American expat is happier though making less money

When he was 27 years old, Bernard Meyer moved from the U.S. to Lithuania: the world’s happiest country for young people. After over a decade in northeastern Europe, he says earning less money is worth the sacrifice 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 working at Starbucks after I graduated college or there was another option for me just to take 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’s now his wife.

What he found in Vilnius was a world apart from his life in the U.S.

“The thing that 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 U.S., people are not so focused on hustling or always pushing themselves to earn more or to talk about politics all the time.”

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

Many young workers relocate to Lithuania for its beautiful natural scenery and attractive work-life balance. Lithuania recently placed No. 1 as the world’s happiest country for people under 30 years old on the World Happiness Report 2024. It ranked as the No. 19 happiest country in the world overall.

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

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

Now, though, things are very different, and it’s become a great 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 employed under a permanent contract for certain high-value-added roles.

Meyer outlined three major benefits.

Meyer spent his initial years in Vilnius working in education and teaching in private schools before pivoting into the content marketing industry in 2016.

Despite earning less than his U.S.-based colleagues, 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 around 41% lower than in the U.S., according to the cost of living database Numbeo.

“I think that when you look at it in its entirety, when you first see the salary differences, you think it’s extravagant,” Meyer said. But he doesn’t want to move back, not least because he currently has access to free healthcare and knows 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 scared to get the treatment because if they do then they get a bill for $25,000 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 at the 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 with the U.S.

“I cannot begin to describe how stressed out I would be in the U.S., especially because I have kids,” he said. “In the U.S. you have higher pay, you have more money, but you have high stress as well because something could go wrong and then your whole budget and savings could be wiped out.”

Vilnius is an “emerging 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 tech campus measuring 55,000 square meters is also being built in Vilnius and is expected to hold 5,000 digital workers — which would make it the largest startup campus in all of Europe.

The burgeoning scene has inspired something of a hustle culture, but Meyer says it’s still vastly different from the culture of work in the U.S.

“When I first came here, one of the things that I noticed was that everyone had sort of a side hustle, but they were not working 9-to-5 and then 5-to-9 on the side hustle,” he said. “They were just working on it a little bit but having that work-life balance. So, they had the hustle culture but not the killing yourself culture, which I think is great.”

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

He emphasized that Vilnius is a beautiful city where people place a high value on connecting with nature. It helps that the city is extremely walkable — making it very different from many major U.S. cities.

“So you have this nice switch where they work hard here and they hustle, but within this time period. After that, they switch off and they know how to switch off, and I think this is what makes them happy.”

He explained that “one of the biggest differences” between the U.S. and Vilnius is the attitude towards time off. “I remember when I was in the U.S., I never had a vacation and I never knew anyone who took vacation willingly,” Meyer said.

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

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

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

Another factor stopping Meyer from moving back to the U.S. is the sense of safety.

There’s “a persistent environment of violence and racism” in the U.S., Meyer said, whereas in Lithuania, “it sounds harsh, but I actually don’t have to worry about my kids getting killed in another school shooting or in the mall or at the beach or wherever else these things are happening.”

The environment is different for him as a Black man. “I feel like here sometimes I forget that I’m not white or that I am different because it’s not something that is 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, whereas in the U.S., you just swim through this racial society.”

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