Tag Archives: moving to Puerto Rico

Tumbling Down the Rabbit Hole

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Our upcoming move to la isla del encanto has been one heck of a journey, and we haven’t even moved yet! It has come to mean so many things to us that it really is difficult to explain to others without a lengthy conversation that challenges commonly held beliefs. For this reason we normally leave it to simple things that we all understand; nice weather (no snow), growing plants, playing in the ocean, and achieving a goal. When we first started down our path and looked at properties in Puerto Rico we were simply going to get a mortgage and move. That was the extent of our planning. No idea of how we were going to make money or what we would be doing.

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First Property We tried to Purchase

Through the process of discovery which unfolded in front of us on our path we found solutions to all the big ‘problems’. How are we going to buy food? How are we going to PAY OUR BILLS!? Do I need a corporate/cubicle job down there? I was obviously still thinking in the box.  A box I had forgot existed even though I am in it everyday.

I didn’t realize what actual freedom entails or that I was even in a system that doesn’t promote or teach it, which is odd because we live in the ‘land of the free’. I didn’t even realize I wasn’t free! I like to use the movie “Matrix” as an analogy to the realization of what we were actually up against.

The answers came over time.

One essential thing was to cut our bills to a manageable size (no mortgage, very little in the way of consumer goods and NO SUBSCRIPTIONS). It’s pretty easy in the U.S. and totally normal to spend $1000/mo or more on just a spot to sleep. And that seems…I dunno…Kind of ridiculous. When you are first starting out on your own, that consumes a lot of your money. That money that you traded your life’s energy for.  Then add on cable, phone, utilities and all the other modern conveniences of life I haven’t ever been without for long.

Why do I have to spend money simply to exist?
A> Because that is the way it was decided long before me.  It is that simple.

The meaning behind this became profound.  Debt is the basis of American lives and is what our economy is built upon.  We as a nation rarely if ever mention this and certainly the paid for advertising of our mainstream media isn’t going to let it be known.  It isn’t taught in public school, or discussed on the television.  The debt based consumer mindset opened my eyes to how the things I buy hold me down. Everything I purchase has associated costs.  The concept of less is more started to appeal to me and also gets me closer to our end goal.

This is a huge consideration in my life now. Want that shiny object?  Would you trade your life for it? Is it worth 2-10 years of my life to have a new Corvette Z06 that will continue to consume more of my life’s energy (in the form of money for gas, licensing, insurance, tickets, repairs and worry)? No. I have struggled with this as an American male.  I started to question it. Where does that consumerism seed get started? Is it just an exploitation of a hard-wired evolutionary biological mechanism?  Is it installed into me by society and advertising? I think it’s a mixture, but it is deeply rooted in our culture and taught to us as children.  Want.

justification-for-higher-education
This poster was in MANY of my classrooms

You see. This decision to walk a different path, even if just slightly,  from the standard has spawned an introspective thought process.  This is where true freedom begins, with our choices.  Not just the choices of what to buy, but the choice of how to think.  How to operate this human machinery.  It has allowed me to see more clearly and be more aware of my surroundings, motivations and beliefs.  All of this came from a simple goal to move to an island.

IMG_0244

Creating the lifestyle that we envisioned is now on our doorstep. We are both looking forward to a life without the rat race. No more waking up everyday at 6am to shower, eat, commute and work towards someone else’s dream and someone else’s freedom. We get to work at our dream and our freedom.  At the age of 34 I’d say that is one hell of an accomplishment and we are only getting started.

Today marks my last day of work and entrance into wonderland.

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Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize

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We have come a long way. When we began writing this blog five years ago (five years!), we had no idea how to write a blog (the very first posts are pretty bad, lol) and we had only a vague idea of when we were moving to Puerto Rico. We had a contract to buy a finca with 25 acres in the jungled outskirts of Lares, Puerto Rico and were just waiting for the paperwork to clear, a mortgage to come through, and ideas for income sources when we moved to appear.

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At the first property we tried to buy

We thought, perhaps, within that year.

But things changed; the title work didn’t come through cleanly. The mortgage companies said it was non-comforming and in general it just sort of fell apart. In the mean time, we kept working and living in Colorado and as we thought about it we became more and more drawn toward the west side and the ocean. We looked and looked for properties and visited PR various times. We even put in another offer/contract on a place in Isabela/San Sebastain, before we finally found and bought our little slice of paradise in Rincon, Puerto Rico.

From other side
The Prize! 🙂

Now, we are finally on the verge of the big jump. We have worked out the kinks. In just about 100 days, we will have left all that we know -our friends, family, jobs, home- and will begin our new life, from scratch.

Now that we are in the home stretch, we have to close down our life in Greeley, Colorado. I am finding that this is much like attempting to unravel all the various roots and ties we have here. And they run much deeper and tangled than I initially thought.

We are still selling nearly everything we have. This has been a much more emotional task than we thought when we started. Everything we keep in our lives has some sort of reason for being there. Sometimes they are very superficial, and other times, they have huge sentimental and identity attachments, like Britton’s Corvette or my jewelry armoire that was a gift from BK.

We are also trying to detach from opportunities and work we have here. While we have to remain somewhat present to our current lives, we also have to know that we just can’t get too wrapped up in the latest and greatest new event. As it turned out, at my work, one of the grant programs (a cardiovascular health disparities program) that I coordinated just happened to end too. We had a nice celebration to acknowledge all the work we had done over the last two years on this program.

Ama Tu Vida crew
There’s going to be lots of goodbyes

We are also going through our to-do lists. Like doctors’ visits, vet visits, making accounts paperless, arranging places for our too-sentimental-to-sell, too-bulky-to-bring stuff, checking off our Colorado bucket list (and occasionally adding to it). We are planning our going-away party. I also had some information to share with Greeley chicken enthusiasts who want to know what the chicken laws are, so I finally wrote a page here about the rules for chickens in Greeley that I had been meaning to write for some time.

americana chickens

Sometimes we still get so busy in our day-to-day chores we forget what we are moving towards! It’s important to keep our eyes on the prize, but we also can’t be so forward looking that we miss what we are doing right now. This life-changing stuff has been a good practice for a lot of things. Mostly of balance and of letting go.

Letting go of our egos. Letting go of our stuff. Letting go of money and comfort and jobs. Letting go of our identities (somewhat). Letting go, moving on and making space for something new entirely. Sometimes we get profound insights on why we are doing this and other times we break down (probably mostly out of fear) and start having alternate reality fantasies of what our life would be if we just stayed in Colorado. And, of course, we know that it would be good and fine, because we love our life, but it would be, well, the same game. Rinse and repeat.

We have played the game here in Colorado. We have played the heck out of it! We are really good players. We have won this game. It’s time to collect that prize and start playing a new game. Watch out, world. Here we come.

BK and Cass2

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Moving to Puerto Rico Checklist

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Lately Puerto Rico has really been in our mind. We are MORE THAN READY to move mentally/emotionally. So we have been thinking about getting ready to move physically. We wrote up all the things we will need to do in the next few months so that we can just up and move there. A lot of this is a general checklist for moving pretty much anywhere, but some of it is specific to moving to Rincon Puerto Rico.  After living somewhere for so long (Greeley) there are things we just don’t think about much.  We have lived here in our first home for 10 years.  Things like car titles, using up old stuff, medical and school transcripts/records , making sure we have Social Security cards, etc.  Also we don’t really have an “address” to ship stuff to, so that will be something to figure out.

For those of you who have already made the move to Puerto Rico (or elsewhere), are there any other things we should think about/take care of before we ship out?

  • Banks (change over address and ensure future bank cards are delivered to us)
  • Open new Bank Account inPuerto Rico
  • Cars (get titles together, sell)
  • Buy new car inPuerto Rico
  • Go thru all Stuff/Junk (to friends/family, charity, sell or toss). *Question: How much should we take with or replace?
  • Find new homes for the chickens
  • Get Kitty’s vet records and learn what it will take to bring him with us on the airplane
  • Get house cleaned professionally (carpet, bathrooms, kitchen, etc)
  • Put remaining properties under managment(2)
  • Host a going away party!
  • Put together all personal / professional records
  • Call insurance agents to cancel car insurance and change home policies to rental and update address
  • Sell assets we can’t manage from afar
  • Use up old stuff and don’t buy new stuff (Frozen food, cleaners, canned food, bathroom supplies, etc)
  • Look for boxes and pack up / label and have family ship to us when we get there
  • Buy airline tickets and line up rental car for appx 1 month while we look for a new car
  • Find new homes for our plants (coffee, banana, orchids)
  • Get tax documents together for 2012 filing
  • Update address with property tax assessor, 401k, IRA, etc
  • Setup things we need down there (we already have water and electric.  Mayyyybe internet?  Cell phone? )
  • Find new server / hosting for website and promote

We have been thinking about this a lot more lately as it appears we will be moving our date up.  We don’t have an exact new deadline but we figure we can take care of a lot of these things now in preparation.  Stay tuned for posts on many of the items in the above list!

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Can We Make it a Year (And Do We Want To)?

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We are nearing the year mark for the countdown to Puerto Rico. But lately we have been asking ourselves, “Can we make it a year…and do we want to”? As I mentioned before we are pretty well set up to move. We have a good savings. We have some income set up. We have the property paid for in Puerto Rico. Lately it just seems like we are READY! In late January Britton had a dream that he would leave work in 9 months…which is now. October. I told him then that he was one year off of the goal. But now I wonder if he had been on to something.

Everything is changing at both of our jobs. Britton is down to a team of two from five when he started and the additional work is a heavy burden. His on-call has gone from once every 5 weeks to every other week which is super stressful to him. At my work, we’ve been having delays with grant contracts. As I await the start date of the grant in which I do inspections, I have realized how much I really do enjoy being out of the office. Because of a delay in this grant, I’ve had to do much more office work, and I just don’t think I can live in the cubicle anymore! I have had a small taste of freedom and want it back! We are also getting a new division director and so there has been a lot of change in this season of change.

And what’s more, as the weather begins to turn cold we just keep asking ourselves, is it time? Is it time to make the leap to the unknown? To our own personalized paradise? Then come the doubts and excuses…should we be more prepared? We should save more. What if I wanted to come back? What if this is all just some crazy (early) mid life crisis? Will I regret this? Blah. Excuses not to move. Excuses not to grow. Excuses to be comfortable instead of hit in the head with LIFE!

I know this is a bit of a rant, but I just really felt like I needed to get it off my chest. What do you think? Are we crazy? Should we stay and be cautious or throw it to the wind and roam! Can we make it a year? Or should we?

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