Arrrgghh – you went and did one of those posts – where you describe exactly the types of issues I’m struggling with too!

I’ve gone very quiet on my site recently, and that’s because I’m going through what I call one of my “growth spurts” There’s a lot happening under the surface. I’ve had a few major insights/breakthroughs over the two week xmas vacations – and the results are quite surprising for me. I’ve gone through a huge change in attitude where I’m much more organized, making better use of my spare time, and – most surprisingly – really enjoying my job again, and I have some great goals I’m working on – which leaves me wondering what to say on my blog! I’m biting my tongue at the moment and instead working on my book, while I figure out how to put all this into words for my blog readers!

Here are some general thoughts on the other points you mention.

1) Paying off my mortgage didn’t really change my life as radically as I expected. It’s nice and all, but at the end of the day it just means you have fewer outgoings. For me it wasn’t the game changer I imagined it would be. I still wrestle with many of the issues I had before I paid it off – such as what the hell am I doing with my life!

2) Reducing expenses tails off in effectiveness exponentially. You can reduce expenses but it gets harder and harder to do so as you reach a certain point. For most, it’s hard to get your expenses below $1000 a month, especially if there are two of you, wherever you go. This is more so these days with the dreadful state of the pound thanks to QE. So – whatever you do you’ll need at least a grand a month coming in.

3)There’s a lot to be said for keeping a base in the UK, and maybe getting more flexible work (e.g. contract, freelance, work from home etc). You can then use time out to travel to New York, Portugal, wherever, during downtime. Ten years ago my plan was simple: work until fifty and then get out of the UK forever. As I’ve gotten older, traveled more widely, and actually lived overseas in various places I’ve grown to appreciate what we have in the UK more, and I’ve realized that the best things in my life are my family – I don’t want to be too far away from them.

4) From this and what you’ve said before I wonder if the plan to move to Portugal was an “escape valve”. Especially when we are in high pressure jobs we dislike and only do for the money and conflict with our values we seem to need these escape valves. The thought of something “better” in the long run keeps us going through the daily grind. However, if that pressure was removed, by say moving to a job you liked a lot more and was aligned with your values, the need for the escape valve would disappear. I think this is what happened to me.

5) It might be worth writing down why Portugal appealed so much to you in the first place. Was it the climate, the sense of freedom, the pace of life? Isolating the *reasons* why you wanted to go there might be useful. It may be possible to get many of these these without moving – although the climate thing might be a bit of an issue!

Good luck and let us know how you get on!

So much this! My head spins round and round, too, then comes to the same point: no debt gives you options. There will be time to think about the rest!

I wouldn’t say you have lost direction! In fact it would be more worrying if you didn’t let up on your goal until you arrived in Portugal – and then questioned your decision. I think some pauses and questioning are healthy.

Tony hits a a few great points. I HVAC had some revelations since paying off my mortgage but it took a good year before I figured it all out. First, when you’re so intensely focused on something that is easy to measure and quantify progress and then its gone, its de-motivating. Debt is tangible and measurable, happiness is not. We expect that when debt goes away, happiness will increase but it does not. It leaves you searching for the answer to the question, what now?

The biggest gift I received from debt freedom is new perspective on my career. I have an awesome job, but when it felt like a necessity because I needed the money, I tended to focus on the negative bits of it, of which all jobs have something. Them when I started asking myself, is it bad enough to quit over, I would always say no. The ability to walk away is empowering but also puts things into perspective.

Last month I got back into debt and it doesn’t feel so bad because I like my job. I also am not as obsessed about retirement. Do I regret spending so much time and energy getting out of debt just to do it all over again? Absolutely not because there’s no way we could have bought the 2 family house we did and and carried 3 mortgages. We have 2 houses to sell and one to fix up and it’s not stressing me out as much as it would if we had the payments on top of everything else.