Never Retire: By Far, The Biggest Problem I Have With Life In Spain

The real struggle? Wanting this life to last forever.

I will turn 50 in July.

I don’t think I always look 50. I don’t think I always act 50. Only sometimes. And I certainly don’t feel 50—physically or mentally.

Emotionally—that’s probably another story. I assume that many 50-year-olds who don’t think they look, act, or feel 50 go through similar obsessive thought processes.

Let me break it down within the context of age being one of the—if not the—primary motivators for making the move to Spain.

My wife and I made this move to give ourselves a fighting—maybe even a better chance to live well during the second acts of our lives. As I wrote the other day, this has decreasingly less to do with cost of living and more to do with quality of life—

Every time I step out our front door in Spain, I realize that people who move here—or, at least, the people who repeatedly and redundantly cite why people move here—have it all wrong. They have it backward.

The quality of city life Spain facilitates, and fosters should come at a higher premium than it currently does. If you have ever paid too much to live in a soul-sucking, car-clogged part of the United States, this is something you (re)learn real fast. And it makes a couple hundred a month extra for housing feel like a steal.

We pay more for housing in Valencia than we did in LA. We also pay utilities here. That’s something we’re not used to. Plus, when we paid for electricity, gas, and water, the cost was less in America. Of course, there are taxes that—while not meaningfully higher than what I paid in the United States as a self-employed person—aren’t low.

Later this week, I’ll cover taxes—(I will make my first quarterly payment next week)—alongside additional thoughts on earning US dollars and spending euros. But, in the shell of a well-thought-out nut, life here is so good—relative to America and on its own—that I’ll do whatever I need to do financially and otherwise to die in this country.

I’m not surprised that I like it here. My wife and I thought long, hard, and realistically enough about making this move that liking Spain felt almost guaranteed. But I am taken aback by just how much I love living here. It’s not without its challenges, but facing these obstacles is precisely the tonic we sought—put on ourselves—to keep our bodies and minds as vibrant as possible for what will hopefully be a thrilling but comfortable next 50 years.

And that’s the thing. That’s the real and meaningful struggle I’m facing as we settle into life in Spain. While I had the goal of living to 100 in the United States, it feels different here.

If I do make it that far, it means—and this is super trippy—I will have lived longer in Spain than in the United States: another entire lifetime plus six-and-a-half months. If I erase the part of my infancy and youth I don’t remember; I will have lived even longer in Spain than I did in America.

While I can’t speak for the rest of Spain, something about city life in Valencia is extra inspiring. You walk out our front door and are immediately hit with what my wife and I call so much life happening. From every angle and on every corner, there’s a vibrancy on the streets that doesn’t exist in the United States.

It makes you—it makes me—want to be outside all of the time.

When I go to bed at night, I tell my wife that I can’t wait to wake up in the morning. But I know that I need to sleep because my body tells me I do, and it’s also an essential part of the plan to live as long as possible.

Resting in our apartment is a bit easier because it’s a great space. You can always hear and easily see the street life taking place below. This city's theater rarely goes on intermission.

When I have to work, I usually want to be outside. But I need the mental stimulation and money my work—even the jobs I don’t love as much as writing my newsletters—brings.

For goodness sake, Friki de Bici—which launches next Wednesday (!)—is a project initially conceived as a way to get outside more! I have a longstanding love for cities and bikes, so one day, it hit me that if I can find a way to combine the two, I can parlay the mixture into another source of income, mental and physical stimulation, and more time spent navigating this great city.

Of course, being outside or resting amid urban chatter 24/7 is not realistic. That’s dumb, and that’s not what I mean. I’m exaggerating only slightly to emphasize that this place is inspiring. It makes me feel like I have to live my life to the fullest extent possible because you view the time remaining on your second act differently than you do your first.

Mostly, these are good psychological gymnastics to go through. Except when I think about the reality that the ride has to end—barring profound and rapid technological advances.

I’m paying taxes on Monday, and—at some point around 50 years or so later—I will die. It took me almost 50 years to realize that what they say about death and taxes is true!

All of this said, living and observing life in Spain—especially daily on the streets—has also (re)taught me that too much time spent contemplating the uncontemplatable is time wasted.

So many people of all ages in this nation are simply doing their thing—living their lives—and they probably don’t realize the valuable lessons they’re teaching and reminders they’re giving to us overthinkers who grew up and decided to leave a completely different culture.