Law Student- want to move to VI, just starting the process here

I'm sure others will chime in with advice but one of the major difficulties in living in the islands is dealing with the high cost of living. So, to answer your question you'd find it very hard to "live the broke student lifestyle". If you truly want to live in the islands you'd be much better off completing your studies and get your law degree and building a small nest egg before moving here or anywhere in the Caribbean.

Read through some of the relocation stories on this forum and you'll get an idea of what it takes financially to live on the islands. Get your education and save some up money BEFORE making the move and you'll increase your chnces of success a hundredfold.

Afriend gave you good advise. I hope Onika sees this as she's an attorney.

I think it would be very hard to have to pay all of your living expenses and school and work for free on a intership. Although I admit I'm not sure what your really saying you're plannin to do if you move down here. Many of us have to live a very frugal live to make ends met and save a little. If you have help from family, like they're paying your living expenses and for school? Are you talking about just coming for a summer internship until you graduate? You could do that, work your intership and another job to make money, but money would still be very tight as summer is the slow season so it much harder to get a job. In this economy it might be impossible to find a job right away,

Tell us what you're thinking you would like to do. Internship and job, pay your own expenses, etc... And we'll be better able to tell you if you can do it and how many months of savings you would need, etc..

Betty,

My first step would be to hopefully get an internship out there (most likely it will be unpaid) and also work while I am doing that. School allocates money for living expenses while doing an internship but not much. I would be paying my own expenses with some help from family but not much. Once I graduate from Law School I will have a lot of money in student loans that will need to be paid back as well (approx $150,000) I don't really imagine that lawyers down there make a very large incomes either. Afriend- I think you have good advice to build my savings before I make a move. From anyone's experience is it typically a bad idea to be in significant amounts of debt (student loan debt only, the kind that is hard to avoid if you want a good education!) while trying to make it down there?

Thanks again.

Some attorneys make very good livings but like anywhere, it varies. Debt here makes living here even more difficult due to the cost of living but a good education will serve you well anywhere.

If you can pass the bar here and go into private practice here you will make a good solid middle to upper middle class income. Like anywhere else you're starting salary may start low, but it is a litigious community so we have more then our fair share of lawyers on such small islands and they all seem to do well. Now if you work for the local govt you will have salary caps in the 60k to 80k range. If you can get a job with the federal govt it will be more like 120k to 130k, but that can be much harder to do.

I would look on the cost tab at the top of this page and see if you think you can make it with your family's help and whatever type of job you think you'll get here. Each island varies in their rental prices. They are generally on the high end coming from stateside. Everything here will cost you more from food to electric. You would need at least several months savings with the condition the economy is in down here to find a job. You can get buy without a car but it is truly a massive pain and may end up costing you more in the long run. I would suggest a minimum of 5k but closer to 10k would be much better in savings.