Hello, I’m Ellis

Most writing about moving abroad is done by people who want you to move. Relocation firms, visa consultancies, insurers, countries competing for your tax residency. The advice is free because you are the product being sold.

This site reads the paperwork instead.

The filing fee schedule. The income threshold that changed last quarter and broke everyone's guide. The clause on page eleven of the policy that decides whether a pre-existing condition is covered or excluded. The processing time the consulate publishes, next to the one applicants actually report.

Every number here is traced to its source before it is published. Where a figure comes from a ministry's own fee page, that page is linked. Where it comes from an insurer's policy PDF, so is that. A claim that cannot be sourced is cut rather than softened — which is why some articles end with "nobody publishes this" instead of a number that sounds about right.

What you will not find: rankings of best countries, affiliate round-ups dressed as research, or a figure repeated because it was repeated somewhere else.

The questions this site is built to answer are narrow and expensive to get wrong. What does the whole application actually cost, including the translations and the apostilles nobody quotes. Whether an insurer will cover the condition you already have, and after how long. Which bank freezes accounts that log in from three countries in a month.

If you are deciding whether you can afford to go, that is the cost of entry.