How I Turned a Lifelong Dream Into a Reality

I remember the moment I knew—like, absolutely knew—I would live overseas one day. 

I was at a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the Pacific and the main beach below in Laguna Beach, California, where I lived at the time. Three of us were out on the open-air patio, sitting under those heat lamps that sort of look like mini-light poles, drinking margaritas. It was me, my roommate/workmate Chuck, and his college buddy, who was in town as he transited America on a path taking him to Bangkok from Nairobi, Kenya. 

He was a writer for a U.S. news magazine being reassigned to another part of the world. He’d stopped in Los Angeles to visit family and friends. 

His stories of living in Kenya mesmerized me. His travels were as inspiring as they were jealousy-provoking. I gawked at his passport—125 pages with extensions and nearly filled. 

“If you wanna live overseas, just do it,” he advised. 

This was the spring of 1990. 

I had my marching orders. I will live overseas, I told myself. 

It took me another 28 years to “just do it,” but I did it. And now, as you know, here I am in Prague… 

Which brings me to the point of today’s dispatch: Just doing it is a whole lot easier today than it was back then.  

In the weeks after Chuck’s buddy departed (I think his name was Eric), I spent a great many hours in Orange County traffic thinking about living and writing abroad. I remember wanting to know what apartment rents cost in Nairobi…maybe that would be a good place to live. 

This, however, was before the internet was actually useful. So, I trekked to an international newspaper stand in L.A. and spent a ridiculous sum on a two-week-old, Sunday edition of The Standard, one of Nairobi’s largest newspapers, just to peruse the classifieds to gauge apartment rents. 

How different it is today… 

Nowadays, you can easily hit up local real estate sites online to gauge costs and see images of apartments and where they’re located in a city. There’s no question that moving overseas has become easier and less intimidating. And people are taking advantage of this new reality… 

I see in my social media feeds all the Gen Y and Gen Z folks who are talking about moving abroad or who crow about already having done so. In one of my Twitter groups, one person (in her 20s) splits time between Greece and Asia, while another (30s) is plotting a move to Mexico. 

But this is not just a young person’s game. Far from it. So many boomers and Xers are making the leap too, now that it’s so relatively easy. 

The Social Security Administration now sends benefit checks to 713,000 bank accounts outside the U.S. At the end of 2018, the number was 685,000. So we’re up another 30,000 overseas retires in 3.5 years. 

Of course, the number of retired Americans living abroad is almost assuredly larger, given that so many people choose to have their check deposited into their U.S. bank account and move money overseas as necessary. 

So, moving abroad is more achievable than ever.  

However, we do face a new challenge in relocating overseas today—an overabundance of often-unreliable information. 

There’s a lot of inaccurate information online, as I found in my own research before moving to the Czech Republic. Websites are so desperate for clicks that they’ll publish poorly researched nonsense from some freelance writer who may never even have visited the country in question.  

As an insider in the writing industry, I can tell you that this is exceedingly common.   

Amid this sea of misinformation, what people are crying out for is boots on the ground knowledge, and the context and the opinions of real expats so they can make an informed decision. 

I see the demand for this all the time.  

An acquaintance (in his late 30s) regularly pings me about Portugal, wanting to know if he should pursue a Golden Visa or maybe take advantage of Portugal’s D7 visa, one of the easiest paths to residency in the European Union. (The most challenging qualification: Proving you earn about $9,800 in income, even passively, per year.) 

One of the most fun parts of my professional life is helping people with questions like these, so they can follow in my footsteps. 

That’s why I’ll be joining the experts from International Living at the Retire Overseas Bootcamp in Atlanta this October…so I can share my firsthand knowledge and experience and make your path to moving overseas as easy and enjoyable as possible. (Click here to learn how you can attend at a discount.) 

This September, I will have been at this live-abroad life for four years. Honestly, there’s nothing I would change about it (except maybe convince Waffle House to open an outlet here).  

Reaching this point required many more years than I’d hoped when I was sitting on that cliff-side patio all those years ago in Laguna Beach. So it goes. 

Nevertheless, I eventually followed that “just do it” advice, and I’m thrilled about the new life I’ve found. 

So, I will now pen the same advice for whoever needs to hear it: Just do it. 

You won’t regret it.  

If anything, you’ll probably be a bit miffed at yourself for not doing it sooner. Because relocating overseas is certain to reset your life in all the best possible ways.