Fresh ideas

I recently had someone send me some links to some really interesting websites regarding other people who have taken the approach my wife and I took. That is, moving to a country/area where the cost of living is nill in comparison to your country of origin. Take a gander at this and this.

Some people question the stability of such a move. I'd like to point out the fact that we are making a fraction of what we made back in the US, but we have far more money to spend every month, we put more money in the savings each month, and we take far more vacations per year then we ever would have been able to do if we stayed back in the States.

One in particular was from a UK couple who moved to Thailand. Their cost of living is 500 pounds a month vs. the 2k+ pounds per month that it used to cost them living in the UK. They do websites and consultations. And, similarly to my situation, her hubby lost his job 2 years ago due to redundancy, and when they were stressing about how to find a job in the recession market and panicking about the mortgage and other costs of living, the thought suddenly dawned upon them: why do we need to stay in the UK to have the life we want to live?

The short answer? You don't. When your living expenses are 500 a month you can literally work a fraction of the hours, for a fraction of the pay, that you would have needed to survive in the Western world. And ironically you can live like a king vs. living like a pauper, despite the fact you are making less money than you used to! In our case, Evy and I are able to enjoy part-time work schedules and still have more than enough money to go out all the time, take vacations 4-5 times a year, and have all the nice little toys we want...all of it without having to stress about a 40 hour a week job and someone breathing down our necks.

I've touched on this topic a few times in other posts, so it was really awesome seeing someone else's website focusing on the exact same things that we discovered when we made the transition.

So far my favorite read is the Location Independant, or LIP, website. Amazing stuff there from the UK couple. They are a bit more "business" savy than Evy and I are currently, but it's a nice look at someone who came to the same conclusion we came to about living a nomadic lifestyle and still achieving all the same goals that the "rat race" aspire towards.

The bonuses of being Location Independent? As I've discussed in previous posts, there are a *lot* of them, not the least of which is the ability to put more money in the savings, take more vacations, and enjoy our lives to a greater degree than we ever could have staying back in a society where 40+ hours a week is the only way to even barely survive.

Take a look. These are a couple of good sites that I plan on fully perusing over the next few days of my week off work :)