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Comment by richsaunders | Hacker News Reader

I am not thinking about starting a business or founding start-up. I just want to move to a better place. I honestly don't like my country.

> b) Illegally migrate to another country.

Well, I don't want to break the law. If I have a chance I want to move legally. But as you can say, given my background the chances are very slim.

> c) Migrate within your country to a better comunity. ... If you succeed here another option may open at a later point with higher success probabilities.

I think this is what I am going to do. I don't know how long does it take to make enough money to get out of here, but I'm going to try.

I actually run a small printing business where I make enough money. The bad news is, I don't have any machine or employee, so if I am moving to another city, it'll be hard for me to run my business. The good news is all my customers are coming from the internet, we never meet, and they do repeat order.

Thank you for your reply!

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I can simpathise with your desires and calculations - I’ve been there myself. While the country I’ve lived in (part of the USSR) was not that bad, back when the change was happening it really felt like the only rational decision was to flee west.

Due to some unfortunate buerocratic mishaps I was forced to stay. And 20 years later here I am - still in the same country, while companies are offering me to relocate and help me with legal expenses.

After travelling a bit abroad and seeing how life is in the countries I wanted to live in, I know have the feeling thet they all have their own problems, and you get to a pretty awesome standard of living if you stay at your unexpensive place, but get a decent european/american salary. And its totally possible with remote work nowadays.

And while I still think my life would have turned out better if I was able to emigrate back in the day, life here has gotten noticably better, a lot of expats are returning and bringing the culture I desired to be a part of here.

So yeah even if you don’t manage to get out, you can still sharpen your skills, and get to work for some first world companies with a great compensation. And with not that much money, even the lousiest places can be a great place to live.

I would add, if you remain in your home country, and you aren’t that confident in that countries’ future, keep your extra earnings in foreign currency and assets. That way, you can hedge against getting screwed in the event of a currency crises or revolution. I have contract workers all over the world and I encourage them to do this.

> Keep your extra earnings in foreign currency and assets.

Can you give me an example? Like what kind of assets?

How does one run a printing business without any machines? Print brokering? Seems like you could do that from anywhere, and not having equipment to move might be an asset rather than a liability.

> How does one run a printing business without any machines?

I don't have any printing machine. I got all my customers from the internet, so basically we never met. When my customers place orders (from WhatsApp), I would print their orders from a company who actually have a printing machine, then I just sell it more expensive to make profits.

I already do this for about a year now. I went from $100 to $1,000 saving. Which is pretty good money in this country, I can live with that for 5 months.

> Seems like you could do that from anywhere.

Yes, the problem is I need to find another printing company that doesn't cost too much. I'm already thinking about this actually.

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