It Feels Good To Be Doing Something To Move Forward In Life, Doesn't It?

Exactly where we are with the visa we'll use to move to Spain

Fresh off the last two installments focused on how my wife will make the transition professionally and personally in Spain, it’s time to start doing real work on the visa we’ll use to move there!

My Wife's Unique Perspective As We Prepare For Our Move To Spain

My Wife's Career Transition As We Move To Spain: It's Exciting Because It's Uncertain

It’s not that we haven’t been doing anything.

We’re both working to put ourselves in a good financial position headed into, upon and beyond our arrival in Spain.

Over the last several months, I have focused on exactly how to do this, as to feel the best cash security possible when we do arrive and start getting settled in January.

For example—

Exactly How I Plan To Maintain Cash Security And Not Touch Savings When We Move To Spain

That’s ↑ one of the main strategies and—as of the moment—it’s going much better than even I anticipated. I don’t like saying that out loud. That said, I’ll update that plan with specific numbers on how much I have been able to save and how I intend to allocate these funds to make our transition to life in Spain flow as smoothly and seamlessly as possible. Give me another month or so of—fingers crossed—continued good progress before I tell you the latest.

Devising strategies, seeing them through and making money to support them. That’s all fine and good. But, in many ways, these things aren’t much of a departure from everyday life. Unless you’re made of money, you’re always in cash flow and allocation mode.

What we have really been waiting for is the time to be able to do real work—beyond research—on the visa. The digital nomad visa that we’ll use to legally reside in Spain.

So Exactly How Do We Hope To Legally Migrate To Spain?

Now that we’re inside six months, we can start doing real work.

I emailed the person who is helping us with and will submit our visa application for us the other day and asked for her approval on—

• The independent contractor employment agreement I will use to apply for the visa.

• The letter from my employer reiterating my pay and authorizing me to work remotely from Spain.

• A letter from my editor at CNN, who I also worked with between 2012 and 2014, attesting that I have more than three years’ experience in my field.

• A sample of the invoice I will submit with the application.

We can start getting these things signed, sealed, translated and ready to be delivered now. That last link has details on the required documents if you’re interested.

Then, come August/September, we get other key documents, particularly the ones that need to come from government entities and receive official confirmations.

These documents have a shelf life of six months. It looks like we’ll actually submit our visa application on January 7th (we have a date!). So, if we start the process of collecting and getting these documents apostilled and translated in August/September, we should be good to go. Pretty much all that will be left is to copy our passports (with our entry stamp into Spain) and boarding passes and we’ll be good to go.

So, yeah, it feels good. I have had an extra big smile on my face these last few days.

I am the type of person who likes to be doing material things to work towards whatever it is I want out on the horizon. This can mean I’m impatient. But it also keeps me well-organized. In some ways, this is just a no-judgement positive way to be. In others, it’s absolutely a way to control anxiety and make myself feel useful.

I assume (at least some of you) can relate?

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The view from near where we’ll be staying during our first month in Valencia.

Literally our dream location in so many ways. And the apartment looks nice, too.