An Enticing Idea

Friday evenings often see my husband and I having a couple of drinks, listening to some music, and throwing around dreams and ideas for our future. 

We currently live in a country town in Australia but the dream has always been to live somewhere coastal. We visualise walks along the beach first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and imagine this will help us de-stress and be more joyful in our lives and our marriage. 

Being realistic, we know this dream is only possible many years from now after we’ve paid off our mortgage and received a small inheritance from one or both of our parents. To be frank, it’s not a nice feeling to be banking on your dream materialising only at the death of your parents. Grim!

And then, a couple of weeks ago, my husband found a spreadsheet comparing cost of living, taxes etc in Australia, the US, UK and others to cost of living, taxes etc in a number of south East Asian countries. The figures were staggering. 

We looked at each other. Could we do something like that? Could we uproot our whole life and move to a country we are completely unfamiliar with?

The idea began to take root, more as a vague possibility than a reality. Because we couldn’t really do it, right? 

Now, you have to understand, my husband is a big researcher and once he gets an idea in his head it doesn’t go away until he’s worked it through from every angle.

So within a couple of days there were AI chats answering all sorts of questions, sifting through our financial figures and painting a picture that was all too appealing. But more importantly, it narrowed down a possible location – Penang in Malaysia. 

And in those few days we went from a cool, but crazy, idea to seriously considering the advantages of this move.