House Hunters International, Escape The Continent and The Great Escapers are just some of the shows that sell the expat dream of establishing a new life abroad. But what’s it like to really do it? Dawn Banks is a married mom of two who has actually done it. In July 2017, Dawn, her husband Nathan and their two children, Berri and Pablo, sold everything they had, left the UK for Vancouver and drove 18,000 km to Costa Rica. Today, the Banks family run the Libelula Lounge in Potrero, Costa Rica, a highly-rated boutique hotel. Dawn shares her story and some [...]
I am writing this post before Feb 29, so I can only project how I will have spent my extra time from leap day. However, I know two things for sure: I will be on a road trip from picking up my youngest for college spring break; and I will be just a few days into my return from a trip to the Philippines. I think I’ll be too jet-lagged to do much more than the road trip! That said, I tend to get a lot of ideas on road trips – topics to blog about, consulting projects to pitch, [...]
This is our third trip in four years to the Philippines, but our first to Cebu. Previously we had visited Manila and Legazpi, but the Philippines is an archipelago made up of 7,107 islands! We are never going to visit all 7,107 – only 2,000 are inhabited. There are three main islands: Luzon, Mindanao and the Visayan Islands. Manila and Legazpi are both part of Luzon, and Cebu is part of the Visayan Islands. Now, at least, we have checked off two of the three main islands off our list. It was an easy trip Cebu despite arriving on Valentine’s [...]
My favorite thing about watching movies on long airplane flights is that I invariably discover movies that I hadn’t yet heard of. These movies are too small to run in the big chain theaters, and don’t get enough award acclaim that I would have gotten free screeners of them during SAG Award voting season. We are currently on a trip to the Philippines, and with 18 hours of flying time each way, there is lots of time for movie watching and discovery! On other recent long trips, I discovered The Hummingbird Project, a Wall Street thriller which I summarized in [...]
I love my flexible consulting work and don’t plan on changing careers any time soon. That said, there are advantages to a traditional, full-time job, such as easier mortgage approval, subsidized healthcare and the camaraderie of an ongoing community. Now that we have moved to Florida, a traditional job would help us integrate. Healthcare off the Florida state exchange is cheaper than in New York, but health insurance is still a wild card, and health insurance through a job could be an alternative to running off to Costa Rica. Being on the ground in Florida gives us ample time to [...]
“I am learning a lot about myself. It's exhilarating and horrible at exactly the same time.” Tricia, aspiring career changer I am a career coach, and one of my clients emailed me that sentiment to describe the mental gymnastics of trying to change careers after 10+ years in an area that no longer excited her. She was excited at the prospect of change, but the change itself felt really hard. I advised her to do something every day to keep her bigger vision and especially the excitement of the change front of mind: for example, create and display prominently a vision [...]
We get a lot of questions about how to get started in real estate investing. We’re not financial advisers so do not give financial advice, especially specific buy (or sell) recommendations. Besides, investment criteria for a first (or subsequent) investment should vary based on multiple, very personal factors, such as life circumstance, goals and priorities, risk appetite and your talents and expertise. Click to pin me! Instead of making specific recommendations for others, we talk about how we approach real estate investing for our own personal situation, which might give ideas and inspiration on what to do (or not!). We [...]
We recently took a five-day trip, Thursday to Monday, to Tamarindo, which seemed a perfect example of bleisure (business + leisure) travel. We timed the trip around the annual homeowners’ association meeting at our condo complex, so it was first and foremost a business trip. Once we had the dates for the trip, we lined up other business meetings and errands since many things are best handled live - in fact, some things can only be handled live. Of course, since Costa Rica is a place that we love, we squeezed in our favorite leisure activities in-between. A trip to [...]
A few months ago, we moved into one of our Florida rentals and have made Florida our primary residence as of 2020. The rental needed a lot of work, as we had a tenant in place for six years. A longtime tenant is great financially because there is no lost rent due to vacancy or turnover costs in-between move-ins. However, when you do turn over the unit, there is a lot of deferred maintenance that you now have to do. At the time we turned over this unit, we considered selling it. Therefore, we didn’t want to make big updates [...]
We posted before about how we are targeting FIRE in stages of increasing spending levels: Our stage 1 is relocating full-time to Costa Rica and a level of spending that can easily be covered by our current income streams. This first stage is also purely hypothetical -- a Plan B option we set up just in case we need to drastically reduce our spending. As of now, the longest time we have spent there is one month in Costa Rica in 2019. Our stage 2 is relocating full-time to Florida and a higher level of spending than Stage 1 but [...]
