. We, because we weren’t picturing these countries, but we were picturing that we want this.
Now that you showed us that this is actually somewhere else, we need to figure it out because it’s actually something else we’re looking for. And some of them later come back and tell me, we figured it out. We want this and this. Everything else doesn’t matter.
Like, okay, here you go. This is your new list of countries. But then again, you have to go there and you have to have the chemistry. So if you don’t have the chemistry, the algorithm will not work. The country may be perfect if you don’t click. Nothing works.
The only thing I can help you with is to make sure that those countries you test are at least not too bad from the point of view of your rational side and whatever you fall in love with or you don’t, I don’t know. It’s chemistry.
But when it comes to personal values, many people – for many people it’s really very important. How do they match the people who live in the country? That comes up very, very often because very often people who come to me when we do the test, when we use for example, Culture Compass that is based on Hofstede’s dimensional national culture model, which is awesome stuff.
When we plot their profiles against the countries they were born into, they look like complete foreigners. So they are – And it was very funny once, a friend of mine who was having a lot of political debate with his grandmother –
Carlie: Classic. A classic situation.
Vasily: Classic. And this friend learned about this culture compass. He did it also and he was like, wait, let’s do this for my grandmother. We did the profile and the funny thing was this friend was the exact opposite of the average for that country.
The grandmother was very, very close to that average. It was just one of those people who lived there. And I mean, seriously. After that I became a believer. I was like, my God, this thing actually works.
And we actually started using it after that because I was like, oh my God, I can literally plot two people who constantly fight about the things they believe in. About the fundamental values and they could just explain to you why. Okay, here I can explain though.
Okay. Wow. So yeah, that does help. But the thing is it also doesn’t guarantee that you will like it. Nothing does. And this is why you –
Carlie: Recommend the epic road trip before, or a flight trip, wherever these countries are. Maybe need a plane.
Vasily: Yeah. Yeah. If you can afford it, the only problem is that it is extremely costly. As you know, you flew from Australia, I mean. That’s one country I do wish to visit, but I’m always scared. No, not by the spiders, but I mean the length. I mean, how much time does it take to get?
Carlie: 20 to 24 hours depending on where you’re coming from and how long you spend in transit, because you typically need to make a stop. You have to take two. I can tell you Vasily, for example, flying from France.
The first six or nine hours to Dubai or wherever you’re porting first, it’s long, but it’s okay. But then you get on that second leg for 13 hours and by the end, I understand why people fantasize about opening the plane door because you’re climbing the walls, you know it’s cabin fever.
But I do watch the most movies ever in my – 18 months when I get on that plane to Australia, I’m like, okay, it’s time to binge some series I’ve been putting off for a long time. What movies have I missed at the cinema? All of them. Okay, let’s smash them out.
Vasily: Where are all these movies? What is this about? I’ll dive into the universe. You could get through all the Marvels from Hugh Jackman as a baby to now.
Carlie: Yeah. In your opinion, what is the benefit of having an independent eye on this decision making? I know when I moved to London, it was very much consulting my mom, my sister, some friends, people who already knew me, who knew my motivations, who knew my emotional decision making.
What value is there in having someone like yourself look over your plans?
Vasily: Well, the first thing that can be useful is just a fresh pair of eyes. Because when you are planning something like this for quite a while, there may be certain things that you are missing, but you don’t really see that because you just go the usual path.
When you start walking somebody through your plan, there may be an aha moment, like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You just went from here to here. But there is an abyss –
Carlie: An abyss in here. You –
Vasily: Don’t get here – an abyss. Sorry. How do you fly? This may be one thing. Another thing also because I’ve been doing this for quite a while and about many countries and cities, I already have certain things I know.
I still rely on my data. Right? I can’t have it all in my head, but I have already certain things I know. And then sometimes when people come to me and they say, oh, I want to move to Amsterdam. Let’s take Amsterdam. I want to Amsterdam. It’s awesome. It’s amazing. I love the city.
Yeah. And then they start telling me, okay, how do they want to live? And what their life is and everything. I’m like, you don’t want to move to Amsterdam. You’ll probably hate it because you’ll have to adapt and obviously you don’t want to. So I mean, that’s sometimes, yeah.
So a good thing about this fresh pair of eyes, is that this wake up call and the challenge to yourself, right? About why do you do this? Are you sure you want to do this? Maybe you just need to change a job or move to another city further away from your family.
Some people, some people move continents to get away from the parents.
Carlie: You don’t need to change countries to get away from that problem, uncle, or, yeah.
Vasily: Yeah. Yeah. Or from an ex. I mean, sorry, I –
Carlie: I promise I did not change countries to get away from an ex, but I can imagine why you would.
Vasily: Yeah, so I mean, it can be useful because I just get a few questions and it makes you – it also puts you to a different perspective, right? So you start observing it from a different perspective. You may see something new.
You may realize that everything is fine, you’re ready. Or you may realize, yeah, it’s fine and I’m ready, but I need to prepare for this. For example, prepare, right, something that you are not really ready for. Or maybe you need another country, or maybe you don’t need to go anywhere. Maybe it’s just –
Carlie: So can data lie?
Vasily: Oh, data. Data can definitely lie. That’s why I don’t just give all those tables that we assemble, compile to people. Just here it is. Because you have to – the most important thing I explain to my clients when they get this report, they get the ranking, when they get the very thorough report with all the comparison for the top five countries.
Okay, so this is better, this is worse. This is the trade off. Then we have a call and I start explaining and what I explained is, okay, look, this is what we measured here and now I will tell you what is not measured here. Which is also important, but nobody can measure that.
Or you have to measure that on the neighborhood level when you are deciding where to settle or for example, yeah, okay. I know you want to live in the more rural area, but you also want culture. You also kind of want cultural activity, whatever.
So let’s look at the city, but then you have to choose the actual village nearby on your own, and this is what you should have a look at. So, yeah, data can definitely lie. Also, data can come late.
Also, there is a big question of who compiles the data. We sometimes actually exclude sources from our models because there was once – I think it was with, especially with political things, everybody’s now trying to make ranking to be number one.
Carlie: You telling me that the Danes are buying that happiness index top spot? Is that what you’re suggesting?
Vasily: I don’t actually know if it’s the Danes, but let’s put it this way. Happiness index has nothing to do with happiness. But I remember there was once this think tank that produced a ranking of freedoms and rule of law and everything, and everything was fine.
We were also using some of their data until I ran into a very weird situation when I think China in liberties was right next to Czech Republic. And I mean, sanity check is the most important thing here. And I know a red line in data when I see one.
And then I start looking, okay, what is this think tank? Who is in the governing board? Oh, here we are, China, Singapore, Qatar, something else. So you guys, so data quality –
Carlie: Quality is really important. It was lovely working –
Vasily: With you.
Carlie: And source data quality. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Vasily. Well, thank you so much again for coming on the Expat Focus podcast. It’s been fascinating to chat about a data-driven approach to making a move abroad.
Vasily: Thank you for having me, Carly. It was lovely talking to you.
Carlie: That’s it for today. I’m sure you are kind of curious like me now to find out which cities would come up in Vasily’s ranking for you versus where you’re living right now. Let us know what you think in the comments on our YouTube channel. Just search for Expat Focus.
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