So You Want To Move Abroad: To Spain From Washington, D.C.
Soon, we’ll be calling these streets home. The (usually sunny) streets of Valencia, Spain. Valencia gets about 300 sunny days per year, making it the sixth sunniest city in Europe. Though your perch relative to the coast matters, Los Angeles receives, on average, around 263 sunny days per year.
We’re this much closer to calling Spain home. In what will probably be the next installment, I’ll relay the details of the call we had—on Monday—with the person who will help us assemble the paperwork and apply for our visa.
In a minute, another So You Want To Move Abroad Q&A—and this is a lively and insightful one—with someone who left the US for Spain nearly six years ago!
But first …
This IS a newsletter for those of us who will Never Retire.
Some by choice. Some out of necessity. Some both.
A few of us will move abroad. Others will move within their home country. Some will stay put.
The thing that seems to unify us all is a desire to live as well as we can today—and in the second act of life—without succumbing to the daily grind.
Our Q&A today is all about how difficult it can be to have a good quality of life in much of the United States at a reasonable price. And how moving can greatly enhance quality of life and the value (not the amount of something) you receive for your money.
As Melisse and I embark on our journey, we’ll be updating our experience in real time. Making now an excellent time to upgrade to a paid newsletter subscription or founding membership.
Founding members immediately become lifetime members, so they pay once and never pay again. Founding memberships are just $100. If you’re already paying to subscribe, it might cost less on a pro-rated basis.
Anyhow …
Livia Dabs, a prolific and provocative writer on Medium.
She’s answers our questions today on leaving the US and life in Spain.
How big of an opinion does Livia have on all of this? Here’s what she says in her Medium profile:
I quit the rat race and the constant hustle to live sustainably and healthy. I just started to live off grid, showed the middle finger to our modern life.
I fall somewhere in between the parameters of this description. And I have almost entirely different lifestyle preferences than Livia. But her writing has constantly inspired and helped inform me as I follow it on Medium. So it’s great to have her agree to answer our questions about her experience in a way I can’t and never will be able to.