{"id":36480,"date":"2017-08-27T13:06:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-27T17:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=36480"},"modified":"2017-08-27T13:06:34","modified_gmt":"2017-08-27T17:06:34","slug":"looking-ahead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/looking-ahead\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Ahead"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend wound up being a good time to catch up on my bookkeeping, set up a budget for the next quarter, and start to work on my projected budget for the start of 2018. There is no doubt that I’ll be able to afford a comfortable life here, but I’m trying to pay down some debt and step up my retirement savings so I wanted to see if there was some fat I could start trimming right now. Absolutely. I have a few calls to make for that tomorrow.<\/p>\n

It will be good for me to have a stable (ish) budget for a couple of years to catch up on some things. I’m doing absolutely fine for someone pushing 40 who just spent a decade gallivanting over about a quarter the planet’s land mass and I want to make sure I’m in at least as good a position 10 years from now.<\/p>\n

I really didn’t go into this without a lot<\/em> of thought. Setting up a home again is going to be a big expense and I had to be sure that it’s something I’m ready for again and that this is the right location for it. I definitely am certain on both counts.\u00a0So that’s one of the reasons I chose to go with more house than I really need — I wanted a place to grow into.<\/p>\n

I didn’t want to find myself wanting to move again in a few years, especially since I know I’m going to be in M\u00e9rida for at least four years. I really wanted a proper home base where I can receive people, pursue hobbies, and continue to grow my business. If I had continued to snowbird, I would have definitely gone with a much smaller place as I would have had to maintain two homes, but this will be a year-round home for me, something I had started to\u00a0doubt I would ever have.<\/p>\n

While there are a few things I’m not thrilled about with the house, especially the location of my office, there is so much more that I’m looking forward to and I’ve spent probably too much time in the last couple of weeks dreaming of how I’m going to set it up and doing some online window shopping.<\/p>\n

The room I’m probably most excited about is the kitchen, which is huge and has great light from two windows. I am going to be able to really get back into cooking here, something that I’ve missed since I’ve stopped living in Miranda full-time and had access to a pantry.<\/p>\n

I also know that I’m going to spend a lot of time in the rear courtyard off the dining room. I saw so many homes with uncovered exterior spaces that would have been difficult to make comfortable in the middle of the day.<\/p>\n

The laundry room that I discovered on the second visit is such a bonus. I’ll be able to do laundry without there being noise in the house and there is so much space to hang everything outside.<\/p>\n

My bedroom is going to be so airy and I’m ridiculously excited to have a closet almost as big as Miranda after squeezing into her tiny wardrobe all these years.<\/p>\n

I’m thinking of turning the upstairs landing into my art studio, but I suspect a comfy chair might end up there to turn it into a reading nook. Regardless, it’s so bright and well ventilated that I’m sure it won’t be wasted space.<\/p>\n

I really hope that I get keys with my lease on Wednesday so I can take you on a tour of my new digs. In the meantime, here’s a sneak peak! This photo is taken from the centre of the living room (which you enter directly into from the front door). Looking ahead is the staircase to the master suite. To the right, you can see the dining room and the door to the courtyard. Both spaces that you can see here come with really nice furniture!<\/p>\n

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This weekend wound up being a good time to catch up on my bookkeeping, set up a budget for the next quarter, and start to work on my projected budget for the start of 2018. There is no doubt that I’ll be able to afford a comfortable life here, but I’m trying to pay down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,14,635,11,1650,3,894],"tags":[45],"class_list":["post-36480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finance","category-mexico","category-north-america","category-personal","category-progresochelemchuburna","category-travel","category-yucatan","tag-moving-to-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36480"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36487,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36480\/revisions\/36487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}