As I sit here getting ready to leave my latest local house sitting gig, I have to admit, this is really going to be a cool way to travel the slow route! I just completed a weekend spent with the most adorable two kitties that I would love to take home! They are a hoot and I miss the rambunctiousness of a cat’s personality. I’m a dog lover as well but this definitely sealed the deal that I love their spunky personalities a little bit more.
This sit was located about an hour from my house outside of DC. I packed for the three days as I didn’t plan to go home in between and was happy with all the projects I got done while spending quality time with this family’s little loves.
The best part of this sit is my cat allergies only flared up a little bit. To about a 2-3 scale. The last two dog ones I got up to a 10++ that lasted for over a week. After that one, I researched the term “highly allergic dogs” and came up with a great list that I will look at before I do future dog sits. The last two sits had dogs on the list……um, could be why I was in such bad shape with the allergies. I knew there were some dogs, like poodles, that were better for allergies but I didn’t realize how bad some dogs dander is to those that suffer.
My local sits are over now. I’ve done three and I’ve locked down a Germany sit for December so I’m going to go with that at this point and be comfortable in my reviews that are outstanding. It’s been incredible, amazing and overall totally worth it to me to try this out and I would highly recommend it to others!
Edit: Several weeks later I received a request to sit again for the same family but I have a conflict otherwise I probably would have done it.
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”
Malcolm Forbes
I am a pretty big fan of Lauren from https://www.neverendingfootsteps.com, so when I saw that she had a book out, I jumped at getting it. I dove right into to reading it this summer. She is a world-wide backpack traveler/expat and all around sweet girl. She decided to pack up her life and travel around the world, which shocked her family, as she has both anxiety and some health issues.
Lauren is wonderful. I love her unfiltered honesty! It is one of my favorite things about her and is why I always go back to her blog. She keeps it real. Not every trip/adventure is going to be Instagram-worthy and the moments of hugging the toilet for days after eating something wicked never seem to make it to your feed.
She is very relatable to me, and I adore her quirks and her relationship with her boyfriend, Dave, who is the complete opposite of her. I can relate to her “opposites attract” story.
A couple of themes I picked up and have been thinking about since I read the book, have been her loss of friendships and a sense of belonging. She felt the most while she was in Chiang Mai and I suspect that is why she was so happy there. We all are happier when we have friendships, even those darned introverts! While it was important for her to see the world, the hole of missing friendships was integral to her moving back to Portugal and later back to the UK.
Jason and I know that we will need those friendships and really appreciate the confirmation from this book. We are looking at traveling but also putting down some roots where there are established expat communities that hike or bike, have book clubs and such.
It’s best to read this book as a beautiful extension of her blog and you won’t be disappointed. She offers similar stories with more in depth descriptions. I love her, and if you regularly read her blog, this book will feel like some of her best blog articles.
Book can be found on her blog and on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/How-Not-Travel-World-Disaster-Prone-ebook/dp/B0116TQDG8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536934661&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+not+travel+the+world
Think it’s time to gather up what is going on in the pending expat life in our household! There is a lot going on, which is actually very crazy to think since this adventure is really set to start in 60 months!!
Housesitting Updates:
Last weekend was the second go-around with the local dog sitting gig and the pups are just angels!!! Jason came with me this time and I think part of it is that dogs like him and his vibe!!! 🙂 Jason keeps looking at me like I have lost my mind and I just don’t know what to say! This is like a completely different house sitting experience which I am so happy about! It goes to show that one good or bad experience should not overshadow the next one! It definitely made me more excited about house sitting again!
After a couple hours of eating dinner together, playing with the dogs and playing on our computers, I left to go home and Jason stayed overnight to ease my allergies. His overnight was more eventful than mine as there was a major party in the neighborhood that kept the pups awake until almost 2am. Jason texted at 5:45am and said that they didn’t want to get up to go out, but eventually they were coaxed outside. They came back in to nap and nap and nap some more!
Jason and I swapped out the housesitting about 8am and I was here until the family returned. Jason went off to ride his bike on this gorgeous summer day!
My next house sitting gig is the weekend after the 4th of July for two of the cutest little kitties! I can’t wait to snuggle on them!! Hopefully, it goes well as I haven’t heard from the owner after reaching out to her twice. Trusted Housesitters said to just wait at least a week and then reach back out to them again. It seems proper protocol is to assume that you are going until told otherwise, even if the owner doesn’t communicate. I’m still processing this!
Cleaning Out:
This past week I started going through closets and drawers to get rid of stuff for donation and also to sell in our neighborhood swap site. It was really pretty easy now to go through our stuff knowing that in a couple years, we plan to sell off most of it anyways. You look at things that at one point in life felt like it was important and now it no longer holds the same appeal. It made me start wondering why all this stuff held such a strong appeal to us. Anyways, I gathered 3 large bags of old clothes and already dropped them off. I sold several items in the swap site with more to go! I need to tackle the basement, but that just feels daunting to me right now.
Job Analysis:
We have been making spreadsheets and starting to compare Jason’s position at work. He has a promotion track and a specialist track to choose from. We are talking, analyzing and processing how we want the next 60 months of our lives to look like and which path is best suited for us. Every choice comes with pros and cons and each choice is “right” in it’s own way, but we are feeling out what is the best “right” for us at this point in our life.
Recipe Blog:
Not sure if I mentioned that we have a recipe blog that we started back in December. We both work on it and post two recipes a week. We are researching and analyzing to optimize its growth. We know that most food blogs take two years to gain traction and we are officially past the 25% mark. We haven’t killed each other, yet, so that is a win for us!! Our photos are getting much better and the process is more streamlined. Jason is a little concerned that we might not be able to continue the recipe site as traveling expats. I think that is a valid point, so we are talking about being open minded to switching it up a bit if needed as the time comes.
Thailand Travel:
We are getting ready to visit Thailand in August and are anxious to see what it has to offer as it’s one of our potential expat locations. That is leading to more blog reading and wishing we just planned that Thailand trip to be a bit longer! It is a family vacation and not an expat scouting trip so we are casually looking. I would have loved to have spent time exploring Chiang Mai. We will be in Bangkok for 3 days and hope to see how it feels and how the prices stack up against what the blogs have been saying.
Bulgaria Travel:
Jason and Spence are headed on an 8 day “dude trip” this coming week with a 2 day stop in Bulgaria!! It is definitely not a sought-out travel destination for most but it is an up and coming expat location due to the low cost of living and awesome climate when it’s too hot and humid in Thailand or SE Asia! Spencer is looking at a school there and Jason is scoping it out from a potential expat’s view.
All in all, after writing all of this, I’m surprised how much is “in the works” this early on in the process. Could be because we are massive planners, not sure. I even started to make a list of places that I want to see and how long I could be at each location. Amazing how fast the time will go!
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” – John Wooden
Since we are just starting our expat journey, we thought it would be best to make a list of things that are factors in our decision making process. This is not an all encompassing list, but it is a starting point for us. I encourage you to make your own list and share what is important to you in the comments below.
We expect our list to change multiple times as we go through this but right now the things ranking highest for us:
Location
Low cost of living
Activities
Proximity to places we want to visit
Safety
Health Care
Climate
Crater Lake National Park
Right now, we aren’t listing real estate on the list as we don’t know what type of expat we want to be and we know in some countries we can’t buy real estate. We will certainly add it when (or if) we decide to settle down in a location for a longer period of time. For right now, we plan on renting
Here is the meatball chart we are using to visualize the things that are important to us. I will put Jason’s Microsoft Excel skills to use and weight the importance of those factors. Some of them (low cost of living) are substantially more important than others (climate).
Researching Locations for Expats to Retire
I have been scouring this site a lot and love it! They do a great job of providing details of locations, things to consider and true costs of living. I definitely recommend bookmarking this one for later. You’ll need a lot of time to read these. Impressive work there!
How do you see your day-to-day life as an expat after the honeymoon stage is over and reality sinks in? Are you staying home, enjoying the climate and relaxing? Or are you out walking around the town, enjoying the markets and visiting historical sites? Are you a hiker and plan on spending your days outdoors, exploring a hard-to-reach mountain? Or are you a night-owl and want to spend your time in the high-intensity night life of a city?
We picture spending three to six months in a location and then moving to the next one. This idea of slow-tourism really attracts us. When we have visited places for a few days, we spent our time at the most popular tourist places, and visited the common historical sites. Those were great, but we usually find that our favorite things to do are those that are a bit more eclectic.
We visited a local Hawaiian on Kauai and he taught us how to use coconut fronds to weave a basket as he told us about his family’s life. That was one of our favorite, not-too-mainstream activity that really helped us get a better understanding of the culture.
If we spent a bit more time in each location, we would be able to find those experiences, stalk a favorite coffee shop, and really get immersed in an area. We anticipate moving every three to six months. After two years or so, we may settle down in a location. A lot will depend on our health and how much we end up feeling at home in a location.
Location, Location, Location
Location matters. Right? Well, maybe.
We both agree we want somewhere relatively warm and temperate where we can be outside most of the year. We love to hike, bike, snorkel, garden, cook, and take photos. We have a lot of different interests (ok – maybe WAY too many!) but those are the main ones we consider when we talk about the expat lifestyle.
As you’ll see in the following sections, location isn’t as important to us as the other factors. We aren’t limiting ourselves to any place – heck, we aren’t limiting ourselves to any continent. So, location won’t be weighted as heavily as the other attributes.
Low Cost of Living
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. One of the big reasons we want to be expats is to retire early, explore the world and stretch our dollars as far as possible. We’ll still visit higher cost areas, but the focus will be on those fantastic experiences we can enjoy in lower cost of living areas.
Activities
In Northern Virginia, we ride bikes, hike, kayak and sail with our son. I quilt. Jason and Spencer fly RC planes and we all enjoy growing vegetables on our deck in container gardens.
We love to cook out on our grill but find that we don’t use our gorgeous deck hardly at all in the summer because of the heat/humidity (looking at you Thailand!). We tend to be outside a lot more in fall, winter and spring.
We would like to continue playing with our cameras, hike and bike when we are expats. Without having to worry about running our son to his activities, and Jason working long hours and fighting the traffic, we’ll have a lot more time to enjoy these things.
I am super-excited to take local cooking and language classes.
Proximity to Places We Want to Visit
Portugal, based on my research so far, you own my heart on this one. Budapest, you’re a close second as well! Heck, the entire European continent is at my fingertips!!! I drool at the thought! We are a quick flight or train ride away so much history!
I think Southeast Asia could win my heart. The videos and my research lead me to believe we could make a home there and visit an area of the world that we just don’t know a lot about. What a fun learning experience!
Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize are a little lower on my list so far. I don’t have a bucket list of places I want to explore in that region, but I want to go visit there anyway. I definitely like the proximity to the United States, if we need to fly back for anything.
Safety
This is huge for me. I want to feel safe….as safe as I do in the US at least. All of the places that we are considering are considered safe.
I know, I know…poor Mexico is getting a bad rap right now. I’m sure that one will be questioned by some of you, but there are some incredibly tempting expat communities that are look to be real hidden gems. I think the media portrays Mexico as being dangerous with the cartels and such, but if I were visiting America and didn’t know any better, I doubt I would ever go to Chicago or Baltimore.
My point is that there are bad places out there. Do your due diligence and make intelligent decisions. Don’t just listen to news reports.
Health care is pretty important to both of us as we will be 53 when we make this move. I want to make sure we have access to decent care if something were to happen to us.
Jason is retired Military and has Tricare. We’ll post some articles on how to use Tricare overseas, and how to get medications. But right now, we want to make sure that high quality health care is available. The VA has a Foreign Medical Program for vets living overseas. We’ll be exploring that a lot more as well.
In some locations, we might just use local private medical insurance. From the research we have done so far, this looks to be fairly inexpensive and might just be easier to use than submitting Tricare claims. We’ll see.
I would prefer not to pay for insurance if we are already covered by Tricare, but it will be an option, just in case.
I do not like continuous heat and humidity. Humidity and I are not friends. Allergies are another concern for me. I have had allergy shots for several years, and they help a ton, but I would prefer to find an area where I won’t be sneezing and sniffling all day long throughout the year.
Those are the two main reasons we hesitate about having Thailand high on our list. We will visit there this summer and I hope it isn’t too bad. Beach weather seems to be fine because the ocean breeze usually cuts the humidity down a bit.
We’ll see how things shake out to see how big of a factor the humidity and allergies will play for me.
So this is just a short and sweet guideline we built to keep us on track to remind us that even though this feels SO FAR away, it is really very close. We also added a cool countdown to our blog to keep us motivated. I see it as as so fast, Jason still sees it as SO FAR.
June 2019 Spencer graduates
August 2019 Spencer goes to college
Summer 2022-Summer 2023 sell off excess, locate storage for remaining items
It doesn’t matter what’s been written in our story so far. It’s how you fill up the rest of your pages that count.
Toby Mac
I posted earlier about researching house sitting as a creative and inexpensive option for us as we prepare for the expat lifestyle. After a lot of research, I chose Trustedhousesitters.com as the platform I would try to build up my house sitting profile. There were several other websites that looked great and it was tough to choose, but THS looked like they had more places we would likely visit.
The first thing I did was just sign up. We didn’t have to pay a fee for this. I was able to look around and research a lot of information without needing to commit funds. For the first week, they emailed several times. One of the emails was offering 50% off the fee. So it brought the cost down to under $60. SOLD!
Lesson learned: If the company needs more house sitters, it makes sense that they will offer discounts. Just wait until they send one your way before outlaying cash.
Create a Profile for the House Sitting Website
Creating a profile took me a lot longer than I expected. I wanted to put out a good representation of us. This is a personal resume on why a family would trust their home and pets to us. No pressure, right?
After researching other bios that looked strong, I wrote up our bio of us being retired military family wanting to become traveling expats in a couple years and expressed our love of travel and the outdoors. I located photos that best described who we are and then reached out to a couple friends for character references.
This is not a fast process. Before you can move forward with the site, the references must come back and be processed. I received two references on the same day and the profile was almost complete. Hooray!! I was so excited.
How to Plan for the First House Sitting?
Several sites recommended that newbies, such as myself, reach out to local house sits first. You don’t have any reviews and it is less likely that someone will choose you over more experienced house sitters with a portfolio of previous sits.
The benefit of trying out house sitting locally is that the homeowners will have a chance to meet you ahead of time. It would be a low risk for them (since they met you) and low risk for us (since we didn’t have to pay for any travel). Win-Win!
I found short term house sitting requests in the D.C. area and submitted requests for each. The first two never responded at all. One didn’t even open the request (there is a notification if they opened it and read it) so I knew that wasn’t in the cards for me.
The third one that I reached out to was a complete fluke!! I was looking up sits in Virginia and there was one that popped up in the next town over for a three-day sit. I reached out to offer an interview. My son and I went over to meet the couple and their three dogs. They were so sweet! They were so kind and welcoming! I told them why I wanted to do a short term local house sitting, and they were very open and encouraging. She offered us the sit during the meeting! Woohoo!
She even asked me if I could sit for an additional night later in June. Absolutely! The owner did email about a week later notifying me that one of the dogs will have a cyst removed a couple days before I arrive and asked if I was ok with that. I thought that was incredibly thoughtful to ask!
Now my confidence was up and found another sit about 40 minutes away. I reached out and got that one on the spot, too. The owner loved that I was going to come alone and that I was local in case she had to cancel.
All of these are still pending and my first sit comes in just 2 weeks now!!!
At this point, I have a bad case of the housesitting bug!!!! I want to go everywhere!!! EVERYWHERE, I tell you! Plus I have an incredibly supportive husband that thinks it is great to build our house sitting resume now!! Hooray for awesome marriages!!!
What is the next House Sitting Step?
So, I continue to look at the site everyday and applied for my first overseas sit in Malta. It’s been a dream to visit Malta. I LOVE the prospect of visiting!!!
Unfortunately, I received my first “application declined” notice. Ouch!! That one hurt. It didn’t get me down though. I am still pushing through and tonight I applied to one in Germany over a long weekend. The best part is there is a Christmas market in the town which has been a huge dream of mine! I researched how to create a great entry message and pushed go! Now I wait and see!!
Lessons learned so far!
Create the most badass profile you can. Put as much relevant information as you can on the site to make them feel comfortable with you.
Create a message to a potential sit on why you are the best one for their family and pets. Don’t talk about why you want to visit their town. Talk about how much you love playing with labradors or how you enjoy frisky cats that like to play hide and seek. Remember, you are applying for a job and this is your resume/cover letter.
Apply to several sits at a time if you see more than one that fit your goals. I applied for one at a time at the beginning. Some folks never responded and I was waiting to hear before I reached out to another one during the same period. Just be careful not to get yourself double-booked.
Apply as early as you can. Some owners take the first applicants. Others allow their ad to stay on the site for weeks before making a decision. I’ve watched one grow up to the 30 applicants and she has had it up for the entire time I have been researching. This is a perfect example of someone who may have forgotten her ad, or her life got busy. Who knows? Move forward with your own goals.
I can’t wait to report back on the local house sits! Stay tuned!
***A week after I put in for the Germany housesit, I received a message offering me the position. The family was sweet as can be apologizing that they were out of town for a long weekend and would love to have us come! Less than 2 months of this and I secured my first overseas housesit!!!! To say that I am over the moon excited is an understatement!!!
“Don’t expect to see a change if you don’t make one.”
Toby Mac
I just completed my next book researching a future life of an expat! “The Expatriate’s Roadmap to Successfully Moving Overseas” by Cynthia Caughey was a fantastic resource and should be at the top of everyone’s list to read prior to making the jump!
Tenerife, Canary Islands
Cynthia is a two-time expat and an expat coach. That stopped me right in my tracks. What is an expat coach?
That led to a quick internet search on the topic. I mentioned that to Jason and he had run across a Youtube video about the topic. He sent me the link of a guy that does this work for folks dreaming of living in Costa Rica. The link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jthmfTk0dI&t=131s
The first thing Cynthia did was go through several great questions to ask yourself if you are a good candidate to be an expat. “Do you get upset if your food is late at a restaurant?” “How do you handle lost luggage?” “How are you with being someplace where nobody speaks your language?”
She did a great job pushing those hard questions to the surface before you get too deep into the book. The point being that being an expat comes with unexpected challenges and it is important to think through how you will react when you are in a situation that might prove challenging.
This is definitely something for us to talk about ahead of time.
She went over health care, taxes, renting/buying property, investments, and even working. Then she walked the reader through a hypothetical move to France, the country she is most familiar.
She explained everything in plain English and didn’t sugar coat anything. No romance of the expatriate lifestyle here. I am much better with straight answers. Her book led me to make a list of investment and tax questions I still need to research.
Overall, this book is a solid 4.5 rating on my Goodreads and I highly recommend it as a resource for others looking to take the leap into expat living!
“Deciding to live in a different country with different challenges is the bravest, strangest, hardest and funniest thing you could ever choose to do with your life.”
Taken from “Once Upon an Expat” by Lisa Webb
Mount Tiede, Tenerife, Canary Islands
Expat Book Club
A couple of weeks ago, when I started researching my list for expat books, I ran across a blog that talked about a book club focused on expats. She missed her old book clubs and was experiencing loneliness being abroad (she posts about that as well).
So, she took the bull by the horns and started her own book club targeting expats. Recently, some of the members even met up in Paris to talk about this month’s book. Seriously, how cool is that? She also started a Facebook Group and I was able to join even though I am not an expat yet. She is very active in the group and it has gained a lot of traction.
This is the first book I chose to read in my expat book reviews. I left the book more curious on the potential of what an expat lifestyle would really mean for us. I had been thinking about the “honeymoon stage” where everything was romanticized. My honeymoon stage involved thoughts that we would be walking the streets of new an exotic places, enjoying different cultures.
Ms Webb’s book is fabulous. It is laid out in a series of essays distributed through the different continents. Each essay is written by women who express the ups and downs of expat living while still keeping an individualistic tone. Each one just a few pages long, and can be read in short stints or blown through (like I did) in a single day. They are fun and easy to read, but really kept my interest.
If you have a lot of prior expat experience and looking for more, this may not be the ideal book for you. You probably won’t gain a lot of new information here, as you have most likely experienced these themes. For me? Well, I am new to thinking about expat life, and I like to gather as much information as possible. So, this book was perfect for me!
This is a group of extended blog posts, if you will, bound into a beautiful book.
My favorite stories involved the expats and their close knit friends that develop while living abroad. That is something that we loved about serving in the military. Do you need something? Someone is there for you in a skinny minute and they don’t expect anything in return.
Those stories warmed my heart. If you haven’t had the opportunity to live in a community like that, you will get a sense for it after reading these.
The other story that stuck with me was about a mom who was lonely overseas and hadn’t yet found her group of friends. She kept trying and trying but nothing worked. She was an introvert with an streak of extrovert, she said.
After months of trying, a mom at the playground reached out to her and invited her to coffee and introduced her friends. The playground mom didn’t end up being her close friend, but as a result of this experience, the author pulled out her extrovert self when she saw other expats to initiate conversations.
I have a similar personality to the author’s and I am worried about the social aspect of being in different places around the world. I love my husband, but I will definitely need friends and a social life beyond him. I will definitely need to plan on being more assertive and extending myself to find fellowship.
The last thing that I came away from with this book is that we will need to have more conversations on what kind of expats we will be. Right now, we are planning on spending the first couple of years traveling slowly, but at some point we will settle down. It is important to me to have a sense of community. This pulls at my heart more than I initially thought.
I am currently looking at the larger expat communities in Thailand, Portugal and Mexico. This is just another piece of the puzzle to ponder.
I would highly recommend Ms Webb’s book and gave it 4 out of 5 on my Goodreads.
Jason sent me a text today about taking my bike overseas as we will have so much more opportunity to ride. This led me to continue my research into house sitting as an expat.
Jockey’s Ridge Sand Dunes Park, Nags Head, NC
Choosing the route of being an expat that housesits doesn’t lend itself to taking a lot of stuff or shipping a container over with a few of my favorite things that I don’t want to live without. This is the life that you have a couple suitcases and you are willing to live as a hard core minimalist for extended periods of time in someone else’s house.
Let that sink in for a minute.
So really, my clothes and electronics will be with me, right? I can’t imagine lugging much more with me even though I would love to. I am a hobbyist in many areas and the one thing seems to be a match for me will be knitting while I housesit. Takes time and a lot of patience and will take up little room. Not sure what Jason will do at this point though as sitting in front of a computer as a hobby just won’t work long term. Something to think about for that one.
The draw for us is we would be able to temporarily live in multiple places for little money. So we aren’t 100% sure this is the route yet but we are exploring the options to do this full time for a year or too or even part time for a year. We are also thinking big bang for your buck as well.
What is house sitting?
Housesitting is the rage all over the world and is just getting more and more popular. The owner of a house would like someone to stay there (just as the name implies) while they are out of town. Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, a lot of times it is. The owners usually have a reason they need someone to stay in their house-either it be pets to take care of or a garden to tend to. Generally, you shouldn’t think of this as simply free night time lodging while you explore parts of Europe. The homeowner is giving you free lodging in return for a little bit of work ie taking care of their dogs or weeding their garden. You are usually able to explore the area a bit but during the interview you will get a clear picture of expectations of the position.
Where to find a housesitting job?
I have been researching this for a couple weeks now and have found that there are a couple main reputable sites that everyone agrees upon. Not saying there aren’t outliers out there but here are the main ones:
https://www.trustedhousesitters.com/us/
https://www.mindmyhouse.com/
https://www.housesittersamerica.com/
https://www.rover.com/house-sitting/
How to land your first house sitting job?
First start thinking of your profile and creating a resume of who you are and what you bring to the table. Remember, this is still a job. You are trying to sell yourself in return for payment (the free housing) so put your best foot forward. What do you bring to the table to offer them? Think of why should they choose you? Owners will receive dozens of responses within hours of posting and you will want your profile to shine.
As you approach the interview stage, think about the potential questions they will ask you. Why do you want to housesit? How do you feel about dogs? Have you ever housesat before? Do you have references? Why should I choose you? For example, Jason hopes to house sit for a family with a garden. He loves playing with the dirt and seeing the results of his labor. He treats his plants like his babies. Because he wants to help with the garden and it won’t necessarily be a chore for him, he may win over someone else with experience just simply because his love for gardening may speak to the owner. Be yourself and know that it’s not personal if you are not chosen. Move on and try again. Once you get a couple under your belt, the references from previous owners will also help you out.
How to housesit with no experience?
The easiest thing to do is to try to see if there are local or something relatively close to you to pick up and try it out. Maybe it’s just a 3 day one an hour away that you can try out and see if you even like it before you make the big jump of flying overseas for 3 weeks to find out you hate it and are stuck! The people will be able to interview you locally and you can meet and have a better shot at getting the position. Do a couple of those and you can quickly be on your way as you now have experience! Try to think of it as unpaid internships! Put in a little bit of time to get the end result you are shooting for.
“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.”
– John Wooden
Mount Tiede, Tenerife, Canary Islands
Since we are just starting our expat journey, we thought it would be best to make a list of things that are factors in our decision making process. This is not an all encompassing list, but it is a starting point for us. I encourage you to make your own list and share what is important to you in the comments below.
We expect our list to change multiple times as we go through this but right now the things ranking highest for us:
Location
Low cost of living
Activities
Proximity to places we want to visit
Safety
Health Care
Climate
Right now, we aren’t listing real estate on the list as we don’t know what type of expat we want to be and we know in some countries we can’t buy real estate. We will certainly add it when (or if) we decide to settle down in a location for a longer period of time. For right now, we plan on renting.
Here is the meatball chart we are using to visualize the things that are important to us. I will put Jason’s Microsoft Excel skills to use and weight the importance of those factors. Some of them (low cost of living) are substantially more important than others (climate).
Researching Locations for Expats to Retire
I have been scouring this site a lot and love it! They do a great job of providing details of locations, things to consider and true costs of living. I definitely recommend bookmarking this one for later. You’ll need a lot of time to read these. Impressive work there!
How do you see your day-to-day life as an expat after the honeymoon stage is over and reality sinks in? Are you staying home, enjoying the climate and relaxing? Or are you out walking around the town, enjoying the markets and visiting historical sites? Are you a hiker and plan on spending your days outdoors, exploring a hard-to-reach mountain? Or are you a night-owl and want to spend your time in the high-intensity night life of a city?
We picture spending three to six months in a location and then moving to the next one. This idea of slow-tourism really attracts us. When we have visited places for a few days, we spent our time at the most popular tourist places, and visited the common historical sites. Those were great, but we usually find that our favorite things to do are those that are a bit more eclectic.
We visited a local Hawaiian on Kauai and he taught us how to use coconut fronds to weave a basket as he told us about his family’s life. That was one of our favorite, not-too-mainstream activity that really helped us get a better understanding of the culture.
If we spent a bit more time in each location, we would be able to find those experiences, stalk a favorite coffee shop, and really get immersed in an area. We anticipate moving every three to six months. After two years or so, we may settle down in a location. A lot will depend on our health and how much we end up feeling at home in a location.
Location, Location, Location
Location matters. Right? Well, maybe.
We both agree we want somewhere relatively warm and temperate where we can be outside most of the year. We love to hike, bike, snorkel, garden, cook, and take photos. We have a lot of different interests (ok – maybe WAY too many!) but those are the main ones we consider when we talk about the expat lifestyle.
As you’ll see in the following sections, location isn’t as important to us as the other factors. We aren’t limiting ourselves to any place – heck, we aren’t limiting ourselves to any continent. So, location won’t be weighted as heavily as the other attributes.
Low Cost of Living
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. One of the big reasons we want to be expats is to retire early, explore the world and stretch our dollars as far as possible. We’ll still visit higher cost areas, but the focus will be on those fantastic experiences we can enjoy in lower cost of living areas.
Activities
In Northern Virginia, we ride bikes, hike, kayak and sail with our son. I quilt. Jason and Spencer fly RC planes and we all enjoy growing vegetables on our deck in container gardens.
We love to cook out on our grill but find that we don’t use our gorgeous deck hardly at all in the summer because of the heat/humidity (looking at you Thailand!). We tend to be outside a lot more in fall, winter and spring.
We would like to continue playing with our cameras, hike and bike when we are expats. Without having to worry about running our son to his activities, and Jason working long hours and fighting the traffic, we’ll have a lot more time to enjoy these things.
I am super-excited to take local cooking and language classes.
Proximity to Places We Want to Visit
Portugal, based on my research so far, you own my heart on this one. Budapest, you’re a close second as well! Heck, the entire European continent is at my fingertips!!! I drool at the thought! We are a quick flight or train ride away so much history!
I think Southeast Asia could win my heart. The videos and my research lead me to believe we could make a home there and visit an area of the world that we just don’t know a lot about. What a fun learning experience!
Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize are a little lower on my list so far. I don’t have a bucket list of places I want to explore in that region, but I want to go visit there anyway. I definitely like the proximity to the United States, if we need to fly back for anything.
Safety
This is huge for me. I want to feel safe….as safe as I do in the US at least. All of the places that we are considering are considered safe.
I know, I know…poor Mexico is getting a bad rap right now. I’m sure that one will be questioned by some of you, but there are some incredibly tempting expat communities that are look to be real hidden gems. I think the media portrays Mexico as being dangerous with the cartels and such, but if I were visiting America and didn’t know any better, I doubt I would ever go to Chicago or Baltimore.
My point is that there are bad places out there. Do your due diligence and make intelligent decisions. Don’t just listen to news reports.
Health care is pretty important to both of us as we will be 53 when we make this move. I want to make sure we have access to decent care if something were to happen to us.
Jason is retired Military and has Tricare. We’ll post some articles on how to use Tricare overseas, and how to get medications. But right now, we want to make sure that high quality health care is available. The VA has a Foreign Medical Program for vets living overseas. We’ll be exploring that a lot more as well.
In some locations, we might just use local private medical insurance. From the research we have done so far, this looks to be fairly inexpensive and might just be easier to use than submitting Tricare claims. We’ll see.
I would prefer not to pay for insurance if we are already covered by Tricare, but it will be an option, just in case.
I do not like continuous heat and humidity. Humidity and I are not friends. Allergies are another concern for me. I have had allergy shots for several years, and they help a ton, but I would prefer to find an area where I won’t be sneezing and sniffling all day long throughout the year.
Those are the two main reasons we hesitate about having Thailand high on our list. We will visit there this summer and I hope it isn’t too bad. Beach weather seems to be fine because the ocean breeze usually cuts the humidity down a bit.
We’ll see how things shake out to see how big of a factor the humidity and allergies will play for me.
