Over the next few entries, I’m going to post some practical advice about how living more internationally can be not just a rewarding experience, but fun, safe, and financially worth your while.

OK, now let’s talk money. How do you get the wherewithal to start and continue traveling?

First an important principle: Work in rich countries, spend in developing countries. How to find out how expensive a place is? Get ahold of a Lonely Planet guide to the place you’re interested in, then page through it, checking prices for hotels, meals, etc. The cheapest countries in the world are India, Indonesia, Nepal, Guatemala, Egypt, Ecuador, and Cambodia. Most middle class Americans could probably retire to any of those places whenever they felt like it. Why knock yourself out doing something you don’t like till you’re 65 so you can live in Florida in a trailer when you could be in a villa with a cook, nanny, and gardener on the shores of magnificent Lake Atitlan in the healthful climate of the Guatemalan highlands?

So how do you put the initial bundle together? Say you’re making $40K/yr. Just pretend you just got demoted to $30K/yr. Lots of people live on that — whatever they do, do that. In a year you´ll have $10K — that´s a lot of money where you´re going.

A second principle: You have a skill that millions of people around the world are dying to learn. You are fluent in what has become the international language — English. There are schools in virtually every non-English speaking country in the world desperate for native English speakers to teach students. Pay is especially good in Korea and Taiwan but good everywhere, at least by local standards. Incidentally, wages up to $85K earned outside the US are tax-free. You should be able to get a job strictly on your status as a native English speaker. A college degree will increase your salary, as will a 3-week TESL (teaching English as a second language) course.

OK, that’s one way to make money as you travel — there are many, many more. I met an American guy once who made his living ($500/ night) putting on live sex shows in Japan — the mind boggles. A very wealthy man was once asked the easiest way to make a million dollars. His response — find a country where something costs $2 and another country where the same thing costs $1. Then negotiate the sale of one million of them. It’s tougher than it sounds but the principle is valid. The Economist magazine has what it calls the Big Mac Index, in which the price of a standard commodity — the Big Mac is computed in dollars for all 228 countries where our famous burger is sold. Last time I checked, it the most expensive BM in the world cost $5.79 in Norway, while the cheapest was in Malaysia for $1.52.

The gap between wages is much larger. Minimum wage in India is $1/day. For what it’s worth, I made a considerable amount of money buying Indian software companies when they first listed on the NASDAQ. I’d seen how smart, educated and motivated those guys were. I knew that with the Internet, they would be able to compete head to head with software companies in Silicon Valley and I knew the differential in wages. That kind of knowledge is worth something.