DanielHouston

You can comfortably live in Latvia on that budget, internet infrastructure is very good & cheap. I got by for years only speaking English.

I work at IBM. But my word isn't law

I believe the policy is that you declare all your side projects, which get reviewed and approved by lawyers and you're then able to do what you like with them. 100% of projects I've heard people submitting have been approved.

Otherwise, the party line is that IBM hold the IP. I've never seen this happen in practice though.

Obviously don't work on side projects on company time. If you did you might have more than IP problems to worry about!