International Living Postcards– your daily escape
Monday, April 2, 2007
Living or retiring overseas, you could lower your cost of living dramatically, you could reduce your tax burden, you could cut your annual health care and insurance bills by 50% or more, and you could say goodbye forever to snowy winters.
But do you know the real reason most people cite when asked why they’re thinking about making this kind of move? Truth be told, they admit, when we speak with them at conferences and in our travels, it’s all for the fun of it.
Organizing a new life in another country is a great adventure, maybe the grandest of your entire life. Living well on less, enjoying little luxuries you couldn’t afford back home, reducing your annual bill to Uncle Sam, saving on medical insurance? Those are rationalizations. In fact, a reinvented life abroad is more an agenda of the heart than the head.
We all have that instant of recognition, where we open our eyes finally, take a sober look at our lives, and wonder to ourselves, to our significant others: There must be something more…mustn’t there?
Once you’ve had this realization, you develop a hankering to go in search of the something. You think about the daydreams you had when you were younger. You remember the talents and the interests you set aside in favor of more practical pursuits (like running a business, earning a living, raising a family). You remind yourself "practical" isn’t everything, especially at this stage of your life.
And you begin to look around the world. You remember trips you took years ago, places you visited and promised yourself you’d return to see again. You think about the escalating cost of living in some parts of the world, bubble real estate markets, icy Januarys…
And, slowly, ideas like building a house on the Pacific coast of Panama, starting an import/export business from Nicaragua, investing in a bolt-hole in Buenos Aires, or a big spread up north Cafayete way, maybe a pied-à-terre in Paris…or Dubrovnik…these ideas don’t seem crazy. They become exhilarating. A reason to get out of bed in the morning and a chance to re-fashion your life out of whole cloth.
What would you do if you could do anything? And where would you do it?
Greg Gunter and his wife Robbie asked themselves those questions after they’d had their instance of life-changing recognition at age 50. They knew one thing from the start: They didn’t want their retirement to have anything to do with AARP cards. Read how they reinvented their lives (in colonial San Miguel de Allende, Mexico) in the April 2007 issue of International Living.
You can get instant online access to the April issue here.
Kathleen Peddicord
Publisher, International Living
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