Red Tape Is a Sure Sign of Liberation

I spent an inordinate amount of time today reading about the bureaucracies of getting a visa to spend more than three months in Spain. Undaunted, I began making our monthly checklist from now through the end of 2009 when we hope to be packed up and ready for launch.

One of the foolish thoughts I've been harboring is that two years is an incredibly long way away. Upon making the checklist, I began to wonder if two years would really be enough time to get house and finances and applications and visas and everything in order.

Something I learned today that was slightly disheartening is that, should one choose to live in Spain for a year without working, they would have to arrive with $75,000 (that's an internet reference and so I've got no claim to its validity) in their bank account (or in investments). Silly me, I was thinking somewhere in the ballpark of half that. The prospect of socking away 75K in two years has me reconsidering finding part time work as a TEFL teacher or something equally footloose that would, at least, get me a temporary visa with a work permit attached.

Obviously, I'll have to find ways to save more than we had planned which was already hovering around a knee-weakening $1,000/month. I'm envisioning this plan as a kind of snowball. If I set the goal of having a giant yard sale on Memorial Day weekend this year, I can save as planned until then and then take the savings up to that date plus any earnings from the garage sale to open a money market account where any future funds would go until we're ready to invest.

A yard sale by the end of May would mean that we will have to systematically go through each and every room of our house (including the basement---oh, the dread!) and rid ourselves of the excess. Don't worry, this won't be our only yard sale.

During this period, we will also be renewing our passports, weening ourselves off of the car (gas is currently costing us $150/month!), weening myself off of sugary stuffs (can you imagine, I spend approximately $1400/year in drinks alone!), and weening ourselves off of restaurants (which conspire to make our monthly food budget something close to $500). I'd like to also sell one of our cars, currently used by a friend, and be putting all of that extra money into the pot on a consistent basis by Memorial Day.

That's a tall order amounting to, essentially, a complete and total lifestyle overhaul. I'm not entirely sure Remy will go for it.

If, by the end of May, we can do all of those things, we should be able to increase our saving from the $750 that is truly feasible at this moment to closer to $1250 per month.

We could have a $10,000 seed to invest with by the end of summer and, with a bit of luck and shrewd planning, increase our egg that much more than we could with saving alone.

Naive? Perhaps. We'll see.