The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
Lifestyle Arbitrage, Balancing Ambition and Relationships, and What Gives Scott Hope
Wed, 07 May 2025
Scott unpacks whether young Americans should consider lifestyle arbitrage — moving abroad for a better quality of life. Then, he offers advice on balancing ambition and relationships in your 20s and 30s. And in our Reddit Hotline segment, Scott answers the big question: what gives him hope? Want to be featured in a future episode? Send a voice recording to [email protected], or drop your question in the r/ScottGalloway subreddit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is lifestyle arbitrage and should young Americans consider it?
Hi, Prof G. I'm a solopreneur in my late 30s running a modestly successful online business. My partner and I have deep ties in the U.S., but work independently and could live anywhere. As we consider having kids and the life we would want them to have, we also discuss moving abroad for three main reasons. Lifestyle arbitrage, a more supportive environment for children, and as a hedge against U.S.
instability. Given your recent thoughts on diversifying your investments globally and your current residency in the UK, do you think younger Americans should be diversifying their residency options when possible? If so, which countries would you look into that still offer some of the economic opportunities that the US currently does? Thanks for all the great content and advice.
Chapter 2: Which countries are ideal for lifestyle arbitrage?
I love this question. According to a Harris poll released in March, roughly 40% of Americans have considered or are actively planning to move abroad. The number one reason, cost of living. More than half of Americans say they believe they'd have a higher quality of life abroad. Among those that planned on leaving their top choice destinations were Canada, the UK, and Australia.
As for non-English speaking countries, Americans indicated they were eyeing moves to countries including France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and Germany. Countries ranked among the most receptive to digital nomads are Spain, the UAE, Montenegro, and the Bahamas. Okay, so in sum, I love a lifestyle arbitrage. And you want to lean into your strengths.
And if your strengths are you have a career that is not location-dependent or geographically dependent, then you want to do the lifestyle arbitrage. The key is to make a urban city-like salary without having urban city-like costs, unless you're in love with cities. And then, okay, some people, I know some people who are like, I am leaving New York feet first, and I don't care what it costs.
I don't care what sacrifices I have to make. Most people, by the time they have kids in New York, peace out because it just gets prohibitively expensive. And the lifestyle is just tough. I remember walking around with my boys in Manhattan and thinking I always had to have their hands for fear they'd run out into the middle of traffic.
So 100%, I would say, really be thoughtful about the lifestyle arbitrage. My general assumption or general reductive analysis after having molested the earth for the last 30 years is that America is the best place to make money and Europe's the best place to spend it. So if you can make an American salary and live in Europe, that's a decent arbitrage. Also think about different places in the U.S.
And that is, there's a lot of cities... in the South, quite frankly, that I think are just, so for me, arbitrage is, one, I think college towns are great arbitrages, whether it's Charlottesville or Ann Arbor or Chapel Hill.
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Chapter 3: What are the benefits of lifestyle arbitrage in the U.S.?
These cities typically, if you can call them cities or towns, typically bring this great peanut butter and chocolate combination of a urban sensibility with rural beauty and hopefully rural pricing, and you can have a great quality of life in a college town. I also think there's a lot of cities in the South right now that offer what I think is a great lifestyle arbitrage, specifically the weather,
that aren't as expensive as some of the blue cities in the north. In some, if you were to look at migration patterns in the U.S., it's driven by two things, low taxes and sunshine. And I would also think about, you know, think about this a lot, but the tax arbitrage.
By moving to Florida from New York, and you have to move, you can't fake it, you have to spend 183 days there and roll your kids, so you really, you can't fake it, you legitimately have to move. The 13% swing, I reinvested purposely that entire 13% over 10 years and it helps have a bull market.
But basically, my cars, my housing, my kids' school were paid for in that tax swing because I make really good money, but a lot of it was current income. So 13% of that, then you invest it. If you make $300,000, you're not saving $39,000. You're saving, you have $39,000 in capital that should grow to 78 or 100, 150 10 years on.
And you do that every year, you wake up and you might have seven figures in additional wealth that you didn't have had you not moved. So I love a lifestyle arbitrage. Some cities that I think offer incredible lifestyle arbitrages at the moment. By the way, it used to be Florida.
When I moved to Delray Beach, our first home that we rented there was on the water, on the intracostal, and cost us $4,500 a month. It no longer costs $4,500 a month. Word is out about Florida, that lifestyle arbitrage has been starched out, as they usually are starched out. Some cities I would consider If you were single and male, I would think about Cape Town.
I think the crime there is a factor, but if you can make a Western salary in Cape Town, you're just gonna have an extraordinary quality of life. I love Cape Town. I've been there several times now, and I can't get over how good the food is. how deep the culture is and how inexpensive everything is. Now, crime is an issue. So I wonder if it's a place for a family.
I'm sure other people will weigh in, but I think in terms of just pure raw beauty, colliding with an incredible city and incredible food, incredible culture at a incredibly low cost, that is really hard to beat. Madrid or somewhere in Spain.
I just think the Spanish get it in terms of being able to get a great bottle of wine for eight bucks, walking around fairly safe, incredible culture, history, proximity to other great cities in Europe. I think Spain offers an incredible lifestyle arbitrage and pretty good weather. The other city I would consider is Mexico City. And I'm assuming it kind of likes cities.
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Chapter 4: How does Scott Galloway approach work-life balance in his 20s and 30s?
Hey, Scott. I've been struggling with your perspective on work-life balance, or the lack thereof, in your 20s and 30s. You often frame those years as a time for relentless ambition, even at the cost of relationships, health, and personal well-being. I'm particularly curious about how you discuss your first marriage.
You emphasize that meaningful relationships are the key to happiness, yet also seem to suggest that sacrificing them is necessary for success. That feels like a contradiction, no? If you could go back, would you do anything differently to preserve those relationships? For context, I'm 28, putting everything into a new business, and dating an incredible woman I hope to spend my life with.
Should I expect to lose my partner and friends to succeed? Or is there a better way? Thanks for your time and for the impact you have on young men like me.
Thanks for the question. You sound awfully serious. So first off, I can't blame the dissolution of my first marriage on my ambition or my career. I say that my relentless focus on work took a toll on me physically and my relationships, and it did. But the bottom line is, without violating privacy, the end of my first marriage was a function of my immaturity.
And the fact that I was working around the clock probably didn't help in terms of stressors, but I can't just lay it at the feet of my I want to be clear, my way was to do nothing but pretty much work from the age of 22 to kind of my late 40s, early 50s. That was my way, but I'm not sure it's the right way.
And I have some proximity bias, and that is the people I am close to are mostly other very ambitious, economically ambitious people that want to be successful and live in places like LA and New York where you have to make a shit ton of money to have the lifestyle we want. and also MBA students.
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Chapter 5: How can relationships and ambition be balanced according to Scott?
And when I survey my MBA students, about 70, 80% of them expect to be in the top 1% income-earning households by the time they are 35. And what I suggest is that if you are that ambitious economically or from an influence or relevance standpoint, you just have an honest conversation around the trade-offs and the sacrifices, you might decide
that you want the trade off on the other end of the spectrum, that you're going to move to St. Louis and have a nice life and work, but you're going to work to live, not to live to work. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And you can maintain healthy relationships.
you know, coach Little League, work a reasonable amount of hours, you know, have your church, your country club, or whatever it is that gives you spiritual or relationship reward and have a wonderful relationship with your partner and your kids. I think that's possible. Unfortunately, I think it's less possible. What we've seen is than it used to be.
What we've seen is the majority of cities have brought up their prices because of inflation. So I think in a capitalist society, the cruel truth is you need a certain level of economic security.
But if you've decided you don't want to work 40 hours a week, not 60, and that you're going to prioritize your relationships and your health and your fitness and the pursuit of other outside interests, more power to you. I get it. I get it. But you also have to recognize that means you probably aren't going to make a million, two million bucks a year and live in LA or Manhattan.
You're just not gonna get there doing an ordinary amount of sacrifice around your career. So what I would say is it's a spectrum and that is you have to decide and get alignment with your partner around where on that spectrum you wanna be. And I've always assumed that the majority of people I come in contact with, and maybe that's incorrect, but actually it's not.
The majority of the young people I meet, where they fall flat is they get used to these Instagram life and the algorithms that they're going to be on a jet and vacationing at the Almond in Utah, partying in St.
Barts or Saint Tropez, and that they're going to get there at a very young age and just, you know, they'll find a job that'll carry them there or they'll find the right cryptocurrency that'll carry them or no. That involves a lot of luck and working your ass off, which comes at a sacrifice.
So I think that's where what I'll call the dissonance is, is that a lot of people don't recognize the sacrifice. A lot of people on the other end say, well, you can make that sacrifice and still not get there, which is also true because luck plays a big role. So why would I make that trade when I can just be a good citizen, work relatively hard, find a good partner, and just enjoy life?
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