American expats are happier even though they make less money

When he was 27 years old, Bernard Meyer moved from the USA to Lithuania: the world’s happiest country for young people. After over a decade in northeastern Europe, he says earning less money is worth sacrificing for a much better quality of life.

Meyer, a senior communications and creative director at marketing automation platform Omnisend, settled in Lithuania’s capital Vilnius in 2012 after graduating in 2008 — at the time of the Great Recession.

“I had an option to go back to work at Starbucks after I finished college, or there was another option for me to just get my degree and teach English abroad,” the 39-year-old told CNBC Make It.

Meyer initially took an English teaching job in Mongolia in 2009. Then his brother, who was visiting a friend in Vilnius, invited him to join them. Meyer ended up staying in Vilnius for a number of months and met his Lithuanian girlfriend, who is now his wife.

What he found in Vilnius was a world apart from his life in the United States

“What I see here is just that it’s a slower pace of life, but it’s not a bad slow,” Meyer explained. “Compared to the US, people are not so focused on needing or always pushing themselves to earn more or talking about politics all the time.”

After finishing a teaching contract in Taiwan, he permanently moved back to Vilnius and still lives there with his wife and two daughters.

Many young workers move to Lithuania because of its beautiful scenery and attractive work-life balance. Lithuania recently ranked #1 as the world’s happiest country for people under 30 on the World Happiness Report 2024. It was ranked #19 of the happiest countries in the world overall.

“Ten years ago, I would have said it’s very confusing,” Meyer said, commenting on the ranking. “They had this horrible idiom that said Lithuanians are happiest when their neighbor’s house is on fire.”

At the time, the country was struggling to emerge from a financial crisis that hit Lithuania and its neighbors particularly hard.

Now, however, things are very different, and it has become a good place for young people to live, according to Meyer. The country has launched several schemes to attract skilled foreign workers, including short visa processing times and an arrival allowance of 3,788 euros ($4,170) for foreigners hired under a permanent contract for certain high-value roles.

Meyer outlined three major benefits.

Meyer spent his early years in Vilnius working in education and teaching in private schools before switching to the content marketing industry in 2016.

Despite earning less than his American counterparts, Meyer says he has a good quality of life and owns both an apartment in Vilnius and a summer house in a nearby town.

The cost of living in Lithuania including rent is about 41% lower than in the US, according to the cost of living database Numbeo.

“I think when you look at it in its entirety, when you first see the wage disparity, you think it’s extravagant,” Meyer said. But he does not want to move back, not least because he currently has access to free health care and knows that his family will be taken care of in Lithuania.

“You hear so many horror stories about the U.S. where people just give up and they don’t get the treatment they need. They’re afraid to get the treatment because if they do, they get a $25,000 bill for five stitches and an X-ray,” he said.

At one point, Meyer had surgery on his knee because he tore his ligament and had to stay in hospital for three days in Vilnius, but “the bill was zero” at the end of it all. He explained that even when he needs the services of private doctors, the cost is reasonable compared to the United States

“I can’t begin to describe how stressed I would be in the US, especially because I have children,” he said. “In the US, you have higher wages, you have more money, but you also have high stress because something can go wrong, and then your entire budget and savings can be wiped out.”

Vilnius is a “new tech hub,” Meyer said. The Lithuanian capital is home to over 890 startups and has produced three unicorns to date, including Vinted, Nord Security and Baltic Classifieds Groups.

A $110 million 55,000 square meter tech campus is also being built in Vilnius and is expected to house 5,000 digital workers – which would make it the largest startup campus in all of Europe.

The burgeoning scene has inspired something of a busy culture, but Meyer says it’s still very different from the work culture in the US

“When I first got here, one of the things that I noticed was that everybody had some kind of side hustle, but they weren’t working 9-to-5 and then 5-to-9 side-hunting,” he said. “They just kind of worked on it, but had that work-life balance. So they had the hustle culture, but not the suicide culture, which I think is great.”

Meyer added that after the 9-to-5 workday in Vilnius is very “relaxed”, with people often going to bars and cafes after work or going for walks and bikes.

He emphasized that Vilnius is a beautiful city where people value connecting with nature. It helps that the city is extremely walkable – making it very different from many major American cities.

“So you have this fine touch where they’re working hard here and they’re busy but within this time period. Then they switch off and they know how to switch off and I think that’s what makes them happy.”

He explained that “one of the biggest differences” between the United States and Vilnius is the attitude to freedom. “I remember when I was in the United States, I never had a vacation, and I never knew anyone who took a vacation on purpose,” Meyer said.

Now, as a manager, he said he never asks employees to work on weekends or holidays.

“One thing I tell them, which I think is very European, is that we don’t work in the hospital emergency room. There are fires, but there are always fires, that doesn’t mean you have to give up your vacation.”

While there’s less of the “speed and hustle” of Silicon Valley, Meyer said, “the work-life balance we have here makes up for it. It’s a worthwhile sacrifice.”

Another factor preventing Meyer from moving back to the United States is the sense of security.

There is “a persistent environment of violence and racism” in the United States, Meyer said, whereas in Lithuania “it sounds tough, but I don’t actually have to worry about my kids getting killed in another school shooting or at the mall or at the beach or wherever these things happen.”

The environment is different for him as a black man. “I feel like sometimes I forget that I’m not white or that I’m different because it’s not something that’s mentioned here,” he added.

“People notice it, of course, but it doesn’t feel like it’s an integral part of my position here in Vilnius,” he said, while in the United States you just swim through this racial community.

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