Is the UK Over? Why I Left the UK at Age 23

so there's a bunch of videos lately about people talking about why they left the UK and i' figured I'd make my own share my own experience having left to Japan about 7 eight months ago so for those of you who are new here my name is Ray and I graduated from Cambridge about two and a half years ago with a degree in physics during that time I made a few Vlogs about my undergraduate experience so you can check those out on this channel but basically in this video I want to talk about my decisions for leaving and something basically something for you to reflect upon yourself if you're living in the UK and especially if you're young and

ambitious as well so of course remember this is my own opinion you're welcome to disagree with it as well and you can make your own video about why I'm staying in the UK instead so I'm going to start off with traveling when I graduated I worked in the UK for about 6 months I grew up in the UK from about the age of two and I went to University there so I grew in Iran Manchester from the age of 2 till like 18 and then from 18 to 21 I stayed in the like around Cambridge because I was undergraduate there and uh after graduating at age of 21 uh I worked at Oxford for about 6 months as like a software engineer and then afterwards I left that job and I decided to travel around and like do freelance work and I did some sort of accelerators and I did my own business and various other things so during that time I got to visit like 2025 different countries and I think during that time like my expectations of like how good your life can be or how good the place you live in can be has like massively increased so basically like there are couple factors here of where you should live when you're young I think firstly like being around young and ambitious people I think the reality is especially in the UK that on a lot of young and ambitious like people because of this phenomenon called tall puppy syndrome where people in the UK generally seem to like put each other down so if you say that you have like high dreams or like High Hopes or whatever then people are kind of like oh man like of course like as if you can achieve that or they like give a very snarky or sarcastic response and of course that is maybe British scha maybe they kind of joking but it kind of like reinforces itself into you over time with enough people saying this like if in the UK if you're in a pretty average town and you're like man I'm going to become like the next prime minister or whatever um then people will be like yeah as if or like oh why would you want to join those guys if you say I'm going to start like a billion dollar company in the future and like solve all the world's problems or something people kind of like down upon you for being wanting to like break free or like stand out of the crowd whereas I've noticed in the US especially like if you say as like a young kid in Middle School in the US hey I'm going to become like the next president of the United States the attitude is more like oh you can do like anything if you point your mind to it or if you're in San Francisco which is especially known for like Tex startups and you're like man we're going to start like the next Google or like the next billion dollar company like people actually encourage you and they like motivate you and they say like oh I'll connect you to this guy that guy and they seem more supporting of your beliefs and dreams as especially noticed this during what startup accelerator that I did called Y combinator where people seem much more optimistic about the future and more willing to build it and they have more agency and they take more control over their life whereas it seems that people in the UK they kind of like just kind of light things happen to them and they kind of like put over people down especially if you're not from a big city and yeah it just is not a good feeling overall if you're a young and ambitious person and you want to like achieve big things in your life I think another component of this is because I was pretty entrepreneur entrepreneurial growing up I wanted to do entrepreneurial stuff and there aren't a lot of entrepreneurial people in the UK and it's usually because they moov to the US especially for those who raise funding because it's easier to raise like VCH Capital funding in the US so when I was in San Francisco that were like significantly more like people just doing cool stuff I'd meet people who in like high school or like college they like modded their car so they could like Drive their car with an Xbox controller or something and you just don't find people doing cool stuff like that in the UK in my experence especially top universities where people take like a more conservative approach of they just want to go to like get a pretty basic job or like go to like consulting or Investment Banking and just kind of live out their days being like an office slave I guess like quote unquote I think

another component of this why I left part from the culture is taxes after traveling to a bunch of different countries um I noticed the taxes were lower at like a given income level and the quality of life was higher as well so for example like taxes between Japan and the UK when you include like resident tax and like government tax um is pretty similar but if you've ever been to Japan you kind of noticed like hey the quality of life here is like way higher than in the UK and if you're like I don't know you have like a cost optimizing mindset and you're considering okay where am I going to get the most bank for my book like for my taxes like is like an equivalent thing I think in the UK a lot of rich people do live there although they are kind of leaving these days I saw a graph where it's like 10,000 people 10 no 10,000 millionaires have left the UK and it's the second most number people who left the UK after China which has like 20 times bigger population as well um whilst there are a lot of rich people in the UK it's usually that they made their money overseas where taxes were lower and then they came back to the UK for example I see online that a bunch of people like they live in Dubai where they have to pay zero tax or like very low tax for their companies as well and they have no intention of living in Dubai for like the long term like when they start a family or they get married they want to move back to UK or go to a different country to raise their kids because raising kids is like not an optimal environment in Dubai according to them um so a lot of the rich people that you do see in the UK um they usually made their money overseas where the taxes are lower and then they came back to UK to like raise their family and like invest in property and do VAR other things instead I rarely see people actually making a lot of money in their 20s in the UK so also when it comes to taxes as well inflation has massively increased in the UK in recent years but the tax brackets haven't increased in line with inflation so in a sense your purchasing power after taxes is lower than it was about 5 years ago and in some countries that's just not the case as well um when it comes to like eating out and stuff uh I noticed like for example in Japan an average Japanese person makeing an average Japanese salary can go and eat out more often with their friends and stuff than the average person in the UK on an average UK salary and it's just the way like the economy works and the system is designed and I personally prefer that because of course like I don't cook um being able to eat out whenever I want to and the transport just being like much better on time like in the UK there are train strikes when I want to visit a friend in a different city I got to like make sure hey is there going to be a train strike tomorrow is there not going to be one oras in Japan at least uh or many other countries as well they don't really do train strikes like it's just not really thing that happens and I think like when you live in another country at least for a decent chunk of time maybe 2 weeks or more you notice all these like small day-to-day conveniences or day-to-day improvements in your daily life that could happen from like leaving um I think another pretty big thing for me was like during the winter months in the UK I noticed myself like feeling pretty U logic and like sad um because like it was always dark I was very dark gloomy and rainy and I notic Was Myself feeling more productive when it's like generally sun and shinier and like PR side the UK Su is great but for like 8 months of the year Nine it's like not really that good um whereas in other countries the weather is just like better year round and especially if you're like me and you feel more productive when the weather is better I think that makes like a pretty big quality of life difference I think another big thing for me now being like 24 graduating like 2 and a half years ago when I went back home after graduating it kind of felt like my life went backwards in a way in the sense that oh now I graduated like I'm at home with my parents again and I'm in the same childhood bedroom that I grew up in and it's easy to fall back into old habits of like oh man I'm just going to like watch movies I'm going to like chill and hang out with my parents and like siblings and stuff and like go to park and one of it which is like all great and all but after a while it kind of like it feels like you're no longer the ambitious young person you used to be I think one part about being away from home kind of feels like you're in a big adventure and you're like trying to make something of yourself and you're like going to go home and like show that you've I don't know quote cour made it during University when I lived in University dorms it was kind of like that every day kind of felt like an adventure um but when I went back home during the holidays during University after about a week or two I fall back into old habits just because it's the

same environment that I group in with old habits now many people in the UK they do end up moving to other cities for example like London a lot of my friends moov to London but I think feel like especially for University graduates London the salaries are not as high as the US especially for similar same job for example a software engineer in the London probably makes like 50,000 40,000 whereas in the US uh they'd be making like $150,000 $200,000 in like San Francisco even more depending on how experienced they are and for a given like income level um that take-home pay after all the expenses and half insurance and everything else is still higher than someone who is working in the same job in the UK I think that UK salaries just haven't really increased since the 2008 financial crisis and it doesn't look like they're going to increasing in much time soon probably why a lot of millionaires are leaving and they're taking their businesses with them as well but going back to living in London a lot of my friends after graduating from Cambridge they went to live in London and working like Investment Banking consulting jobs which are like pretty high salary compared to the average in the UK and almost all of them they don't live alone not because they don't want to live alone it's because they can't afford to live alone I feel like cities in the UK or especially London the city is designed to extract as much money out of you as it physically can in terms of like after eating out like renting all your bills utilities and everything else my friends who still have pretty high incomes they're left with like 200100 of savings every month and that's with them living with flatmates and roommates as well whereas in other countries you can feel like people actually live alone in like a nice place on the same level of income or like the average income for that city or town and I feel like for someone who especially enjoyed living alone that was like a pretty big difference especially if I lived in London i' know I'd be paying like three four times more for a place in London which is in a worse off location and I'd probably have to have roommates as well that I don't really like so much I don't have much Choice over as well so to summarize up until now I feel like the culture when it comes to UK especially if you're young and ambitious is not

really like forgiving I notice U people have like PA tall puppy syndrome where they kind of like cut other people down or make people feel bad about themselves being too ambitious the second point is uh taxes are too high and it feels like you're not really getting bang for your book for what you're paying um a lot of people who do make a lot of money in their 20s they usually do it in a low tax place and then they come back to you K in their 30s or 40s uh because it's a better place to raise kids than say Dubai for example at least for now maybe and thirdly it just comes down to the quality of lifestyle you want to live like if you enjoy living alone it's going to be hard to do that in the UK If you enjoy eating out it's going to be hard to harder to do that in the UK on an average income compared to some other countries if you enjoy like a nicer climate and if you're more productive when the climate is nicer it's harder to do that in the UK and of course I know not everyone can leave and not everyone is Young and ambitious and they want to like achieve big things um it just comes down to kind of person you are and like your kind of family circumstances for example if you're an only child and you have like caring responsibilities it might be like pretty hard for you to leave and finally I feel like I want the sense of feeling like I'm moving forwards and being an adventure when I go back home cuz it's too expensive to live in London I just kind of feel like my life has gone backwards or I'm not really improving or like pursuing big goals anymore I know friends who have like from high school for example uh secondary school they uh live at home they went to University while staying at home and they haven't achieved many like great things and of course they don't have to um but I think I feel like the home environment especially after graduating just you kind of like take a step back and you no longer are like the young ambitious person that you once to were and bear in mind this is not just me there are a lot of people on YouTube who are making videos about this like anecdotally many of my friends who graduated from medicine and are now doctors working NHS are just saying the NHS they don't want to work long hours for low pay and like a stressed out environment in a system that's kind of broken and many of them are like planning on going to Australia or Canada or the us where the salaries for doctors are much higher they have more of a work life balance and they're more well respected so ultimately it just comes down to Lifestyle that you want to live I feel like if you get to travel have the opportunity to travel and visit a few different countries you realize how much different it can be and then it just comes down to your goals as well of what kind of people you want to be around like if you're in San Francisco you're going to be around more techy people who doing startups and companies and I'm trying to like make it really big if you're in Boston in the US you're going to be around more bi bedal companies or like Consulting companies if you want to make an acting it's probably better to be in Hollywood or like somewhere else that's kind of known for acting I feel like the one big difference between the UK and the US is that in the UK London is basically the city for everything in the US different cities are kind of known for different things for example San Francisco in the Bay Area are like Tech focused Hollywood and La is like more like acting focused or like content creators and people that Boston is more Consulting and biomedical focused New York is kind of more Finance focused if you want to do your finance and whereas in the UK and many other countries as well basically the capital city is only known for everything and if you're interested in my logistics for leaving is especially for a student I would encourage you to go to the best university you can because a lot of countries with declining fertility rates and like increasing Global competitivity they want to attract the best possible talent to that country so Hong Kong like Australia Japan Singapore uh South Korea as well Canada and like the UK as well introduced a bunch of new visas I think other countries are introducing new visas as well where the like Talent Visas so basically if you have like recognizable achievements or you graduated from a top university recently or something then it's pretty easy to get a visa for 2 years 5 years 10 years or something because they want you to move to that country and build a career and life in that country as well so if you're a student right now and you haven't gone to University yet I would encourage you to try and get into best university you can do because it opens your doors to other countries you can go to in the future for example it's much harder to get a visa to go to Japan if you haven't been to University and if you've been to like I think it's a top 100 University or so then it's phenomenally easy to get a

visa and I think another big problem in the UK is this complaining attitude which kind of leads to that I'm not going to do anything about it so for example like whenever you have normal day-to-day conversation with someone they're complaining about how their F football team has lost or how like the weather is really bad and of course those things they can't necessarily do something about but it's like this generally pessimistic mindset that bleeds into the rest of their life where they end up complaining about things that they do have control over and then they don't do anything about it and when you're surrounded by people who complaining and don't do anything about it you kind of fall into the same trap I think when I met people in the US especially in like high agency areas such as San Francisco when someone complains about something it's like their friends are like okay like let's figure out a solution to this problem let's like get this under way and probably that's why businesses end up doing better over that whereas in the UK it's just kind of like oh I'm going to complain about this thing and then do nothing about it um or do nothing about myself so I am complaining about the UK but fundamentally I don't think I can personally change a culture in the UK but I can do something that will change my own life and improve my own life which is by going to another country here's culture that I do prefer and like and hang around with people that do prefer and like as well but yeah that's basically for this video like this is all my opinion of course everyone and tile to their own opinion but I would encourage you if you're young especially travel to different countries and I think if you haven't been to another country it's really hard to judge how much better life can be elsewhere maybe and if you Happ been to country is and you still think the UK is better then like you can be more confident that your decision is probably the right one but if you've never been to another country and you're only planning on stay in the UK then I feel like you can be less confident that your decision of staying is a correct decision anyways that's it for today's video If you enjoyed the video subscribe and follow me on Instagram and like alha bang and I'll see you in the next one bye