I’m at a point in life where I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not what I have. My big house, my car, my high-paying but soul-sucking job. None of those things are making me happy. I’m currently in the best city for me in the US, but I’m still dissatisfied with where I live.
But the good news is that I have enough saved up that I could probably retire early in a LCOL place. I don’t want to retire early though. I want to do some self-discovery and learning before I decide where to go in life.
So a part of me wants to:
- Throw a dart at a world map
- Sell my house and possessions
- Move wherever the dart landed in step 1
- Learn the language and customs of that place
- Live off of my savings for a while
- Evaluate where I want to go from there after a year or two
I’m not going to do step 1. I think I can at least make an educated guess as to where I go. I know I have to consider visas and COL. But regardless, I’m still willing to take a risk about where I want to go.
If I go somewhere for a year or two and hate it, but walk away knowing a new language and customs, I’d consider that a win. The only way I’d look at it as having been a bad idea is if I go there and don’t learn anything.
Any advice?
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Come to Tajikistan
If you have a house to sell then you’ll probably have no trouble meeting the income requirements for a Spanish non-lucrative visa. Lets you live in Spain for a year (and renew for as long as you like as long as you have funds), you just can’t work (though no one is ever going to know or care about casual cash-only work like babysitting or doing a few projects for people back home and so on). Gives you a lot of freedom to travel, take language classes, and experience the culture. Plus the cost of living is low and the pace of life here in Spain is nice and slow. It’s a great place to spend a few years.
How about… keep the house and rent it out. Put everything you don’t donate/sell/take with you into storage. This gives you a path back should you so choose.
My friends who spent time in the Peace Corps really enjoyed it.
Another way to throw darts: look on trusted house sitters or similar. Find a place you want to check out where you can stay for a month or so. Let the wind blow you to the next place that’s open around the time you’re leaving the first place. Since you have savings, you can fill in with short-term rentals as you need, and it’s ok if it doesn’t fit together neatly like a jigsaw puzzle.
I’ve liked iTalki for quick language basics. Good luck!
It’s a valid point and one that I’ve considered. The thing is that if I do decide to come back, I probably won’t want to stay in my current house. If I kept everything in storage, it would likely end up being just one more thing I have to get rid of.
Plus, there’s something freeing about not having a lot of stuff.
Ditch the stuff, great!
One advantage to keeping the house – even if you know you won’t move back into it – is that it reduces your exposure to US-specific housing inflation and currency fluctuation. Otherwise you could keep your savings 100% intact yet be priced out of ever owning a US home again. As long as you can cover your full expenses (including property tax, any mortgage, budgeted ongoing repairs) you’re basically getting paid to build equity while providing housing as a decent landlord instead of a corporate jerk. Win, win.
A second advantage to keeping the house is that not all money is the same shade of green… Rent can qualify you for the D7 passive income residency visa for Portugal. You may prefer the D7 to the nomad visa. The amount of rent matters. Your net profit does not. You could, for instance, include utilities to boost the amount of the rent payments while still having the same deal for the renter and for you as if you had a lower rent without utilities, etc.
In a different direction: you’ll need a visa of some type for a specific EU country if you want to spend more than 3 months in Europe anyway. I found “life in a backpack” is very freeing for the first two weeks. After that, I want a home base, even if I travel from it the majority of the time. That implies something inexpensive so I don’t feel angst over “wasting” the money I pay for the home base. YMMV. Good luck!