At my last job I was making close to six figures a year. I should have been rolling in the dough but I wasn’t. I was mounted in debt (house, car, student loans and some small credit card bills). On top of that I had expenses for my son for various therapies throughout the years and as you know, things pop up. Needless to say, I wasn’t rolling in the dough or coasting like one would think when someone makes that amount of money.
After I was laid off from that job I was given a significant severance for a number of months and 5 weeks into that severance I was offered a job making just over six figures. Do you know how that would have set me up? Making over six figures plus my old salary for some coming months? Whooohoooo! It was so tempting, I took the job!
Then I started trying to figure out how I would handle getting my son home from school and homework done and fed and to bed since I had been working from home for years and the new job was an in-office job. The more I thought about it the more I realized I would hardly see my son.
I realized I would:
- leave before he left for school OR drop him at a day care 2 hours before school started.
- have to have someone pick him up from school, do his homework with him and be there as he got ready for bed.
- see him for 1 to 1.5 hours a day max.
- pay out a nice chunk of my new salary to a nanny who would then be spending more time with my kid than me, his mother.
- be at the job’s beck and call (they didn’t say it but when they pay you that type of money they expect it).
- have a boss I didn’t like as I could tell from the exchanges we had once I accepted the offer.
- and so much more…
This was NOT the life I desired in any way, shape or form and it came time for me to stop letting fear make my decisions and turn to my heart and faith so I rescinded my offer acceptance. This was the beginning of my journey to selling my house, taking my son out of the school system to homeschool him and head out of the US on our “Dare to be great” journey.
Now I work diligently for 3-4 hours a day and sporadically throughout the rest of the day (and some days not at all) while I hang with my son. I hardly need an 8th of that old salary to live well. When I say “live well” I mean a 3 story apt for $190 a month, two weeks worth of food is about $60-80, we take our laundry to a laundry service for $5-10 every few weeks, high speed internet is $30, taxis are $2. I could go on but I’ll stop there. It’s crazy!
So many people say they can’t move abroad because they don’t have the money. Can we stop the shenanigans? Where there’s a will there’s a way. I’ll be the first one to tell you, I used to say “I don’t know how to make money” or some form of this, too. I was so trained to work for someone else that even though I could see other ways to make money, I just couldn’t get my mind into doing it. Don’t get me wrong! I was trying; I just wasn’t successful. I’ve heard it mentioned, in the homeschooling world, as deschooling from the employee mindset to the entrepreneur mindset and it is a process.
At the same time, I’ve also found that when you decide to do something (not “kinda decide” – this is another topic for another post) you figure it out. The minute I set a date to leave and things were in motion, let me tell you, I was miraculously able to get that money ball rolling. The ball wasn’t based on one thing, it was a hodgepodge of things, which I think is the first hurdle. We tend to think all our money needs to come from one place. It doesn’t and, most importantly, it shouldn’t! (The is the problem with the job.) Once I began to look around and think of what I can do and what I like to do, I had so many ideas to toy with and I started to take action on them. The only requirement for me, having worked remotely in a 9-5 for 5 years, was that all work must be able to be done on my time, when I feel like it.
If you’re still reading then I’m going to assuming you’re feeling me on some level. I know you can do this, because I did it and I, seriously, had some mental hurdles to bust through. Let me hand you a real truth that is misunderstood in the US. If you don’t have the money in the US, then it’s probably a major reason for you to move abroad. Stop, stop right now! Don’t even get started with thinking you don’t know how to make money independently because I am going to help you!
I’m going to walk you through my 10 month program, The Single Mom’s Path to Freedom: How International Living Can Change the Game. We will dive into 10 points, in a supportive group of women all working towards the same goal. One of these 10 points is MONEY and how to make it independent of location AND how to manage a nest egg because some of you out there have homes and other assets you can cash in.
If you are curious to learn about other amazing ways moving abroad can help you and your kids there’s the building community aspect, new ways to learn and exciting new places to explore!
So, are you ready? We start March 27th. Click here for all the details and tell me, what’s the biggest mind game you are struggling with around money?
1 comment
Such a well written and thought ou t post. I look forward to reading more.