Your mom had a degree, a child, a house and a car by the time she was your age. You have the degree, the job, and a calendar full of reasons you can’t afford the rest.

So you work harder. You take the side project, ask for the raise, trim the budget. Somewhere in there, you start to believe the gap is a verdict on you.

This isn't an argument that everyone should leave the US. It's an argument that staying shouldn't be the only option we price out when we're trying to build a stable life. For some of us, moving abroad changes both what we can afford and how everyday life feels.

I used Prince George's County, MD as the benchmark because I know it. I grew up in Virginia Beach and worked for the county. It's also one of the wealthiest majority-Black counties in the country, about 60.7% Black.

Read that carefully. The typical household, often with two paychecks, is up to about $13,000 short of buying the typical home. That assumes 20% down, today's rate and local property tax. Change any of them and the gap moves, but it doesn't close at the median.

Per person, the gap is wider. The county's per capita income is about $46,400, which averages everyone, kids included. Median household income is about $101,800 because most homes pool two paychecks. The mortgage assumes both.

Now think about one income. When I worked in the county, I made about $90,000. That's a lot of money, and it's still not enough to carry that mortgage on its own. With Kionna's income we were okay. On my own, I don't think I'd have made it.

So if you're a single earner and you feel behind, it isn't effort. The dream now assumes two incomes, or one very large one. Our parents' generation often built it on one. That gap isn't just yours.

Mortgage math fits in a spreadsheet. The rest of the cost doesn't.

These are different problems with one question underneath: how much of your time, money and energy goes toward building the life you want, and how much goes toward navigating barriers on the way?

Moving abroad doesn't remove those barriers. Every country has its own. But it gives you another environment to evaluate. You can ask more than "Can I afford to live here?" You can ask, "What would living here ask of me?"

Here's a comparison budget for two adults and one child under 5. It combines my own tracked spending with local cost estimates, and I've marked which is which. The result: about $6,900 a month in Prince George's County and $3,600–$3,800 in Medellín.

Difference: about $3,100–$3,350 a month, or $37,000–$40,000 a year.

What the savings buy. It isn't only spending less. It's room: building savings, paying for help, and making decisions without every surprise expense becoming a crisis. For me the question stopped being whether I could afford the American Dream. It became whether I could build the stability I wanted somewhere else.

A normal Tuesday (illustrative): coffee on a balcony in Laureles, a 10-minute walk to a park, and dinner out that costs less than a grocery run did at home. A nanny covers the afternoon so you can finish work. You aren't rationing the month.

Money wasn't the only thing I was looking for. I wanted to know what it would feel like to build an ordinary life as a queer Black woman, not just visit somewhere beautiful.

So I wasn't only comparing rent. I paid attention to how I felt in ordinary moments: at work, in rideshares, around my neighborhood, looking for care.

The elevator. Early on, a stranger stepped into an elevator with me in Medellín and asked how I was. Where I'm from in the DMV, that question is a courtesy. You smile, say "good morning" and look at the floor numbers.

I did that. He asked again. He wanted the real answer. Then came the follow-ups: where I was from, what it was like there, whether I liked Medellín, what my favorite food was. By the third floor I knew his cousin lived in Miami and which restaurant was his mom's favorite.

It overwhelmed me at first. I wasn't used to people caring about the answer. Now I answer, and I ask back.

That moment was small, but it's the kind of thing I couldn't price in a spreadsheet. Other things I noticed:

That's my experience, not a guarantee about the whole country. Colombia has its own racism, and Afro-Colombians face it in ways a visiting Black American with dollar income often doesn't. That's why I'd visit and test before deciding.

The comparison depends on having enough portable income to cover these costs. For this budget, that means earning in dollars and spending in pesos.

If your job can't go remote, this math fails. That's a constraint, not a character flaw, and it's the first thing to check.

Everything else follows from the answer to that one.

Three questions to answer before you do anything:

If your income can travel, you have something concrete to investigate. The math can show you where you might have more room. It can't tell you where you'll belong, so you have to test both.

The American Dream costs more than it used to, and some of us pay more to chase it. Price it in more than one place before you decide it was your fault, and test the answer in person before you trust a spreadsheet. That includes mine.

Practical guidance across the state, the money, the move, and the ground—delivered without the fantasy.