As summer approaches and college students graduate, they’re encouraged to take a break from America and travel abroad, sometimes with good reason.
Before taking off to tramp around Europe, however, young Americans should consider something few of them were taught in college: opportunity cost.
If staying in America means working a low-paying job without career prospects, living abroad might be a better option. If leaving America means missing a promising opportunity, though, maybe millennials should deal with their wanderlust until they earn vacation time.
Moving to Europe with her boyfriend worked out for Sarah McArthur as she chronicled for Elite Daily: she moved to Germany, paid off her student loans, taught English, and now lives in Costa Rica.
“If I had gotten a job after college like my peers I never would have gotten to experience so much of this world. When you move abroad you’ll learn a lot about yourself, meet amazing people, see things you’ve only ever seen in magazines, and discover what is really important to you,” McArthur wrote.
It wasn’t a bad idea, either. She struggled to find a job in America after graduating, so she found an alternative that let her travel for cheap.
Noah Smith echoed her praise of traveling in Bloomberg.
“Americans’ lack of understanding of the outside world fuels isolationism, and could lead to ham-handed foreign policy mistakes,” Smith wrote. “Foreign travel can increase people’s understanding of other cultures, open them to business and career ideas, and create the sense that the world is a wider, more interesting place than they had ever realized.”
Proposing a break when Americans are young to travel somewhere, anywhere outside the United States could do wonders, but moving abroad carries some risk. As spirited and carefree as moving to Europe sounds, millennials should be aware that it could delay their career goals. Teaching English might pay the bills, but it’s not necessarily developing marketable skills, depending on the desired profession. Or, if they want to establish roots in the United States, wandering around a foreign country could delay that.
The job market isn’t great for millennials, especially if they don’t want to live with their parents, but it’s much improved compared to 2011 when McArthur left. The American economy is also much better than European economies for young workers, except Germany and Austria. Living in Europe isn’t always the better economic alternative.
As the economist Thomas Sowell noted, “there are no solutions; only tradeoffs.” Millennials need to decide what sort of career and lifestyle they desire before following in the footsteps of young travel blogger. Some millennials will find their time vagabonding in Albania to open up their world, but others could spend a lot of time and money on something that sets them back from their goals in life.
