Living The Semi-Retired Life: Setting An Ambitious Goal On Money, Work And Moving To Spain

There’s still time to respond to yesterday’s post about travel. Specifically travel content in the newsletter. As I write this, 86% of subscribers who responded to our little poll want more travel content.

So I plan to do more travel content.

The post that comes after this one will discuss the platform everybody loves to (misguidedly) hate these days—Airbnb. Much to her delight, it will also show how my girlfriend opened my mind to a different way of booking travel. Broadly and specifically, it’s important to keep an open mind on travel.

But first…

Today, we deal with something good that’s happening in my life that directly links to me and my girlfriend’s plans to move to Spain. In the shell of a nut, I’m tired of talking about moving to Spain and want to be able to do it sooner rather than later.

In the housing survey we did in June, 45% of subscribers (that’s 48 people) who live in the US or Canada said they plan on moving. So, to that end, if you plan on moving to another country, what’s your timeline? Ideally, when do you want to make it happen?

This doesn’t mean we’re picking up and doing it tomorrow. That would not make sense because we need to ensure we have our personal financial ducks in a row before moving. So I have set an ambitious goal for myself that includes several elements I will expand on in today’s installment—

• Work. I have a new gig.

• Money. I got the new gig so I can save more.

• Maintaining a balance. I don’t want to fall into the trap of working too much. I have been there before. And it’s counterproductive.

• My psychology. I tend to set ambitious, even lofty goals. Then, I like to write about them. By doing this, I put pressure on myself and create a very public way of holding myself accountable.

As I noted in a Substack Note the other day—

So, here’s the ambitious goal and how I intend to go about achieving it.