I moved from the US to Finland for grad school and stayed to work. The pay is lower, but the work-life balance is great.

"I studied abroad in Spain, and really loved it there. It opened my world and gave me more perspective, so I knew I wanted to go abroad after I graduated. I was interested in bioenergy, and that industry isn't very developed in the US. After doing some research, I landed on Finland, which has a huge forestry and bioenergy industry. The Nordics, in general, also have a lot of English-language master's degree programs. Through a Fulbright scholarship, I moved to Finland to pursue my master's degree."

"In Finland, you will most likely get a much lower salary than what you would make in the United States, but at least in my experience, it has balanced out. A lot of the things that are more expensive in the United States, like health insurance, education, and childcare, cost way less in Finland. Finland has a really good work-life balance in general. There isn't a huge culture of grinding, staying up late,"

Jordan Blake Banks grew up in St. Louis and studied agricultural and biological engineering at the University of Illinois. She moved to Finland in summer 2019 on a Fulbright scholarship to pursue a master's focused on bioenergy, drawn by Finland's forestry and bioenergy industries and English-language programs. She completed a research traineeship, worked in a lab, and wrote a thesis before obtaining a sustainability consulting role at Deloitte. She observes that Finnish salaries are generally lower than U.S. pay but that costs for health care, education, and childcare are much lower. She values Finland's strong work–life balance and has leveraged her identity as a 'brave American' professionally.

Read at Business Insider