Well, planning I must say is very important and planning for retirement is a must. I must confess, nothing I’ve done so far was decided upon right away. I spent many hours, days and even years weighing the options and more importantly the consequences and impacts of such undertakings. When I was planning for the purchase of our house, it took me years to convince my wife it’s the right thing to do. I went as far as bringing her to home ownership certification classes just so she can hear from the professionals hoping what they say can help change her mind. I knew her mind won’t change that easily, especially when buying means we are staying in America for the rest of our lives. In fact, that’s what stopping her from being committed like I did. The idea that we’ll one day return home to retire. 

So, the minute we got our mortgage approved, I was already giving out clues to my wife that buying and paying mortgage was not our real goal. To me, it was a stepping stone to the real goal. My hope was to build on the equity that was already in the house and one day sold it off so we can use that to buy cash somewhere. I wasn’t thinking an island, but more toward the Oregon coast, one of my favorites. In that plan, I was hoping to buy acres of land and build a house on it and just do lots of crabbing and fishing. 

Quit a real job in 2016 and called myself semi-retired. It was a little less than a year after we bought our house. It was surprising to my wife, especially with the mortgage payment and stuff, but I reassured her and explained my reasonings for doing so. And one of the many reasons, and most important one, was to give me time to do some things that will hopefully helped increase the equity in our house.  I also thought it was the best timing to do so since there were lots of opportunities opening up in terms of self-employment. The so called gig-economy was just being started and I wanted to cash in on it. It was an awesome decision. The timing couldn’t be better! But CORONA HITS and it hit hard. Luckily for me, majority of what I wanted done had already been completed. 

I would do Ubering and Amazon Fresh in the early hours of the day, made enough money to buy supplies by noon, and worked on my home projects in the afternoon hours. Instead of waiting 2 weeks to get paid, Uber and Amazon allowed us to cash out anytime of the day, so money was never an issue. It was a great success! Completed everything that needed done in no time at all. 

While I was busying myself with all these different projects, I was already contemplating what the next thing to do. Looked up Guam and followed the housing trend there as it was on top of my list. But two things bothered me about Guam. The long tiring flying hours to and from, and the fact fishing grounds are pretty limited there. I was once a fisherman there and it was always challenging because the currents can change on you within minutes. 

Next on my list was Hawaii and Big Island was so attractive to me. But convincing my wife to go along with the idea was, as I learned, more tougher than convincing her to buy. And the timing was so so bad. It was right before the lava flows into the Leilani Estates. She saw that on the news and told me straight up to scratch my plan because there’s nothing I say would change her mind. 

So selling our house was never an issue. It was clear from the start that we were going to do it. It’s a matter of when. We could have sold it back then if it weren’t for the eruption that caused lava to flow unto the the Leilani Estates.