If it hadn’t been for a broken water heater… I would have been in the Twin Towers on 9/11.
Let me tell you the story…
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I woke up to a flooded basement. The water heater was bust.
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I was living in Boonton, New Jersey at the time.
A staff writer for The Wall Street Journal.
My office at the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan was literally across West Side Highway from the World Trade Center.
Every morning, I hopped on a New Jersey Transit train and made my way to Hoboken, where I transferred to the PATH subway line for the short ride beneath the Hudson River and into the basement of the WTC.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001… that busted water heater very likely saved my life.
I was supposed to be in the WTC basement—as I was just about every other weekday morning—right about the time the planes struck.
But those moments I spent dealing with that water heater meant I missed my regular train from Boonton… which meant I missed my regular subway ride into Lower Manhattan…
Which means I am here today, 25 years later, to write you this dispatch.
We all remember what happened after 9/11…
I actually think that was the moment America’s fate changed forever.
I grew up in the best America that ever was. Born in the mid-’60s. Raised in the ’70s and ’80s. My first adult job in the early 90s.
That era… that’s the America I miss.
Something was different after 9/11—I think we all felt it… Political divisions started to heat up to boiling point… America’s military spending and debts went through the roof…
The political class betrayed the people—big time.
(Just in case you think I’m down on America—I actually think the 2030s, after the inevitable debt reckoning, will be some of the brightest days the US has ever experienced—with unprecedented opportunities to profit.)
Second Chances
What I really want to write to you about today is second chances—and not waiting too long to take advantage of them.
Since that fateful September morning, I’ve gotten divorced… Left The Wall Street Journal for a boutique financial research firm… got fired from that job and went back to school in LA to study screenwriting…
I found myself starting over—in my 50s.
My finances were decimated after the divorce—and let me tell you, California is not the place you want to live if you’re looking to rebuild your finances!
Then I got a call from International Living.
They wanted me to write for them—and live in Europe.
That’s when one of my lifelong dreams finally came true…
I’m not gonna lie: I always wanted to live abroad, at least for a time. As a kid in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I lived with my grandparents. My mom worked for one of the big airlines… She would show up on random weekends and say, “Pack your bags!” And we’d be traveling to far-flung places—on the airline’s dime.
So I just had that pioneering spirit and a longing for new adventures from a young age.
But after divorce and losing my job in my 50s… it seemed like I’d never achieve my dream of living abroad…
And it seemed like my retirement was going to look a heck of a lot poorer than I had imagined and planned…
At the time, I had no idea it could be so easy—and inexpensive—to move to Europe and to settle there.
You may say, “Well, you had help from International Living…” Well, sure—but they can help you too.
Life Has Never Been Better
The truth is… living in Prague, in the Czech Republic, and then Portugal these past few years—the lower cost of living when it comes to healthcare, rent, and everyday everything—has allowed me to grow my nest egg again in a way I never would have thought possible… For a moment, when the crypto boom was at its highest, I was even briefly a millionaire!
In Prague, I met a girl… it was not something I was ever expecting… but in 2020 I got married again in the millionaire’s playground of Kotor Bay, Montenegro.
I got remarried in Kotor Bay…
But my new life overseas is about more than finding love again and rebuilding my retirement funds.
In a strange way… It reminds me so strongly of the America I grew up in.
In the America of my youth—the America of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s—banks and shops and restaurants were all local. The mom-and-pop stores and eateries would put your purchase on your tab and let you come back tomorrow because you forgot your pocketbook back on your Formica-topped kitchen table.
Right now, that’s my life in Europe… and here in Braga, in northern Portugal, specifically.
I left my iPhone sitting on a table at a restaurant in the center of Braga. The waiter chased me down the street to return it.
I regularly end up at pastelarias—a café/bakery/pastry shop—and I sit outside, al fresco, drink my espresso languidly, while noshing on a custard tart and reading on my phone—no pressure to leave even after two hours—and then I wander off to an ATM and return a few minutes later to pay. No comments, no looks, no assumptions I’m a scuzzball looking to dine-and-dash.
I walk everywhere, in every city I alight, and I never feel queasy about my surroundings, wondering if I might get mugged… or worse. And that’s at all times of day and night.
Life here is easy.
I’m not going to tell you everything is perfect…
But this is the only place in the world where I am regularly aware of that sense of reliving a simpler time in America.
There are so many moments here in Braga, Portugal where I have the strongest sense of déjà vu… that I’ve lived this moment before. That it feels like a faded sepia memory from the ’70s and ’80s, dusted off and repainted in the colors of modern Portugal.
Today… I only wish I had found this place—and this new life for myself—much, much sooner.
Because it’s everything I ever wanted… Life has never been better.
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