Expat Life: World—ready or not, here we come!

Edd:  I never anticipated the feedback we’ve gotten since announcing our plans to reimagine our own retirement.

Cynthia:  The support has been remarkable. So many friends and relatives all over the world have said, “You must come stay with us!”

E:  And we’ve heard from a lot of our subscribers and members too. Not only to wish us well. Several have recommended really interesting places for us to visit.

C:  You know what else has been a surprise?

E:  The film production company contacting us from the UK?

C:  Well, yeah, that for sure. I’m talking about the number of people who have shared that what we’re about to do—freely roaming the planet with no agenda—is a dream of theirs too.

E:  That’s true. I think “freely” is the key word. Whether it involves travel or not, who doesn’t want to enjoy a sense of freedom in life?

C:  Yet so few are willing to do what it takes to achieve it. Like we frequently say, hope without action is only wishful thinking.

E:  You know me with the song lyrics. What you said reminds of a line from the Eagles: “So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains, and we never even know we have the key."

C:  It was amusing having lunch with friends this week and them asking, “So tell us the plan. Where are you going first? How long will you stay? What’s the order of countries you want to see?”

E:  Ha! We were like, “OK, we’ll go to the first place in Mexico and be there until we feel like it’s time to move on. Then we’ll book the next location and repeat that process until we’ve seen and done enough. We have no idea how long all that will take or at this point which country we’ll visit next.”

C:  Of course, this will be a totally new way for us to approach traveling. When we took a trip—as opposed to a “vacation”—in our working days we planned as many details as possible.

E:  Right. We only had a certain amount of time off and didn’t want to regret “missing” something in the event we never returned. It’s so easy to talk about what we’re about to do and imagine what it will be like. But the honest truth is we won’t really know until we get out there and do it!

C:  We’re honored so many people want to follow our adventures, but even more importantly we hope to inspire them to take action and make their own dreams come true.

E:  So long ago we said, “We got off the plane in Cuenca just like everyone else.” Meaning we’ve never thought of ourselves as any different from all the others searching for a better life. We simply arrived with an intention to make our expat experience work at the highest possible level.

C:  And now we’re taking that same approach as we sort of become “Ultimate Expats.” I think we have come to understand this is how we can answer a higher calling, to do the greatest good for the greatest number.

E:  Then let’s go do that. World, ready or not, here we come!