38-year-old American expat lives on $73,000 in one of the world’s most expensive countries: ‘I feel safe, I feel at home’

This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.

Jewells Chambers doesn’t look like a typical Icelander. In a country where 94% of people identify as native Icelandic, Chambers, a Black American woman, is among the other 6%.

She doesn’t sound like one either. Over the eight years Chambers has lived in Reykjavik, she’s developed a conversational level of Icelandic. “I still fumble on things, though,” she says.

Nevertheless, the native New Yorker has never been surer that this is the exact place where she always needed to be.

“It felt as if there was something magnetic that has been pulling me in this direction, and I still haven’t been able to put my finger on it exactly. But I know it has something to do with the nature, because that has been and continues to be such a rejuvenating piece for me,” Chambers says. “Every time I’m out on a hike or even just a regular walk, getting a little bit out of the city, I just feel really grounded.”

It’s a feeling she wants to share with the world. Since 2018, Chambers has run All Things Iceland, a podcast, YouTube channel and social media brand that explores Iceland’s nature, history and culture through the lens of an expat.

Running the show, which has more than 50,000 YouTube subscribers and 30,000 monthly podcast listeners, has been Chambers’ full-time job since 2020. The company is on track to earn the equivalent of $100,000 this year, from which Chambers will pay herself roughly $73,000 before money is taken out for taxes and contributions to a pension.

That’s not a fortune — especially in famously pricey Reykjavik — but it’s enough to fund the sort of life Chambers, 38, dreamt about in her youth.

“Being here, I feel safe. I feel at home. I’m really happy,” she says. “And that has transformed into something that continues to keep me here.”

Chambers says her dreams of living abroad began in high school in Brooklyn during economics class.

“While the professor was talking about U.S. economics and politics, something in my brain was just like, ‘I don’t think I’m meant to live in the U.S.,'” she says.

She’d have to wait for her wanderlust to take hold, however. Chambers hoped to study abroad while attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, but things didn’t work out. “This was something that would hopefully, in the future, become a possibility for me. But it didn’t seem like I knew exactly the direct way that it would happen or how it could happen.”

In the meantime, adult life began. Chambers graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in engineering and about $60,000 in student debt. She moved back to New York City and took a fellowship doing digital marketing for a diversity and inclusion nonprofit, but was barely getting by.

Chambers eventually upgraded to a full-time gig, which helped alleviate some of the financial pressure, but still describes that period as “a limbo state,” “this jumble of trying to figure out my life, trying to make some money, trying to create a career path that made sense for me.”

One thing she had figured out at the time: her love life. In 2013, she reconnected with and began dating an Icelandic man she’d met in college and in two years, the pair were married. By 2016, he told Chambers he intended to move back to Iceland, and she agreed to follow him — on one condition.

“I am not moving unless I find a job that utilizes my skills,” Chambers recalls saying.

Luckily for Chambers, Iceland was in the midst of a huge tourism boom, and digital marketers were in high demand. “This was not a specialty that a lot of people in the country had, or even realized they needed,” she says.

After nailing down a job at a local tourism company, she embarked for Iceland in June 2016.

Working for that company proved to be a microcosm of Chambers’ conversion to a true-blue Icelander: challenging at first, but eventually eye-opening.

She recalls feeling like she’d never be able to remember her coworkers’ complicated names, let alone keep up with an office full of outdoorspeople.

“They were all mountaineers. They had climbed some of the highest peaks in the world,” Chambers says. “And coming from the concrete jungle it was like, I take the bus to work to get nature.”

But this was the job, she was told. If she was going to market nature hikes and kayaking trips and glacier climbs to potential customers, she had to get out there and do them for herself.  

DON’T MISS: How to be more successful with your money

Once Chambers began personally experiencing the adventures Iceland had to offer, “my life changed,” she says. “Everything became about nature and understanding, respecting and then being able to market that out to our potential customers. And I loved it.”

It helped that Chambers was never made to feel like an outsider because of her identity. Rather, she says, the Icelandic people embraced her in a way that felt untethered to the racial baggage people carried with them back home.

“Living in Iceland has 1,000% had an amazing impact on my mental health,” she says. “The nature aspect has helped me in so many ways, [as has] shedding this idea that it always has to be about my skin color.”

By 2017, Chambers was settled in, and passing the winter days with limited daylight listening to podcasts. At the same time, seemingly everyone from her life back home was asking her about Iceland. Something clicked.

“It dawned on me, and I was like, well, I love listening to podcasts. I’m going to look up and see if anyone else is doing a podcast about Iceland,” she says. “I didn’t see any active ones, so I was like, you know what? I’m going to make a podcast.”

Chambers launched All Things Iceland in 2018, with a plan to make it at least a year airing one episode per week. “I didn’t have any expectations,” she says. “I didn’t know what people were going to say or think.”

When she began to receive positive messages and comments from listeners and YouTube viewers, she knew she had something real on her hands.

“At first, it was people reaching out to say, ‘Thank you, this was so helpful,'” Chambers says.

Then came the sponsors. “These Icelandic companies wanted to work with me, and it was like, ‘Oh, there’s money to be made.'”

By day, Chambers was still doing digital marketing, and in 2019, took a job as chief digital strategy officer at an advertising agency. It was a well-paid, demanding gig that Chambers says jeopardized her ability to work on All Things Iceland.

Between her job, her passion project and her marriage, “it was a big juggle,” Chambers says. “It wasn’t easy, and I didn’t love what I was doing enough for it to keep me going.”

By the time the Covid-19 pandemic struck, Chambers was already feeling burnt out and soon scaled down her hours. By the following August, she felt confident enough in the trajectory of All Things Iceland to quit her day job altogether.

These days, things are flourishing. Chambers’ one-woman company brings in money from ad sales, sponsorships and affiliate marketing. She also sells maps, travel consultations and private tours, all while working behind the scenes with corporate clients producing online and social media content.

All told, the company brought in about $50,000 in the first half of the year, out of which Chambers pays herself about $6,000 a month in total compensation.

This isn’t the first time Chambers as been a one-woman show financially. She shouldered much of the financial load for herself and her now ex-husband from 2016 through 2020 while he built a psychological practice. The pair separated in 2022 and divorced in 2023.

Chambers has a boyfriend who she began dating earlier this year, though the two don’t currently comingle their finances.

Here’s how Chambers spent her money in June. Virtually all of her financial life is conducted in Icelandic krona, converted here to dollars.

Conversions from ISK to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 USD to 139.085 ISK on June 30, 2024. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

• Housing: $2,031 for rent, phone and Wi-Fi
• Groceries: $545
• Cash savings: $428
• Discretionary: $423 on household items, house and car cleanings, wellness and entertainment
• Travel: $368 on an upcoming trip to Amsterdam with a friend
• Fitness: $352 on a gym membership and personal trainer
• Dining out: $321
• Life insurance: $73
• Gas: $65
• Unexpected expenses: $61 on an emergency visit and medication for a case of strep throat

Chambers’ biggest monthly expense is rent, about $1,941 per month for a 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment in downtown Reykjavik, with a storage area and an indoor parking spot — a key feature for Icelandic winters.

She also spent more than $850 feeding herself in June, evidence that food, especially at restaurants, can get very pricey very quickly. Chambers estimates that an entrée at a restaurant in Iceland will typically run you $25 to $30, and you can expect to pay $7.50 or $8 for a cup of coffee in a downtown café.

A few major expenses you tend to see in American budgets are conspicuously absent from Chambers’ spending. Some of it has to do with her job. Because she has a brand partnership with a rental car company, she gets a company car on the house; she just has to pay for gas.

Other omissions are idiosyncratic to where she lives. Health insurance premiums? Not a thing in Iceland, which has heavily subsidized universal health care. Chambers did shell out $61 to treat a case of strep throat in June, though she could have paid less had she gone to her neighborhood health center rather than the emergency room, she says.

The other major difference is the way Chambers (and all Icelanders) are compensated. The number that actually hits Chambers’ bank account is net of taxes and a contribution toward her eventual income in retirement. Every company in Iceland contributes 6.35% of payroll to the Icelandic equivalent of Social Security and 11.5% to one of 21 pension funds, with each employee contributing at least 4% of pay.

For Chambers, navigating the complexities of being both employer and employee in a foreign country “has been a huge learning curve,” she says. “Getting an accountant to help me with that has been so crucial.”

In addition to her government mandated savings, Chambers stashes away a chunk of her income – usually 10% of her take-home pay — each month in a savings account. Eventually, she says, she’d like to explore the feasibility of opening a brokerage account, too, to boost her retirement savings.

In the shorter term, though, she’s saving to buy a house with her boyfriend.

She’s hopes to continue to grow All Things Iceland as a brand and a business. As the business continues to expand, Chambers hopes to hire people to help with the nitty gritty of the job so she can focus on being more creative.

Eventually, she says, she’d love to have her own travel show — based out of Iceland, of course.

“When I made that decision and stepped my foot down that day when I came to the country full time, it just felt right and it has continued to feel that way,” Chambers says. “So for the foreseeable future, Iceland is my home.”

 What’s your budget breakdown? Share your story with us for a chance to be featured in a future installment.

Want to be more successful and confident with your money? Take CNBC Make It’s new online course. Our expert instructors will help you master your money and discover practical strategies to boost your savings, reduce debt and grow your wealth — in a way that works best for you. Enroll in “Achieve Financial Wellness: Be Happier, Wealthier & More Financially Secure” to start your journey to financial freedom today! Get a 30% discount with the coupon code EARLYBIRD until Sept. 2, 2024.

Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It’s newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.