How do you feel about road trips? Throwing a few things into the car, a change or two of clothes, snack food, loading up the iPod with your favourite tunes, your favourite travel mug, a map, a full tank of gas and GOING somewhere!
The anticipation builds the last few days before you start out, imagining not just the arrival point, but the journey itself. New roads, new scenery, new people, stepping out from under the weight of the day-to-day responsibilities and just going into discovery mode. Fresh and full of possibilities around every new corner, and if it’s a place you’ve never been before, every corner is new. It’s invigorating!!
Now, imagine that road trip isn’t just for a two-week holiday. Imagine it’s open-ended. And, just to spice it up, you don’t know where you’re going. Wait a minute! I’ll need more than a change or two of clothes. Get out the big suitcase! And I’ll need my own pillow, some more shampoo, another pair of shoes, my laptop, more music, a movie or two loaded on my iPad, what else…? And just where are we headed, anyway? How will I know what kind of clothes to pack?!
With all our ‘stuff’ safely locked away in a 10’x20’ storage unit in Port Alberni, the ferry would disgorge us onto the BC mainland and south down I5 with one major question bouncing around in the car, to the tunes of Bob Seger (after all, what’s a road trip without Bob launching you down the road around some unknown corner?!) The all important, pivotal question? “Where, in the world, can we live a reasonable lifestyle on our small fixed income?”
McDean had been doing some fairly extensive research on the growing expat communities popping up around the world, beginning to burgeon with people similar to us: retiring baby boomers who’s retirement funds have been decimated by the Wall Street/banking gang, or they’re just simply beginning to retire and struggling along on Social Security or CPP – maybe or maybe not supplemented with miniscule pensions.
We actually even had the beginnings of a list – one we had planned to continue researching and use – some day. Someday just showed up about five years earlier than we expected. The list tended to consist of Latin American countries: Honduras, Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize, etc. Places where the cost of living is, according to all reports, a lot cheaper than it is in North America. With an unexpected early retirement, all we had to figure out now is where to start. How tough could that be?
The plan was to narrow down our choices until we were ready to buy the plane tickets, as we visited friends & family and said our good-byes, since we envisioned giving our grand experiment about a year. We decided to give ourselves the summer to bid our nearest and dearest adieu and figure it out, planning to be at a boarding gate in PDX (Portland International Airport) by the end of August, headed to our next adventure – somewhere.
Every time we got into the car and headed down another Northwest road, whether in Canada or the US, we were brainstorming. Discovering our way as we tried to figure out our next baby step on our journey. Pros and cons, why-nots and what-ifs. The honing down process is a journey all in itself.
It’s now the end of July and we’ve finally decided it’s Mexico. We don’t know a lot more than that, but it’s a good starting place. We have a month to figure out which Mexican airport to fly into and take a bus (or buses) to find a good place to plant ourselves for a year. It seems like every day is a new starting place for something, isn’t it?