It’s ok, you can admit it - at least once in your life you’ve dreamed of quitting your job, quietly leaving the country and going somewhere where no one can ever find you again?  If you’ve ever looked into this in any detail you have probably noticed that giving up your life in the United States and moving to another country is more difficult and time consuming than you may have thought.  There are probably things that you haven’t ever thought about that you must do before you book your ticket to paradise.  1. Square away your money and your retirement fund.  I don’t want to sound like your mom, but before you quit your job as a wine making supply salesman and decide to go abroad, make sure that you have everything in order.  What do you need to do?  First, take a long look at your work retirement plan and see if you can afford to quit that job.  Some jobs offer retirement match programs and other incentives that kick in after a couple of years, so staying around might just have a few benefits after all.  If you are going abroad with your company, you won’t have to worry about your retirement accounts through your work, but what about your other investments?  One way to solve this problem is to make sure that all of your accounts are online.  Most of the major banks and investment firms allow their clients to get their account information and perform transactions online.  This way it doesn’t matter if you are in your hometown in the United States, the district office in Europe, a tropical island that isn’t on any large map, or Antarctica; as long as you have internet connection, you can check to see how your stocks are doing or pay your bills.    Before you move away, make sure that you tell each bank and investment firm where you are going.  A lot of them will notice when you logon from abroad and freeze your accounts because they think that the activity is suspicious.  If they know that you moved from Lenox China to Timbuktu and then back to Lenox, you won’t be caught in a bind without any money.

eBooks for Expats - International Relocation Reports - Offshore Investment Reports - Reports On Offshore Real Estate, Moving Overseas,  and a wide range of subjects for those seeking to restart their lives overseas.  eBooks are a great idea.  Consider This: If, for example, you are trying to figure out how to move to Bolivia, buy a ranch, get residency and a passport; you won't find a standard book on how to go about accomplishing those ends at your local library.  You will here.  We have hundreds of great eBooks lined up and coming your way.  Diamond mining in Africa, play the European lottery, where the odds are ten times better than the USA, Homestead in Belize, Moving to Thailand, Working Worldwide from a lap...  our list of titles is growing daily. Randall Colville created this well-organized and indispensable eBook for a clear purpose: to provide some easy-to-do steps for you to protect your information assets and to ensure that your business can continue is a problem occurs.  Each chapter is augmented with links to a variety of resources, making this a highly useful reference work as well as a valuable guide to information security.

The United States Postal Service won’t forward mail abroad, so where are you going to send it to?  The best bet is to buy a nice bottle of wine
and to give it to a friend that you trust to go through it, shred the credit card applications, and forward anything that he thinks is important to you. 

If you don’t have a friend, don’t worry.  There are companies that will forward your mail abroad for you.  These services can be pricey, especially
since you are going to get all of you mail delivered to you, including the mail that you don’t want.  While you are deciding where to forward your mail to, make sure to get all of your magazines forwarded to your new international address and to cancel your daily newspaper subscription (when you still want to keep up on your local news, you can get an online subscription for a lot of newspapers either for free or for a small charge depending on the publication).

3. How much stuff do you have?  If you are leaving the United States for work, you are probably in a pretty good position because your job is going to pay for you to move all of your furniture and everything that you and your family want to keep. 

So what happens if you don’t have someone sponsoring your move?  Take a good look around and tell yourself that for you to move the majority
of your stuff is going to be a huge expense.  Moving across the country can cost thousands of dollars, but now you are going to have to pay for
your furniture and other stuff to move to the nearest coast, and then pay for it to be loaded onto a boat, and then pay for it to be delivered to your new home. 

So what do you do?  If you want to store all of this stuff in a storage unit for years, you are going to end up paying a lot of money; storing it in
someone’s basement is also going to cause a problem in the long run.  What to do is a really personal decision.  One of the most popular solutions is to have a giant yard sale with your stuff.  Sell the brand new wine making supply kit that you bought on eBay three years ago, but save your special memories, photographs, place settings of Lenox china and anything else of sentimental value.

4. How will you prepare for the future?  You may be in good health now, but what happens if something bad comes up?  Getting a cheap health
insurance policy is possible, especially since you aren’t going to be in the United States.  When choosing a policy, make sure that you compare the
cost of local medicine.  If you are going to a country that has inexpensive medical care, you can get a policy that has a higher deductible, and just use the policy in case of a disaster.

5. Make a list.  There are going to be hundreds of other little things that you think that you need to do.  When you think of something that you need to do, make sure that you write it down so you don’t forget it when it comes down to crunch time.  Some of the things that you might forget to do are selling your time share, finding a new home for your Lenox china or a home for your fish. 

Going away for years at a time is a really scary step, and there are a hundred and ten things that you need to do to get ready.  Make sure that you take your time to really think about the details.  When you are finished preparing, the next step is to buy your ticket and enjoy your new country. 
 

The Beastly Adventure - Stuck in a dead-end town with a dull job, plodding along to the same old routine and getting older?  You’ve traveled just enough to know that the Earth is round but not far enough to prove it, so instead of comfort it gives you an attitude.  Not to mention that half of your life has passed forever and you haven’t yet had that once-in-a-lifetime experience such as you’ve seen and heard about.  You’ve become “common,” and as it quietly nags at you, suddenly at some point from out of nowhere you or your domestic partner cries out, “I’m bored!”  What do you do?  Do you finally sit up and take notice?  Do you do anything?  Greg mcCann and his girlfriend did - in The Beast, a decommissioned Land Rover 101 military ambulance / they set off round the world.  Whether you think they’re brave or foolish, you’ll admire these determined travelers as they endure every drinking buddy and befriend every mechanical setback along the way. This is no-holds-barred travel in the classic sense, or lack thereof!  Get a hold of The Beast, its hour come at last, and get in on the Adventure!