We're About To Start A New(ish) Life In Spain

The semi-retired life X two as we look at a lifestyle and numbers in America that simply don't add up

I ran some numbers on housing the other day for something else I was writing.

And—even with interest rates coming down—the math is ugly and underscores why the future for many people in the United States is precarious at best.

Before we review the numbers and relate them to the (sort of) new life my wife and I can’t wait to live in Spain, consider a number that absolutely does add up.

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Anyhow—

Put the 30-year mortgage interest rate at 7% (where it was), 6% (about where it’s at now) or 5% (where it’s probably headed) on a $433,229 home (that’s the national median) and you require a six-figure income (or more) if you hope to spend no more than 30% of what you make on housing.

Up the price of the house to a more realistic $750,000 and you’re well into the six figures. At 5%, you need to earn $168,840 annually to avoid crossing the 30% threshold.

Of course, this comes after you drop between $86,646 and $150,000 on a down payment.

This data begs the question: Who in the hell is buying homes in the United States today?

The answer is: Rich people, flush with cash, and corporations, likewise.

The other day, I wrote this on Medium:

As of the second quarter of 2024, the average new car payment was $734 a month…

Therefore, to afford only that $734 payment, you need to make $7,340 a month. As of the end of June this year, the weekly median wage for “the nation’s 119.9 million full-time wage and salary workers were $1,143,” or $4,572 a month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Shit doesn’t add up…

Who is buying new cars these days?

I don’t know the answer to that question.

I do know—for the record—that the standard is to spend no more than 10% of your income on transportation. This includes expenses in addition to your payment, such as auto insurance, which is, even with inflation apparently cooling, up 16.5% from last year.

Anyhow X two—

These and related realities contribute to our reasons for moving to Spain.

We can’t touch a house in Los Angles (where the median price is about $1,013,623). And we’re sick and tired of driving. I paid off my car earlier in the year and hope to get $6,000-$7,000 or so when I sell it in November. That’ll go along way to padding the savings and aiding the financial elements of this transition to a foreign country.

But, these numbers aside, the sick and tired part applies more than the financial part. We would be moving even if we were made of money.

As I have indicated in our recent four-part series on semi-retirement and elsewhere, this move is about way more than money. It’s about place. About the right type of place to live the lives we wanna live right now.

Rent or own, I want to walk out of my building’s front door into a vibrant, pedestrian-oriented built environment. It just so happens that home ownership—actually apartment ownership in our case—appears to be a much more realistic possibility for us in Spain than it does in America. In fact, it’s impossible in America.

In Los Angeles, you can’t—in a vast majority of situations—live without a car. It just so happens that—in Spanish cities—it’s much easier to not have a car. They’re designed that way.

What’s the point of being semi-retired—of being anything really—if you can’t live the life you wanna live right now? If you’re not in the optimal (built and social) environment to do the things you like to do the way you like to do them, semi-retirement is little more than a work arrangement. By moving to Spain’s third-largest city, we’re about to walk the walk and truly live semi-retirement as a lifestyle.

We’re about to put the emphasis not on how many hours we work, but what we do—and how we do it—when we’re not working. And—to an extent—the logistical and physical contexts within which we work. But—more so, and more importantly—the former.

I’m tired of settling. Falling back on shit like—

• We make good money.

• We’re comfortable.

• We pay way less than market rate for a rent-controlled apartment.

• Our neighborhood is nice and kind of/sort of walkable and kind of/sort of attractive as long as you go south and east, but not too far north or west.

• We’re happy.

All of these things are true. But—in the shell of a nut—they’re little more than half-ass rationalizations when you consider the options at our disposal.

The fact is that we’re preparing—in just over three months (!)—to take the good life we have and make it better. To enhance it in a built and social environment that’s way better suited to our needs, wants, preferences, longstanding desires and sociopolitical values.

No doubt that it’s our current iteration of semi-retirement that makes this move possible. I’ll put that into perspective and explain how your philosophy on and how you structure semi-retirement can dictate you next move, whatever that move might look like for you.

That’s in the next installment, which will be for paid subscribers only. As will be most of what follows through the end of the year and into 2025 as we report—on the ground—from Spain. The free ride is over :-) So subscribe now!

Valencia, Spain / Russafa