The Country Paying You to Move There, But There’s a Catch
There’s something seductive about leaving.
Not running necessarily, but restarting.
Stepping onto a train with a suitcase and a second chance heading to a quiet apartment in a foreign place with a grocery list in a language you’re just starting to understand. The idea bounces around my skull around the first of the month when all my bills are due and I calculate how many hours I need to work before I can bring my bank account back to something somewhat respectable. At this moment in time it would take around 212 extra hours at work in case you’re curious. In like one pay period.
Now imagine leaving…and getting paid for it.
Yes, some countries will pay you to move there! Italy, Japan, Ireland, and a few others worth noting. They want your taxes, your energy, and your willingness to breathe life into towns left behind to deteriorate.
But like all beautiful promises, there’s a catch…or three.
The Rise of “Get-Paid-to-Move” Programs
It sounds like a scam, but it isn’t. As cities empty and populations decline, governments are getting creative. They’re offering cash incentives, tax breaks, subsidized housing, and remote worker visas.
The goal is to attract new life to old places and fill villages abandoned by youth in search of better greener pastures. They’re trying to find ways to revive economies that have been hollowed out by urban migration and birthrate collapse.
And for digital nomads it’s more than a little tempting.
Italy: The €1 Homes and Beyond
Italy’s villages are famous for selling homes for €1, which is amazing and all, but there are more. Towns like Presicce offer €30,000 to buy a home and move there, in Calabria, you can earn €28,000 over three years if you start a business and Sardinia is giving away €15,000 grants for relocation.
Okay, so it’s more like the movie Under the Tuscan Sun than they’d like you to believe. Many properties need serious renovation and you’ve got to stay there 3–5 years. Some require opening a business or being under a certain age as well, which seems agist, but they want young blood who will have children and repopulate the areas.
If your soul already speaks espresso and crumbling stone, it might be worth it.
Japan: $10,000 Per Child to Move to the Countryside
Japan is offering up to ¥1 million ($7,500+) per child to families willing to relocate to some of their rural towns. It’s part of a larger effort to combat population decline and revive fading farming villages, which Japan has a plethora of.
They also launched the J-Startup Visa to support entrepreneurs.
So, you’ve got to live there full-time, often need some kind of Japanese language skills, and integration is slow…and the culture is deeply structured. So you might have some issues making friends and need to download Duo-Lingo while you think about it.
Still, for those seeking quiet, ritual, and sakura mornings, it’s sort of magic. Especially if you have enough kids to get yourself a nice little sum of money to start out with.
Ireland: The Remote Work Paradise?
Ireland’s Digital Nomad Visa gives you up to one year to live and work in the country.
Some rural areas also offer incentives for entrepreneurs and artists to settle…particularly on the western coast, where cliffs meet wind and the pubs know your name by Tuesday.
You’ll definitely need proof of income to get one of these visas, and the cost of living is high. It might be worth it if you’ve got a decent enough remote salary. Don’t forget that some areas are deeply rural and require car access to get anywhere.
But if you crave fog, poetry, and pubs, there’s nothing like it.
What’s Behind the Generosity?
Yeah, so as I mentioned earlier, it’s not charity and these places don’t really care that much about you. It’s demographic survival.
Japan’s population is shrinking faster than any other developed nation and they’re not stupid. They’ve got more people running numbers than maybe any other region at this point in time. They need young blood to mix with their native populations and children to raise who might stay in the country.
Italy’s birth rate just hit a historic low and they’re also scrambling to find solutions. Their famous €1 for a home deal was trying to kill two birds with one stone as some of the towns are crumbling into disrepair. The thought process was they would be able to control the flow of immigrants and point at the places that needed it the most.
Rural Irish towns are emptying by the year as their younger populations head for cities. Less job opportunities in these areas are why they’re putting emphasis on remote workers who already have jobs.
These programs aren’t gimmicks though, they’re invitations…born out of desperation, yes, but also hope.
All these places are hoping that new people will bring new stories, new businesses to stimulate their economies, and new children to grow and stay in these areas.
The Bureaucratic Reality (a.k.a. The Fine Print)
This is where the dream slows down a bit more than you might like it to.
To qualify for most of these programs, you’ll need proof of income or employment (often ~$2,000+/mo), residency documents or visas which might take a long time to get, language skills in some cases like Japan, a willingness to stay for years, not months, and renovation budgets if housing is involved.
And then there’s the quiet loneliness of starting over far from home and all of your family and friends. Although, if you can convince them to all come with you, that might be an epic adventure worth doing.
The trade off is time, space, a slower rhythm of life, and a community of people who will eventually know your dog’s name (for better or worse I suppose). Also, don’t get me started on the paperwork for you to bring your pets with you.
And maybe you’ll find yourself again in the market stalls or in the chapel bells that ring several times a day. In the smell of bread and sea salt and rain your creativity can flourish again and your anxiety can slowly lessen. Leaving isn’t always just escaping your problems, sometimes it’s returning to the self you couldn’t hear over the noise.
Travel Reads:
Should You Do It?
Only you know, but here’s what I can say, the people who do this seem to rarely regret it. There are hard parts, of course, but the richness of life and the rediscovery of things like seasons and meals and walking? That’s priceless.
Just bring good shoes, a flexible heart, and the understanding that paradise has paperwork.
