What Led Me to Retire Now
I have been working since I was twelve years old. First as a babysitter and then at after-school jobs—first as an usherette in the local theatre followed by a stint as a dime store clerk, and finally as a part-time AT&T office worker.
I got married three months after high school graduation and continued working for the phone company. A year later I had my first of four children and began my “career” as a stay-at-home mom, as was the custom in the 1950’s. Believe it or not back in the day a woman needed her husband’s permission to work outside the home!
Fast forward to 2006
I became single with no provision for retirement. I had no worries. I had been working as a spiritual teacher and life coach and added ghostwriting to my income source. I loved my work and had no thought of ever retiring. “As long as I can think and write I can easily work until I die.”
In 2021 I was hired as a contract writer for and East Coast company, guaranteeing a steady source of income. The job came with deadline pressures and writing books on topics I had little knowledge of. That required learning new things on the fly. It was more than stressful.
In May of 2023, around my 85th birthday, I was wearing down. When I had so flippantly declared I would work until I died, I had no idea I’d live this long!
It was time to retire—but how?
A Little Back Story About Barry and Me
Despite Barry and I both being members of the Northern California Publishers and Authors (NCPA) our paths didn’t cross until we met at the book awards judges’ luncheon for the 2017 Book Awards. I was living in Lodi and Barry was living in Nevada City. I had made many trips to Nevada City to soak up the “new age” vibe and had fond memories of the town. Barry and I were the last to leave the luncheon that day. Meeting was an unexpected and welcomed surprise.
Barry and I communicated via email and arranged to meet for lunch in Nevada City. I was delighted to have an excuse to visit that magical town again. I had just had my 80th birthday. Barry would be having his 70th birthday in a few months.
Barry had just come back from his sixth trip to Panama where he was considering moving to retire. He was planning a few more visits before solidifying his plans. A few months later he came to Lodi for lunch. We continued with email and telephone contact and eventually began trading weekends in Nevada City and Lodi. When we became a dating couple I went with him on his next Panama trip. I was concerned the temperature would be too hot for me. It was. I could never live there.
We got married on July 10, 2019, a beautiful balmy day in the outdoor gazebo of the Nevada County courthouse. Barry moved to Lodi. I cleared out closets and bookshelves and Barry pared down his possessions to fit in the space available. One of the bedrooms became his office and I moved my office to an office space a mile from home. A year later I remodeled the storage shed in the backyard to become an elaborate office for me. It was more convenient and paid for itself in ten months.
2023 The Saga Continues
My desire to retire came front and center. I knew I couldn’t keep pace with the stress of contract writing, which had become a major source of income for me. (My Social Security benefit was weak because of the years of payments into Social Security that were deposited into my former husband/business partner’s account.)
There was no way Barry and I could retire anywhere in the United States on Barry’s and my combined Social Security.
Proof that the Universe Works in Mysterious Ways
Around the time of my 85th birthday I received an advertising email from International Living that was currently highlighting Panama as a choice retirement destination. Knowing of Barry’s interest in Panama I passed it on to him. This prompted Barry to go online to learn more about what International Living had to say about Panama when, out of the blue, he came across a book titled “Exit Stage Left—a Guide to Retiring in Europe for Savvy Liberal Women With More Style Than Money.” The premise of the book was that many women could not retire on their Social Security benefit in the United States but there were many places in the world where they could live a good life on their monthly benefit check.
We ordered the book and a few days later we were deep into reviewing the ten countries the author recommended as affordable for women living on Social Security. Though the book was written for women, the information easily applied to men, couples, and families.
Within a few days of study, we settled first on Albania as a prime destination because you can arrive with just your American passport and live there for up to a year before having to acquire a visa. But the more I delved into it I concluded that because Albania was an up-and-coming developing country with infrastructure that was not as advanced as our second choice, Bulgaria, which had great infrastructure and was a member of the European Union, which Albania was not, we transferred our destination focus to Bulgaria. This was in September of 2023.
We set a departure date of September 2024 to move to Bulgaria, giving us a year to prepare. We began studying the language. I hired a Bulgarian immigration attorney online who sent us a checklist of instructions on how to acquire our visas. There were documents to get notarized then apostilled by the California Secretary of State.
One important document to acquire was an FBI background check which required getting our fingerprints taken and forwarding them to the FBI. Barry’s FBI clearance soon arrived. Mine did not. It seems my fingerprints are “too faint” to be useful. And thus began my focused journey to acquire valid fingerprints. After five submissions of fingerprints, both inked and digital, procured from different services were all rejected by the FBI leading them to inform me they could not provide a background check for me but they could provide a letter stating that my fingerprints were unreadable which is why they could not do a background check.
I contacted the Bulgarian consulate in Los Angeles and told them the situation. They asked if I had ever lived in another state. I said, “Yes, Washington State from the age of twelve to sixteen.” The consulate said they’d accept a background check from the State of California and the State of Washington. I applied to Washington State and easily got the clear background check based on a name search. The State of California responded that I had to provide fingerprints. I showed them the letter from the FBI which they refused to accept, telling me I had to submit fingerprints twice and if they were indeed unreadable, then they’d do a background check on my name. It took months and several trips to the Attorney General’s office in Sacramento to get the California Department of Justice background check.
Was The Universe Trying to Tell Me Something
Finally, we had all the right documents, notarized and apostilled and had only to go to the Bulgarian Consulate in Los Angeles to apply for the retirement visas.
Oops! Not so fast. One last requirement. We needed a one-year lease on a Bulgarian apartment that must be included in our visa application packet.
WHAT!? We couldn’t go to Bulgaria and get our one-year lease there and then receive the visas? No. Our immigration attorney offered to connect us with a rental agent who could show us apartments via video and we could get the lease that way. Hmm . . . OK.
One last surprise . . . we learned that generally visas are granted within thirty days, but on closer examination of the fine print we were warned that it could take UP TO A YEAR to receive our visas! Oh, you mean we’d be paying on a Bulgarian apartment for an undetermined amount of time, up to a year and we are not even living there? Or worse . . . what if in the end we got turned down for the visas altogether?
Uhh. Goodbye Bulgaria. Hello Albania.
We extended our original departure date by two months to accommodate our last minute change of plans. We needed to get rid of our remaining stuff and sell the house. I drew on my experience as a real estate broker in the 1980s, bought a For Sale By Owner sign from Home Depot and stuck it in the front lawn. We had a buyer in about ten days.
The flight to Tirana, Albania from Sacrament, California is a twenty-two hour flight with two layovers. Given this was a once in a lifetime trip we chose to fly First Class. Ahh. Such luxury! On November 5, 2024 we flew from Sacramento, California to Denver, Colorado, to Frankfurt, Germany, to Tirana, Albania arriving in the evening on November 6th.