I moved from the US to Uruguay for almost a year. Three years ago I moved to Paraguay, where I currently live.

What has your experience been?
- Mixed. There are good things and bad things. But, overall, I'm happier here and plan to stay.

What is your particular career?
- .Net back-end programmer, back in the US. However, I'm trying to do other IT-related things here that don't involve me sitting in someone's cubicle for eight hours a day.

What were your moving expenses?
- Just the price of the plane ticket. I sold everything, packed a few bags, and left.

How much is your rent or did you buy?
- I'm renting a tiny apartment in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Asuncion for about $300/month. I highly recommend that you don't buy until after you've lived in a place for at least a year. It will take you that long to see if you really want to stay there, and also figure out the local real estate market.

Where did you move to/from?
- US. Chicago and Texas.

How are the schools?
- I don't have any kids, but I've heard that you'd probably want to send your kids to private schools here.

Have you become fluent in the native language and was the language barrier difficult to overcome?
- I've become a little bit better than "functional", but nowhere near fluent. Unfortunately, it's easy to get lazy at this point. You'd generally need to be close to fluent in Spanish, to get anything done here. However, since I mostly hang out with Paraguayans who are educated IT people, many who have learned English. Since they're usually better at English than I am at Spanish, we often end up speaking in English.

How long have you lived in this country? Are you a permanent resident or do you plan on moving back to the US?
- Just over three years here. I've had permanent residency for two and a half years. I plan to apply for Paraguayan citizenship at the end of this year (when I'll first be eligible). I don't plan to return to the US.

What was the process like to become a permanent resident?
- Fairly easy. Get some documents from the US (birth certificate, police background check, etc.), have them legalized by the Paraguayan Embassy/Consulate in the US, deposit $5000 in a local bank (to prove financial solvency), and hire a local "gestor" for about $800 to deal with getting the paperwork stamped and submitted, dragging me around to the required appointments, etc. Six months later, I have my permanent residency and applied for my "cedula" (national ID), which took about a month to receive.

Did you have to already have a job when you moved to that country?
- Nope. But I had a decent amount of savings (emphasis on "had").

What's the cost of living compared to where you moved from? Has your quality of life improved or not? How and why?
- I live on around $1000 a month. I could live cheaper if I cooked at home more often. I could live more expensively, if I rented a bigger/nicer home. Overall, I'd say my life is better - even when you include the stress of still trying to get some business idea to work. I lost about 25 pounds of excess weight, from eating better and walking more. I feel less stressed, since I'm not being constantly bombarded by wars/bad economy/etc. I'm in a place that I believe will grow and improve over the next few years/decades (something I can't really say for the US).