If Semi-Retirement Means You Have To Move, Think Long And Hard About Where You Go And Why
Is there a basis for your destination other than cost of living and online hype?
If you have moved for retirement or semi-retirement to a country other than the US or Canada, please get in touch with me.
If you know someone who has, please get them in touch with me.
I want to create a guide for paid subscribers that covers the process and particulars around moving to and living in different countries through country-specific summaries and Q&As with people who have actually made the move.
Paid subscribers will be able to scroll through the list or view a map and select the part of the world that interests them.
Because I know several subscribers are looking to move, but still haven't determined exactly where.
To that end …
One big problem with social media and the proliferation of writing on the internet is the bandwagon effect, particularly among people who have zero idea of—
who they are,
where they want to be and
why they want to be there.
They haven’t quite done the work to identify their problem—or merely what they want from life absent any glaring problems—yet they’re scrolling for solutions.
Business Insider can’t stop publishing stories like this:
They literally do a minimum of one a day.
They—and countless others like them, not to mention individuals and platforms across social media—effectively prey on the most naive, wide-eyed and fickle among us. Finland looks amazing today. But, tomorrow, it will be Cambodia or Paraguay because some 35-year old sold everything and started running a $10,000-a-month digital agency while working 15 hours a week from an apparent haven for expats.
Wherever you go, there you are.
Which is why I made the above call-to-action. I want to provide paid newsletter subscribers more than flashy headlines and empty dreams. I want to do what the aforementioned articles don’t do, including, but not limited to detailing visa processes, actual cost of living assessments and other quantitative and qualitative elements of getting to know, liking or not liking and settling into a foreign country.
So you can—one day—make a better informed decision on where to live, or even travel for an extended period of time.
Deciding where to live has always been relatively easy for me.
Here’s a rough sketch of my trajectory from a small city (let’s call it a town) to Los Angeles and, in about a year, to the third largest city in Spain. Maybe it—along with a few other related, but general thoughts—can help you. Or, if you don’t need help maybe you can relate.