When talking with people about our plans to move to Mexico for a while, “why Mexico?” was almost always the first question asked. Sometimes it was asked with incredulity and other times more from a place of genuine curiosity. I’m going to give y’all the benefit of the doubt and treat this response as though it were the latter.
Here’s the real-real. Quar-year was tough. In global terms, we had it relatively easy. In local terms, less so. Steve’s job never took a pause. Small businesses, across the board, suffered more than big corporations. The small business he worked for chose between a temporary closing and docking employees’ pay or remaining open as a lifeline for their clients and continuing to pay everyone. This meant that, for the year many people were huddled up at home, he trudged into work every single day to be on the front lines with the general public. This also meant that I was working full time from home while also full-time parenting our then-8-year old through virtual third grade.
What about a pod, you say? All of the pods near us were primarily centered around the charter school (will happily rant about the inequities of charter schools in Atlanta ANY TIME) or were comprised solely of parents who either both worked remotely (so risk of exposure was nominal) or included primary parents without a job who could rotate teaching and caregiving duties, so we needed not apply.
One of the blessings of Covid is that it clarified that my job could translate to fully remote work without real compromise. And in the interest of transparency, I changed companies and got a promotion during the pandemic, which better positioned us to become a single-income family. My new company also embraced distributed teams in a way that my previous one only halfheartedly did, and that freedom made moving even easier. I’ll write more about remote work in a future post.
That’s a lot of context, but the suboptimal circumstances led to perpetual exhaustion and being stretched too thin with no space for renewal, which is what gave us the courage to call it. Hitting the “this is too much” wall over and over and over will force you to make change in your life. For us, we knew changes that needed to happen were fewer financial obligations, more quality parenting time with Hobbes, and a different context that would enable us a clearer perspective from which we could evaluate our priorities.
Fewer financial obligations
We sold our house, half of our furniture, most of our home decor, our second car, and gave away huge amounts of clothing, household items, food, kitchenware, and yard gear.
We paid off the car we’re driving to Mexico (a requirement for obtaining a TIP, which I’ll talk about another time) and moved the rest of the funds from the sale of our home into investment accounts.
Over the years, we’ve made a lot of sacrifices, especially in terms of lifestyle, and we’ve gotten lucky with a couple of real estate transactions, which has made it possible for us to be mostly debt-free. I’m still paying off my student loans, but name me a millennial who isn’t and I’ll show you one who was also handed a down payment for a home, trust funds for their kids, and a vacation spot.
Quality parenting time
Kids are resilient, of course. But a year of virtual schooling, playing with friends fewer times than I can count on one hand, and being parented by two over-committed adults isn’t great for anyone.
Different context; clearer perspective
Mexico is one of our favorite places in the world. We especially love the Pacific coast, but the Yucatan is really special, too. We’re excited about exploring places that we’ve never visited like Mexico City, Oaxaca, Guadalajara, and San Miguel de Allende. We’re also expecting to be pushed outside of our comfort zones in ways that will clarify what is important to us versus what’s just icing. Improving our Spanish and staring at the beautiful Bay of Banderas as much as possible is really, really special icing. Overall, though this is very lifestyle-dependent, the cost of living is lower here than in much of the U.S. which eases our transition into single-income life.
We want to be intentional about our lives. We want to better prioritize our time, energy, and money instead of slipping into defaults. I don’t expect us to wind up back in Atlanta or even in another new construction single-family home, but if we do, we will have confidence we’re investing in what is most important to us and we will embrace those decisions with joy. Right now, we’re going to shake it up and see what sticks.