Why a year away- Why not!

It is something that we have been thinking about for many years. We toyed with the idea several times with different countries and periods of time. Each time we would hit some imaginary roadblock that would pause our thinking and the topic would be put aside for several months.

The one thing that kept niggling in our minds was- do we want to look back in 10, 15, 20 years time and say, gosh I wish we did that!!!!

So several months back I was listening to The Four Hour Work Week audiobook by Tim Ferriss. Although written nearly 10 years ago, many of the themes in the book resinated with me as I run my own business that can be location agnostic. There was one section where he talks about overcoming your fears in relation to making the move to a new location and working remotely. In short it involved sitting down and writing down the ‘worst case scenarios’ for doing a particular action.

When I actually paused and thought about things logically, there were not a huge number of downsides. Sure being further away from some clients could be a downside, but as we have clients globally I would be closer to others. The kids would lose contact with some of their school friends but make amazing new friendships with people at their new school. The list went on, and most of the ‘negatives’ ended up as a positive.

So we made the decision to spend 12 months overseas and have our kids (7 and 5 at the time) attend school in a new country. Then came the big decision- what country?