Why live abroad?

We get lots of questions about being expats, but probably the most common one (from both  Americans and Spaniards) is simply why did we move abroad when we retired. The answer to that is multifaceted, but probably the strongest reason is just because we wanted to. John and I were in the Air Force when we met and married, and so the first years of our marriage we lived in Berlin (actually West Berlin back in those days). Before our marriage we had both been stationed in the Far East, John in Thailand, and me in Taiwan. We also both had an exchange student experience as teenagers, John to Argentina for a year, and me to Mexico for a summer, and loved the experience. In fact when we first met at language school in the Air Force, that was one of the first things we found that we had in common. We both enjoy being a part of another culture, and seeing what life is like as a person who lives there, instead of as a tourist. And it takes time living somewhere else to really get a feel for what that life is like.

We're also big fans of learning other languages, and although we both knew Spanish when we got here, we have both improved our language skills a lot since we've been here. For John it's been more incremental and fine tuning since he was already very fluent when we got here. For me the change has been more dramatic (but slower). I still need to work a lot on my grammar, but I definitely am much better at carrying on a fairly sophisticated conversation than I was when we got here.

And, there is the financial aspect to the decision. We are living on my municipal pension, which is not huge. We made the decision to retire relatively early so that we could enjoy spending time together while we were both healthy and able to be active, which means my pension is smaller than it would have been if I had worked to age 65. Living in Spain we have been able to cut our expenses a lot. First, we do not have a car, so we don't have the expense of owning, maintaining, insuring, and putting gas in a car. Instead we take public transportation which is quite reasonable. Our health insurance policy is less than we were paying in the States, and medicines are cheap here in comparison to in the States, even paying the full cost which we do since we did not opt for including prescriptions. Food costs are also for the most part less than we were paying in Texas, and the food is fresh and locally sourced. There are not as many convenience foods, but being retired I enjoy being able to take my time and fix dinner from scratch without the pressure of having arrived home late after my commute. Our rent and utilities are also pretty cheap, and our son and his family are renting our house in Texas for a nominal sum which covers the insurance and taxes, so housing costs make sense here too.

So I guess the bottom line is, fun, finances, and culture!

The other big question, again from both Americans and Spaniards, is why Spain, and why Toledo, but I think I'll leave that for another post.