You’ve probably head the famous expression ‘’you get what you pay for’’.
Well, I have to say that I don’t necessarily agree.
You don’t get what you pay for, you get where you pay for.
The value you get, more often then not, is based on where you buy things.
Shopping deals
Let’s start with some simple examples, such as clothing.
You can get an awesome deal for clothes, even for designer brands if you know where to look for.
For clothes, we’ve found the best deals in Italy and Andorra.
If it’s European brands, you’ll pay less in Europe, even with VAT. You’d pay more for the same thing in the US, Canada, Asia, etc.
Great thing is that if you’re a foreigner you can claim part of VAT back, and save even more money by buying those brands in Europe.
Same goes for America, you’ll get the best deals if you buy American brands.
The same items have different prices in different countries.
If you travel a lot, you can save a lot of money just by buying stuff in the right place.
For shopping we found Dubai to be quite expensive, so we’d rarely shop for clothes there.
Sometimes prices will drop because of currency fluctuations
We’ve experienced this in Turkey in September of 2018.
Needles to say, we got some awesome deals in Turkey.
The hotels were very cheap!
This was already an inexpensive market, on top of this currency went down so we were able to get insanely good deals.
Get good deals wherever you go
When we stayed in Malaysia we found some good deals on hotels and services.
If you travel to Thailand, you certainly want to visit a tailor and get custom made clothing! You will pay the same prices as you would in retail and you’ll get something unique and good quality.
Another thing you can take advantage of is housing prices.
Do you want a beachfront place? You can get an awesome place in the south of Spain for a tiny fraction of what the same place would cost in California.
Marbella is a great place for real estate. Lots of retired people go there to live.
When it comes to traveling you can get some great deals if you pick the right airline.
For example, we’ve seen some Wizz Air tickets for as low as 2 euros. This is not the norm, of course, but it’s possible!
On the opposite side of the spectrum, you can find some good business class deals if you choose right. We find Qatar to be a great deal for your money, also the best business class we’ve ever flown. You can pay way more than that to travel British Airways and get crap for more money.
This is an awesome example of ‘’you get where you pay for’’.
Hiring people comes with a massive difference in prices depending on the county
As an entrepreneur, this will certainly interest you.
You want your money to go as far as possible, and you want to get good quality for less.
This is entirely possible if you know where to hire.
Outsourcing is nothing new. People did this for years.
Common places where people would look for employees would be the Philippines and India.
When we hire we are looking at the value, not just the price. We want to get good quality people, this is our main condition.
When it comes to positions such as- graphic and web designers, customer service people, coders, etc. we found the best candidates in Eastern Europe. Especially from Serbia and Ukraine.
Our experience with working with people from this part of the world is awesome.
You’ll notice that Serbia and Ukraine are not EU members. Therefore, it’s harder for those people to go and look for jobs in the EU. This also means that the cost of labor will be lower than in Bulgaria.
We found that hiring in Serbia is on average 20-30% cheaper than hiring in Bulgaria.
Another interesting thing we noticed is how cultural differences dictate design sense. Usually, we find Eastern European design sense to work better for us than Indian design sense.
When you look at Indian clothing and design, in general, it is usually very loud, full of bright colors.
European sense tends to be more settled and that’s why our European designers do a better job for what we’re looking for.
Some of the best designers we’ve ever hired were from Eastern Europe.
When it comes to hiring people abroad pay attention to local culture. This could be quite damaging to you if you misunderstand it.
Lots of our clients told us about this. They had problems with people from the Philippines and India due to cultural differences that cause the way of doing work to be very different.
You should always pay attention to cultural differences and manage your staff accordingly.
We can help you
This is just a tiny bit of our global experience when it comes to getting awesome deals.
If you’re interested in hiring staff we can also help you with that.
Let us know what you’re looking for and we’ll find you the best deal for your money.
Also, if you have some tips about great deals you’ve good feel free to share with us. We’d be delighted to hear.
You might be interested in our article on international investing. If so, you can click here.