Editorial standards

Everything on Expat Blueprint is written and edited by Carl S Moller. There is no newsroom behind the byline and no roster of correspondents standing in for one person. Sites like this one often invent a team, or imply that a writer has personally lived in every country on the menu. Neither would be true here, so neither is claimed.

Researched, not remembered

The guides are research work. A country page begins with the questions a person actually asks before moving — what a normal month costs, how residence permits are granted and refused, what happens the first time you need a doctor — and those questions are answered from documents rather than from memory. Personal experience of living abroad shapes which questions get asked and which official answers deserve suspicion. It does not stand in for the facts, and it is never presented as first-hand knowledge of a place I have not lived in.

Which sources are trusted, and in what order

Rules come from the authority that issues them: immigration and foreign ministries, tax agencies, national health services, municipal housing offices. Where a government publishes in a language I do not read fluently, the original text is still the reference point, checked against a second official translation rather than a blog summary.

Costs come from national statistics offices, published rental indexes, utility tariffs and supermarket price data, cross-checked against recent first-hand reporting from people currently living there. Community sources — forums, resident groups, local journalism — are used for texture and for early warning that an official page is out of date. They are never the only basis for a number.

Where a figure is genuinely a range rather than a fact, it is written as a range. Averages that hide a wide spread are worse than saying plainly that it depends.

How often pages are re-checked

Visa rules, tax thresholds and healthcare access are reviewed at least once a year, and sooner when a country announces a change. Cost figures are revisited on the same cycle, because rent in particular moves faster than most guides admit. Each page carries the date it was last reviewed, and that date means the content was actually read again, not that a script touched the file.

What this site does not do

Nothing here is legal, tax, immigration, financial or medical advice, and no part of the site — including the workbooks — includes consultation, coaching or any other human service. The workbooks are digital PDF downloads that help you organise your own thinking. For a decision with money or a residence permit attached, use these pages to arrive prepared at a qualified adviser, not instead of one.

Some pages carry affiliate links, described on the affiliate disclosure. No source, service or destination has ever paid to be recommended, and no coverage decision on this site has been sold.

Corrections

Some of this will go out of date, and occasionally something will simply be wrong. When a reader points that out, the page gets corrected and the review date changes with it. If you spot something that no longer matches reality on the ground, the contact page reaches the person who wrote it. There is only one of us, so it usually gets read the same week.