I have have worked as freelance contractor for most of my career. In my country 80% of decent IT people do this. We can demand higher income because our contrac

I have have worked as freelance contractor for most of my career. In my country 80% of decent IT people do this. We can demand higher income because our contracts only last 3 months so it's easy to lay us off when we are not needed (we have strong labor laws and employees are costly even on top of their salary). Due to this we can demand more salary too. My price goes up for short term prospect contracts, long distance of travel, I'm not particular interested in the project, ... In good times that works great but you better save some of that money for bad times. I have build a good reputations so employers were ok with me working remote. So I could discount a bit as I didn't have to do long distance travel and because it was better for me. I also took the time to move to a lower cost of living country. Was nice, but the timezone was not that interesting. Currently I don't work for my home country anymore. I work locally, apparently they pay well for my expertise here. Still I could edge out a few percentages more in my home country. But with the lower cost of living I still have more money in the bank at the end of the month. If you can't do som form of paycheck arbitrage why would you move? Doesn't mean you need to have same salaries like you had before, you can take a small haircut. But just making the same as people locally? In my case that would be the salary I had when I just came out of school 23 years ago.