You may know John Schneider and David Auten as the Debt Free Guys, long-time hosts of the Queer Money Podcast, or the former hosts of Yahoo Finance’s Living (Not So) Fabulously. Despite paying off $51,000 in debt, building an impressive stock market portfolio and even investing in a little real estate, the couple has not been immune to the financial pressures Americans have faced over the past several years.
The last two years have been the worst. As immediately as November 5, 2024, the day of the U.S. presidential election, Schneider and Auten started seeing the impacts of the incoming administration’s policies on their business revenue. While they thought the work they were doing was being sponsored and supported because it was valued, they quickly realized many of their corporate partners viewed them as little more than a DEI project. Diversity, equity and inclusion in America is currently under attack. It’s certainly not getting funded.
“We lost our six-year podcast sponsor and haven’t been able to secure the brand partnerships and speaking gigs that we have in the past,” explains Schneider. “Consequently, our business has taken a 70% hit to our revenue year-over-year, and we’ve laid off our team of four contractors.
“We decided to pivot and apply for W-2 jobs, but despite many job descriptions looking for people with experience, an entrepreneurial spirit and leadership skills, two gay men in their fifties who haven’t had bosses in over a decade aren’t the most appealing candidates, especially in this tight and confusing job market.”
What does one do when the cost of living spirals and discrimination forces you out of pay?
For Schneider and Auten, the answer is moving abroad.
Schneider and Auten’s financial journey started a long time ago. They found themselves under a lot of social pressure to project a lavish lifestyle, but also found themselves deep in debt. They embarked on a debt-payoff journey that cut out a good deal of the consumerism, driving the same car for 15 years and living in homes that were smaller than what they could technically “afford.” After they got the balance down to $0, they started investing their “extra” money into the stock market rather than returning to their old way of life.
The couple made some other hard decisions, too. They left their relatively high-cost-of-living home in Denver to live somewhere more affordable. Initially, the plan was for the move to be temporary. Instead, they’ve spent several years being relatively mobile, spending periods of time in places like Las Vegas, Sitges, Spain, Mexico, Portugal, France and Ohio.
They were never quite able to move back to Denver, though. While their financial sacrifices have paid off, they cite the chaos of the first Trump administration, the COVID-19 years in the U.S. and the following Trump administration as a particularly anxiety-inducing time to run a business — especially as gay men. Despite the challenges, the fact that their businesses are remote has been a boon to them, allowing for this location-independent lifestyle.
“Because we can work from anywhere, we’ve been published and featured in most major finance publications, including television,” says Schneider. “We’ve spoken on some significant stages and worked with some amazing brands and even more amazing people. Mostly, though not as much as we would’ve liked, we’ve gotten conversations started in our community – money conversations among queer people – that didn’t really exist before we launched the Queer Money podcast.”
Schneider and Auten refer to their lifestyle as “geoliberated,” a new spin on the term “geoarbitrage.” They flashback to the scene of January 6, 2021, as an inflection point along their journey.
“We were never super ambitious about retiring early,” Schneider says. “But after the insurrection, it was clear to us that somehow or another, Trump was going to return to office. It was at that time that we decided we’d do whatever we could to leave the U.S. if he, in fact, became the president again.”
The subsequent five years have been full of preparation, and the couple now sits on the cusp of immigrating to Mexico.
To prepare for their move, Schneider and Auten hired immigration coaches and a Mexican immigration attorney. These professionals made the process of securing visas relatively seamless, setting up meetings for the couple at the Mexican consulate and coaching them for visa interviews. The most stressful part of securing their visas was gathering up the supporting documentation they needed, like birth certificates and financial statements.
With visas in hand, they attended a canje, or meeting at a Mexican Immigration office, in Lake Chapala, Mexico, in September. With this final step completed, they are now preparing for their physical move.
Aside from the physical move, the couple is also preparing their finances. Initially, their plan was to keep most of their money in the U.S., but with more international institutions selling their U.S. treasuries and repatriating their gold reserves in recent months, they have now started moving more of their finances abroad.
“We’re in the process of getting Portugal’s Gold Visa, which means we’re transferring half a million from the U.S. into Portugal,” says Schneider. Having more visas opens up more opportunities and flexibility as the couple enacts their geoliberation in the future.
TIP: PocketSmith can help you manage your money across borders with its unique multicurrency function.
“We anticipate that our cost of living will drop considerably,” says Schneider as he considers their new budget in Mexico. “This move will help us to stretch our money further than if we remained here in the U.S. As we’re retiring early in our early-50s, this will reduce some financial anxiety.”
At this moment in time, many queer people in the States feel increasingly unsafe. Emigrating seems like a preferable solution, but it does cost money. America’s ever-sharpening income divide means that a lot of people don’t have the resources they would need to leave.
Even in this circumstance, Schneider and Auten have some words of hope. They encourage other queer people to do further research and consider places that might not be on their radar. While they haven’t been everywhere on this list and encourage people to “do their homework,” they cite places like Ecuador, Uruguay, Thailand and Malaysia as having more affordable costs of living than even places like Mexico or Portugal.
“Most of the hangups we have about moving abroad or how ‘unsafe’ it is in other countries are completely bogus,” Schneider says. “The U.S. is becoming too expensive for working Americans, let alone retired Americans, and now it’s also becoming unwelcoming to many people who don’t fit into a tiny little box. There’s a whole world out there! Explore it.”
As you’re doing your research, the couple also suggests prepping your finances by:
While the circumstances that prompted emigration are disheartening, Schneider and Auten are looking forward to the move. They’re excited to “immerse [themselves in] Mexico’s rich culture, and tour its ancient ruins and beautiful sites.” Because they’ve been mobile for so long, they’re not as stressed out about the physicality of moving as others might be. The biggest concern they have is for their dogs as they make the adjustment.
Whether or not they’ll ever come back — or be allowed to come back — is questionable.
“Part of us wonders if we’ll ever be blocked from returning to the U.S. or if we’ll get detained at customs,” says Schneider, “as has already happened to constitutionally legitimate American citizens.”
In the meantime, though, early retirement in a place they love with a lower cost of living has them looking forward to the future.
Brynne Conroy is an award-winning personal finance writer, creator of the popular women’s finance site, Femme Frugality, and author of The Feminist Financial Handbook, which was an Amazon #1 New Release across multiple categories including Poverty and LGBTQ Demographic Studies. Her work has been cited in academic texts, and she’s spoken at venues such as Vanderbilt University, the Financial Planning Association and the 529 Conference. Here at PocketSmith, Brynne covers personal finance within American financial systems.
