- Dexter Zhuang achieved Coast FIRE by increasing income and reducing expenses.
- Moving to countries with a lower cost of living increased his savings rate.
- He believes that anyone can use a form of 'geo-arbitrage' to keep more of their income.
Dexter Zhuang achieved what's known as "Coast FIRE" — an offshoot of the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement that means he no longer has to add to his retirement savings — with a simple, two-pronged approach: increasing income and reducing expenses.
He negotiated raises throughout his tech career and experimented with a variety of side hustles.
As for the reducing expenses component, "geo-arbitrage" helped. This strategy, which became increasingly popular during the pandemic when remote work allowed employees to essentially work from anywhere, involves earning an income from a higher-payer country while living in a lower-cost country.
Zhuang, 33, started his career in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US, where he worked as a product manager for Dropbox and growth-stage startups. He quit in 2019 to travel the world and experiment with the digital nomad lifestyle. It was his first taste of geo-arbitrage — he was doing remote consulting, charging the hourly rate he earned from his employer in the States while living in less expensive places throughout Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
In 2020, he moved to Singapore to work at a regional fintech startup. He explained that, while he was earning a lower salary in Singapore than he would have earned for a comparable role in the States, he ended up being net positive due to a lower cost of living and lower taxes.
In San Francisco in 2018, "my average expenses were about $6,422 per month," he told Business Insider. "Fast-forward to Singapore in 2022, my total monthly expenses were $4,945, on average, in terms of the USD."
These numbers don't take into account inflation, he noted: "If you adjusted for inflation, the San Francisco expenses would be even higher." As for taxes, "that was also lower for me in Singapore than in San Francisco, in terms of my effective tax rate."
Even though he was earning a smaller base salary, the cost-of-living difference allowed him to save and invest more of his total income and, ultimately, hit his Coast FIRE number sooner than he would have if he were still living in the Bay Area. Zhuang prefers not to share his exact net worth, but BI confirmed that he has accumulated six figures by looking at screenshots of his savings and investment accounts.
As of 2025, his cost of living is even lower. He and his wife moved to Mexico City in 2024, and their average monthly expenses are about $3,500, he said. His income is also less — he left the Singapore startup in 2023 after growing his side hustles to the point where they were bringing in full-time income — but has more flexibility and feels less pressure to earn a certain amount now that he can coast into retirement with his current portfolio.
How anyone can use geo-arbitrage to fast-track their financial goals
There are a variety of geo-arbitrage strategies anyone with flexible work can use to save more, said Zhuang.
He relocated from a higher-cost-of-living country to a lower-cost-of-living country but pointed out that it's possible to relocate domestically — either to a less expensive city or even a more affordable neighborhood within your same city.
"It's good for most people, especially families with kids, who would find a global move to be disruptive," Zhuang wrote in his newsletter Money Abroad.
Another option is working remotely for a global employer that offers competitive salaries regardless of an employee's location.
"As a hiring manager in the Asia tech industry, I saw wildly different salary ranges for people who were hired in Singapore (mature market) vs places like Indonesia (emerging market)," he wrote, adding: "To plug the gap, I've seen high-performing tech workers successfully petition their global companies to benchmark their salary based on the more competitive market (e.g. instead of benchmarking to Malaysia, use Singapore)."
Keep in mind that "the global tech talent market is still inefficient. If you're a top performer in an emerging market, look for companies that do benchmark their salaries globally."
