Fearless Money

Reading an article at Stake Ventures brought on the fever. I so want to live out of the country for a while. Actually, I should say “we”, since my wife completely shares this goal with me.

Family Goals

Driving (endlessly driving) back from Nebraska when coming home from vacation this summer, we talked for hours about our family goals. One of our biggest goals was to live out of the country for at least six months sometime in the next few years. We’ve talked about that one for years.

We’re planning to live in one of Dustin’s father’s houses in Mexico, most likely in San Miguel de Allende. It is a gorgeous town, with plenty of amenities for expatriots. Most importantly, we already love the place. We love Mexico in general, and both agree that of all the places we’ve visited in the world, Mexico is one of the few places we can imagine making home.

Reading the excellent article about bootstrapping your business in Argentina, I realized that despite agreeing on the goal, we have not been taking any steps to accomplish it. If we seriously want to do that, then we need to let it guide some of our choices. For example, our house.

In the few years since we’ve owned our latest house (my fourth), it has increased in value by nearly $250K. Theoretically. It would certainly be worth that if we put some effort into presentation and curb appeal. It could easily be worth another $100K if we made strategic upgrades to it. It is in a wonderful, desirable neighborhood in Portland, and should be fairly resistant to any “plateau” or “bubble” effects. At least, as long as we sell in the next couple years.

If we are going to move like that, we should probably also not buy any large items. At least we should not but anything which would be hard to resell or which would lose a lot of value. In fact, we should work diligently to pare down some of our too-much-stuff from the storage room in the shop.

Language is a harder question. Neither of us speak spanish, yet it would be simple to just enroll in an intensive course such as the famous Warren Hardy School. My father-in-law thinks taking courses here would probably not really give us much of a jump up on the learning process.

Of course, one of the big things is a source of income. If eBookTribe is a success, then we’ll be well on our way to filling that need. If not, then I’m simply going to need to learn to freelance. It is about time.

Decisions

We’re going to move ahead with this goal. It felt great to talk it out with Dustin and decide that we’re really going to do it. The kids will benefit so greatly from it, and we’ll all have a blast.

One life goal, coming up!

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