‘It just felt right’: This Brooklyn woman has no regrets about ditching the US for one of the world’s most expensive countries — how she affords to spend more on a life she loves

A cup of coffee can range from $7.50 to $8 in Iceland, and a three-course meal goes for $100 to $125, Chambers said in an interview with CNBC. As the owner of a travel media company, she pays herself $73,000 a year — and spends $866 a month on food, between groceries ($545) and dining out ($321).

Excluding rent, Numbeo says the cost of living in Iceland is 24.5% higher than the cost of living in the U.S.

Despite the expense, Chambers doesn’t plan on moving back to the U.S.

“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 told CNBC. “So for the foreseeable future, Iceland is my home.”

Here’s how she makes it work — and how you can too.

She paid off her debts

Part of what makes her lifestyle in Iceland affordable is that Chambers isn’t carrying any debt. She paid off both her credit card and student loans a few years back.

“It’s amazing to say that I am debt free,” she says. “And I’d like to keep it that way.”

The payoff to tackling her debt successfully is that she can afford to budget $800 monthly for fresh vegetables for her plant-based diet, as well as meals out with her friends and boyfriend.

But if you’re not debt-free like Chambers, there are ways to work toward it. Two popular repayment methods are known as the avalanche and snowball methods. With the avalanche approach, you start by tackling your debt with the highest interest rate and make your way down the list. This helps ensure you save paying more in interest than you need to.

Snowball, on the other hand, sees you start by paying down your smallest debts first — the idea being that you build momentum off these small successes and work your way up to your most expensive accounts.

One influencer couple on TikTok, Brittany Xavier and her husband Anthony, say they used the snowball method to pay off $150,000 in debt in two-and-a-half years. They forwent fun activities, so that they could eliminate their debt and build up a nest egg, which would allow them to have fun later.