Being a blog writer, from time to time I like to listen and write about other people’s stories and experiences. The following blog post is an account of a close friend of mine whom decided they wanted to Emigrate out of rainy northern England, to a sunnier climate.

Having failed requirements to enter Australia which was their first choice, they looked around to try and find somewhere which would accommodate a small family, have plenty of job prospects for a young 30 something couple, and give a more relaxed lifestyle than they currently had. The answer was Spain!

Jack and his wife Susan made the decision to leave the U.K just last year, and after months of deliberating settled upon moving to Gran Canarias. I spoke to Jack last week, who runs his own business online – and they haven’t been happier. The kids have settled nicely in an English-speaking school, Jack’s wife has a job in a busy hotel, and Jack (although not happy about the poor WIFI signals is enjoying running his business from his Spanish balcony, having the odd siesta and dip in his own pool.

I asked Jack if he could sum up the steps and decision making process he made so I could share it with my blog readers. Below is a summary of what we discussed and what Jack told me he would do different if he was doing it all again: –

Don’t procrastinate

If you put things off, delay it ‘until tomorrow’ or think that it is out of your reach – the chances are that you will never get it done. In some ways, you need to be a little selfish, you need to make quick and bold decisions, whilst still being calculated and rational. We didn’t just move on a whim to Gran Canarias, we had a few holiday’s prior to moving, and the last holiday was for 6 months! After that we were certain we wanted to move, we knew the exact town we wanted to move to and we were ready.

Plan the move

“We failed at this one to be honest!”. Although everything went smoothly, after our 6 month visit we decided we wanted to stay, but didn’t have a plan of action for the life we left back in the U.K. My wife had a job she needed to hand notice too, we had school placements in the U.K., we had unpaid bills and we had a house and mortgage.

The biggest decision we had to make was to sell our property in the U.K. This was always our fall back if anything went wrong, and because we left it so late, we didn’t have time to mess around and needed to pull our equity out of the property if we were going to make our new life abroad work. We used a ‘we buy any house’ type company who helped us shift the property in just a few weeks which was a load off our minds. This is that I used to sell my house fast, https://www.readysteadysell.co.uk/we-buy-any-house/ and David was very helpful in shifting the property on to an investor.

Another problem was our family car in the UK, we needed to sell that quickly as well, so we again took a little bit of a cut on our acceptance price and sold with we buy any car. https://www.webuyanycar.com/

All in all, my biggest bit of advice is ‘just go for it’! You only live once, so why live somewhere you aren’t happy. We have moved here, and we are now living the dream!