Quit the world at 34 and now "broken" and refuse to go back

[latexman]

For mind-mnd-boggling context... the hospital we ended up in was quite literally the newest/nicest I've ever stepped foot inside, her care was absolutely top notch (incredible really):
- her transportation (ambulance ride)
- 3 days in the ER
- couple days in a specialty ward
- all care and all testing (including several cat scans and MRIs) came to less than $4k!!

Pretty sure the ambulance ride in the states would have cost us that (much less a single night in any ER bed).

In FL and NC, I've paid for a couple ambulance rides to ER the last few years. They were about $500 after insurance paid about 50%. And the $4k for all the care mentioned, is a bit high after insurance, but it's in the ball park. We have the company's insurance too.

 

[brydanger]

Wow! You're very brave and entrepreneurial. Looks like some of the risks people mentioned (and a pandemic no one anticipated) did manifest themselves at various times and you worked your rear off to meet the challenges. Congratulations on a great journey and thanks for taking lots of time to share.

We don't really feel brave (you should see us sailing with a squall nearby - its all terror)
But entrepreneurial sure... back in the day that just seemed like the only way to change our situation given the cards we held (other than buying lottery tickets and hoping for the best).

Funny enough, I was just looking back through this thread, and found this written from yours truly

But...if things got bad enough who ever knows??
Can I imagine a world where even though we aren’t what I would call over-leveraged, we still wake up to an economic disaster where all rents suddenly drop well below the mortgages, we can’t make our payments, can’t sell anything (house or boat) to get more cash, etc… sure.

But that's no different than the fears I had (before any investments) of a tanking economy where I lost my job and couldn’t afford the mortgage on my house… and at this point if things turn that far sour - i'm afraid all other markets are going to crash just as hard, and my finances might just be the least of all our worries.

All I can tell you is that we will try to adapt to changing conditions as we have so far...

I know when I wrote that I couldn't actually imagine a calamity that could lead to that set of events... clearly we now all can
- but ironically it went down almost exactly as I described back then (at least for us financially).
And all we could do was try to adapt.

 

[brydanger]

This occurred to me, you are living what many novelists imagine sitting in a tiny room with a typewriter. Adventures beyond our imagination . I read the books but would never have the guts to actually 'just do it' (as Nike would say).

Interesting...

I think there's a vast difference in signing up for an adventure, like "I'm going to go climb Mt Everest" and simply going for a walk/hike to see where it leads.
At some point you just take the elevation as it comes and keep enjoying the changing scenery... and you may just find yourself climbing a mountain without really having realized you were doing so.

We never made one great decision (other than maybe the original one to quit our jobs)... everything else has simply been a desire to keep moving forward (even if the landscape around us might keep changing and/or getting steeper day by day).

 

[brydanger]

In FL and NC, I've paid for a couple ambulance rides to ER the last few years. They were about $500 after insurance paid about 50%. And the $4k for all the care mentioned, is a bit high after insurance, but it's in the ball park. We have the company's insurance too.

Sorry, this $4k ($3600 in reality I think) was before/without any insurance involved.

I won't claim any personal knowledge whatsoever here (as we thankfully haven't done similar things in the states)... but friends/family have shared experiences of ambulance rides costing over $1k, several people have shared that a single cat scan in the US could run $3600 alone and that a night in urgent care can easily be a $10k bill.

All of our experiences with health care/drugs in other countries (or even just in PR) have proven a small fraction of what they would have cost back home and with equal if not better care. Just something to think through as I often see these questions pop up about the significant cost of health care in planning for retirement.
I'm always amazed more peoples' plan isn't simply "get residency in a country with free health care", but that may well be the family/children back home factor.

 

[captain3d]

The US medical cost is roughly 10x compared to other countries if you pay out of pocket.

 

[latexman]

Sorry, this $4k ($3600 in reality I think) was before/without any insurance involved.

Oh, okay.