Transition 3.0 Update

 The main news in the Transition 3.0 ruminations is the ongoing focus on what our next big travel paradigm (take that MBA'S 'paradigm' Ha!) is going to look like. 

We started this conversation prior to the last election as the pandemic was beginning to rage and the rage in our country was at its highest. Both Wife and I could see having a U.S. passport as a distinct limitation on where we could travel. Plus we were just tired of the constant vituperation in the political discourse. We were introduced to the Golden Visa concept by Daughter #2 which allows you to buy permanent residency in a country. If that country was in Europe, it meant you could stay there permanently and travel to any of the 26 countries included in the Schengen treaty. 

We started to do serious research on a move to Greece. The goal was to have another travel experience but one based on staying mostly in one place. Plus it opened the opportunity to do shorter travel (in time and distance) to many places we had not been to.

Fast forward, the election ended up changing for now the political discourse and that pressure is nowhere near as great. As we did more and more research on what it would be like to live outside of the U.S. for three to five years, we realized that at our age, some of the challenges might be a bit much for us. But a bigger issue is that Wife still has a significant back issue that is alleviated by pain control injections four times a year. If we lived in another country, how would we deal with that.

We also found that the idea of being in Europe in the winter, even the Mediterranean winter was not that appealing. We were thinking of wintering somewhere else like in Southeast Asia. This led to a different concept. what if we were out of the country for 2 months at a time to a place that we were returning? Say one stay in the Med area, one in Southeast Asia, and one in a place to be named later. The key point being finding places that we liked going back to, maybe even finding rentals we could go back to, so we would get a chance to get more and more familiar with the areas we were selecting. Then we could adjust our timing so we were getting the medical care we need when back in the U.S. 

Nothing is off the table yet. The biggest thing we need is for the world to open up! As soon as that happens, we will be out and researching on the ground!