Getting Our Ducks In A Row

This last post about Shedding Possessions gives you a good idea of where we are in our journey of getting ready to leave our home country. We used to own a home, which we decided to sell as the first real step on our path to move to Argentina. By selling the home it forced us to shed possessions, and it got us into an apartment which can only be temporary, just a place to stay where we can save some extra money every month on our way out of the country.

We now own a fraction of the stuff we used to own, and when we move out of the apartment on the way to Mendoza we will sell off almost everything else. We are close to our goal, with regards to personal property, which is to be able to put all the possessions we will keep in the US into a mere 100 square feet of a self storage warehouse.

There are so many things one needs to do in order to move to another country, so many ducks to line up in a row to make the move as smooth as it can be. We are not getting sent to Argentina with a company on an 'expat package' where someone else is handling the immigration and housing issues for us. We are moving on our own, like El Expatriado did, as a self employed person who will be responsible for everything. Many of the tasks we will do on this journey cannot be done, let alone contemplated, until we are actually there. But there are many things which must be done before we leave. I see these as the major steps for us to make before the move.

1.Shed possessions so we can leave with minimal expenses in the US (to store items we are keeping while we are gone).

2.Increase our virtual business revenue, earn more USD in our small businesses that operate over the phone and on the Internet. We can operate our virtual businesses from anywhere in the world with high speed Internet access, and if we can increase our income a bit here then we will have total freedom to live almost anywhere.

3.Deal with the bureaucratic items we must deal with to legally move; our own immigration paperwork (family of three), and the paperwork we need to bring our cat & dog.

We are mostly done with the shedding possessions stage, and are making progress on growing our virtual business revenue. We have done quite a bit of the research on the bureaucratic items we need to deal with to be able to get visas and entry paperwork for the people and pets in the family, but we have not pulled the trigger on hiring help to start this yet since we are more than 6 months away from moving. Our biggest task that we are currently focusing on is growing our businesses. The income from these small businesses will be the core of our monthly income when we are in Mendoza, earned in USD, and spent mostly in Argentine Pesos. Once these businesses grow a bit more we will be ready to set a move date a few months out (at a break point in our daughter's school schedule), and then get moving on the paperwork and the visas which we are going to start at least 3 months before we move.

We have a long way to go until all of our ducks are in a row, and we are ready to transition into our new life in Argentina. But we alone control our future and we are having a good time enjoying the journey.