#200 – Financial Freedom For Expats with Edd and Cynthia Staton

Wes Moss [00:01:32]:
Even if you have no desire to ever retire outside of the US, it’s kind of fun just to think about it. That little town in Portugal, a quaint little coastal town in Mexico. Hmm. I wonder what it would take. Well, Ed and Cynthia are gonna tell us. They’re now seen as expat experts in retirement, traveling, and health and wellness. They’ve authored three number one, Amazon best selling books. They’re regularly featured in the major media, and they run their own online program called Retirement reimagined.

Wes Moss [00:02:05]:
And today, they’ll tell us how they’ve traveled extensively throughout the most popular expat destinations to measure how each one stacks up to their expat community standards. Since talking with Ed and Cynthia, I find myself referring others to them and maybe daydreaming a little bit of the possibility of retiring abroad. I think you may find yourself having similar daydreams after hearing this interview. I’m Wes Moss. The prevailing thought in America is that you’ll never have enough money and it’s almost impossible to retire early. Actually, I think the opposite is true. For more than 20 years, I’ve been researching, studying, and advising american families, including those who started late, on how to retire sooner and happier. So my mission with the retire Sooner podcast is to help a million people retire earlier while enjoying the adventure along the way.

Wes Moss [00:02:59]:
I’d love for you to be one of them. Let’s get started. I don’t know where we. I think I read some sort of article, maybe on CNBC or some place that mentioned you guys, and then we looked you up, and I thought, wow, this is. And again, by the way, I have a list of. I think I have 20, literally 20 questions, and I wanna hear about how you guys met. And I know that you spent a bunch of time in Atlanta, but I think that I wanna just jump straight into this concept that you guys have that you guys own this. And it’s because it’s even for the american, who absolutely loves everything about the United States and says, there’s so many great places to visit and live here in the United States.

Wes Moss [00:03:41]:
Even that group thinks, wait a minute, it would be really cool, like, really fun to go live abroad for a year. Go to Portugal. I think one of the most popular articles for a month straight around the holidays was around a woman who moved to a little coastal town in Mexico. And it’s, every time I read one of these, I think it’s such an amazing. It’s like the Anthony Bourdain life, no reservations, parts unknown. Ed and Cynthia, what made you guys think, hey, maybe it’d be fun to go overseas? And by the way, where are you guys in Ecuador right now? Or are you back in the United States? Where are you now?

Edd Staton [00:04:26]:
We are sitting in my office in Ecuador, actually in Cuenca.

Cynthia Staton [00:04:30]:
Cuenca, Ecuador? Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:04:32]:
What’s the name of it again?

Edd Staton [00:04:33]:
Cuenca. Cuenca.

Wes Moss [00:04:36]:
And how is your spanish?

Edd Staton [00:04:39]:
It is functional.

Wes Moss [00:04:41]:
Functional. Okay.

Edd Staton [00:04:43]:
It will never be fluent.

Cynthia Staton [00:04:46]:
Well, we like to say, wes, that we can navigate the whole food scene, and we can always get home.

Wes Moss [00:04:53]:
You always get home and order what you would like and find the servicios. Right now, that’s beer. Well, what’s the bathrooms? Banos. Dande los servicios, or banos. Right. I just remember being in Spain. I think that was, like, the first thing I learned is, where are the bathrooms?

Edd Staton [00:05:14]:
Like, the last thing, too.

Wes Moss [00:05:17]:
All right, so you’re living this, you’re preparing for retirement, and all of a sudden you start thinking, maybe we can go somewhere outside the United States. What did that take us through that journey? How old were you guys when you started thinking about this? And maybe let’s go maybe five years pre retirement or maybe whatever’s appropriate. Ten years. Tell me about how you guys were prepping for retirement here on the retire sooner podcast. And then what led you to sort of think maybe it’d be fun to go to another country for a while, and so take me through that journey.

Edd Staton [00:05:57]:
Well, if it were really that much of a Pollyanna journey, it would be much more. Well, that would be a different version. But that’s not actually the way it happened.

Wes Moss [00:06:06]:
Let’s hear the unvarnished truth.

Cynthia Staton [00:06:09]:
Okay.

Edd Staton [00:06:10]:
We were in our prime earning years in Las Vegas with what we thought was solid retirement plan in place. Unfortunately, a lot of it involved real estate. And then 2008 happened. So we went from the peak of our careers and a solid portfolio, blah, blah, blah, to our careers disappearing, our house losing two thirds of its value, and our investments and savings plummeting by the day as well. So it wasn’t like we were sitting around thinking, gosh, wouldn’t it be fun? We were. We were in a desperate financial situation at that time, and we came to the realization we were not going to be able to recover at our age. And the employment situation was such that we weren’t going to be able to get to the income level that we had enjoyed for years. So we had to formulate a plan B.

Edd Staton [00:07:24]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Staton [00:07:24]:
And we did.

Wes Moss [00:07:25]:
And you did.

Cynthia Staton [00:07:26]:
We did. So, yeah. And just, you know, to add to what Ed said, we had thought one day, one of these days, when we retire, we would love to travel, see, maybe even live in different parts of the world, but that was somewhere in the future. And what happened in 2008, 2009, just made all of that happen much quicker than we were prepared for.

Wes Moss [00:07:52]:
By the way, guys, what industry were you all in?

Edd Staton [00:07:56]:
Well, I was in the financial service industry, specifically for automobiles, and nobody was buying cars.

Cynthia Staton [00:08:04]:
And I was in new construction real estate, luxury real estate, working on a project that was just coming out of the ground at Lake Las Vegas. And I was working for Sotheby’s international realty. Well, the project just came to a halt. My job came to a halt, and.

Wes Moss [00:08:25]:
Luxury real estate came to a halt for a long time.

Cynthia Staton [00:08:29]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:08:30]:
Vegas was the hardest hit of just about any place in the whole country.

Wes Moss [00:08:33]:
Right, right. Okay. So, because my natural inclination is to think, okay, why not just work, just extend working, right? Why not just say, oh, we’re gonna work another five to seven years. We hadn’t planned on it, but we’re going to do that. We’re going to try to make this up. But for you guys, and like so many Americans during the great financial crisis, because it was so broad, there was such a broad sell off, there was such a hit to real estate prices, really, like we’d almost never seen. And then every industry around that was crushed. You guys were kind of looking around thinking, wait a minute, there really are no other great options.

Edd Staton [00:09:08]:
Pretty much it. So our plan B was, I told Cynthia, we need to find someplace to live with a lower cost of living.

Cynthia Staton [00:09:19]:
And I said, okay, that sounds great.

Edd Staton [00:09:21]:
And then I said, I’m talking about moving out of the country.

Cynthia Staton [00:09:26]:
And she said, what we’re going to do. What?

Edd Staton [00:09:30]:
I was a year away when we moved here from taking early Social Security at 62. Cynthia was in her mid, late fifties.

Cynthia Staton [00:09:40]:
Late fifties.

Edd Staton [00:09:41]:
So she was not even close to that. So we kind of. Our moving abroad idea was not so much of which of these great options are we going to choose from? We felt like it was the best and almost only option. We had to be able to just survive, survive and have a chance to, not just to kiss all of our dreams goodbye that we had worked for our whole life, basically.

Wes Moss [00:10:15]:
So how did you end up picking Ecuador, and what were some of the other places that you considered? It sounds like you were looking at this from a cost perspective. So where. Where were you looking?

Edd Staton [00:10:25]:
That’s where Cynthia comes in.

Cynthia Staton [00:10:27]:
She said, well, I said, okay, Ed, I’m on board with this, but we cannot just uproot our whole life and move to another country solely based on the cost of living. It has to. This place has to be a place that we really want to make a new life. So there are more factors involved than just the money. And that’s when we sat down and we made our wish list of if we could pick the ideal location, what would that look like? What do we actually want?

Wes Moss [00:11:01]:
So that’s where you guys go through this checklist of, hey, we’ve got to look at Costco of living, we got to look at the climate, we’ve got to look at healthcare, we got to look at what real estate they are living, and then do we buy, do we rent? So take us maybe through that a little bit. In the early days, as you were looking at different places, what else was on the radar besides Ecuador?

Edd Staton [00:11:22]:
Well, the early days is a good way to put it, because we’re so used to on the Internet, everything being at our fingertips now. And in 2008, 2009, that information just wasn’t out there like it is now. We happened to find one blogger here in Cuenca that we communicated with, but it was. It was slim pickings. So, based on our personal wish list, which involved the things that you said, cost of living, healthcare, we were in good health, but we weren’t new or getting any younger, so we didn’t want to go to places with poor healthcare. Climate was huge for us, proximity to the states, because we wanted to be able to visit. We didn’t have grandchildren at that time, but we hoped that we would, and we, in fact, now do. So we didn’t want to be way away from them.

Edd Staton [00:12:19]:
The size of the city, there was a lot of factors for us. So the climate thing was a big driver, and that ruled out for us quickly places that are very popular, expat destinations like Costa Rica and Panama, because for us, they’re too hot and humid. We lived in Atlanta. Most of our lives were in the south. Then we lived in Vegas. So we knew wet heat and dry heat, and we didn’t want either one of them too much anymore.

Wes Moss [00:12:50]:
By the way, for those listening, Atlanta’s the wet heat. Of course, Vegas is the dry heat. Right?

Cynthia Staton [00:12:54]:
Okay. Yeah. And just side note, we spent most of our life in Atlanta, so we are very familiar with that kind of climb.

Wes Moss [00:13:02]:
By the way, we’re in the. Remember the pollen season where everything gets yellow? It’s so much pollen. Your car is coated. Yeah, we’re in that season right now. Only lasts for about a week. It’s only one, one rough week. And then it rains and it washes it all away. All right.

Wes Moss [00:13:15]:
So the climate took out some of the really popular destinations because they’re too warm, really too hot, too tropical for you.

Edd Staton [00:13:24]:
That’s what this wish list thing is. So individualized. What’s important to us may not be important to you or to whoever, but this was our wish list. So I went out trying to research this stuff, and I looked at Buenos Aires, which sounded good, but it’s a big city, and I realized it was so far away, so just out of nowhere, on Memorial day of 2009, I discovered somehow Cuenca, Ecuador, didn’t know how to pronounce it.

Cynthia Staton [00:13:56]:
We had no clue where it was.

Edd Staton [00:13:58]:
We thought it was. So, Wenza, if you had put up a blank map of South America and said, if you can pinpoint where Ecuador is, I’ll give you $1,000, you’d have kept a $1,000. We had no idea. And yet everything about it seemed almost too good to be true.

Cynthia Staton [00:14:17]:
It did.

Edd Staton [00:14:17]:
So I said, we got to go there. Time was not on our side. We didn’t have the luxury of just taking our time and checking out this place in mexico and that place here and this place there. We needed something to happen. So in july, 2 months later, we were here doing a ten day scouting trip, looking for red flags. I mean, I mean this was the one that.

Wes Moss [00:14:45]:
Deal breakers. You’re looking for deal breakers.

Cynthia Staton [00:14:47]:
Exactly. I said, all right, I’m going to go and look for all the reasons why we shouldn’t do this. And you know what? When we showed up and we’re walking around I’m thinking I can’t find any, I can’t find any reason why we shouldn’t do this. So we got on the plane ten days later and said, well, I guess we’re moving to Cuenca, ecuador.

Wes Moss [00:15:12]:
All right, tell us about, I want to, walk me through that first day or two. You’re walking through what is the town like? What are the people like, what are the restaurants like? What is life like there?

Edd Staton [00:15:25]:
Well that’s, that’s different too from now and 14 years ago when we showed up.

Cynthia Staton [00:15:30]:
Yeah, but then, you want to know.

Wes Moss [00:15:32]:
Then what was it like then? Because then again you, you drew probably I don’t know how many people to Cuenca, but what was it like when you, it was you and one other american blogger?

Edd Staton [00:15:42]:
Well, that’s the thing. When we showed up, I mean, Cuenca, just so you know, it’s a UNESCO World heritage colonial, historical colonial city downtown. But if I showed you outside of our window, we’re in the modern part of town. Everything I just, she just said, you like, well, where’s that colonial part? But it’s ten minutes in the other direction. Anyway, when we got here we were, you know, when they start a new high school and you’re the first class that’s going to be the graduating class. In 2010, we were kind of the first, the first big influx of expats to Cuenca. International Living magazine had been touting Cuenca as one of the top retirement destinations in the world. So when we showed up, nobody knows exactly, but maybe they were 500 expats out of a city of 500,000 at that time.

Wes Moss [00:16:41]:
So Cuenca is, it was around five, about a half a million people when you first moved there. Okay.

Edd Staton [00:16:47]:
But these expats had, many of them were former peace Corps people that have maybe married a quincata and had kind of disappeared in the landscape. So we were, I liken it in a overly dramatic way to people that got in a covered wagon and went out west. During those days we weren’t taking arrows and stuff like that, but we had to start an expat community. We didn’t know that at the time. There was no expat community.

Cynthia Staton [00:17:16]:
Well, and I have to interrupt here, it was an exciting time.

Wes Moss [00:17:18]:
Yeah, it was great.

Cynthia Staton [00:17:20]:
The food was mostly typical food. But a lot of Ecuadorians had lived abroad and come back to Cuenca, and they knew how to make pizza and they knew how to do italian food. And so we could find those kind of restaurants. And there were a few upscale restaurants, but we found out later that a lot of Ecuadorians that lived here in Cuenca had sent their children abroad to study. They had gone abroad, a lot of them. And so it was more of an upscale community than we realized at first glance. So we tried to find the food that we could enjoy. All of us made a lot of guacamole because avocados were abundant.

Cynthia Staton [00:18:05]:
So we did those things. But it was really, and this is only looking back that I could tell you this, it was so exciting to be part of that community building. It brought a lot of us together because we were really trying to figure out, well, how do you do this? Or where do you find this? And we were all into sharing that information. So that was kind of the beginning. Now it’s totally different. The expat infrastructure is vast and it’s just not the same anymore. And then the restaurants and availability of all types of international food, it’s just wonderful. It keeps getting better and better.

Wes Moss [00:18:49]:
Oh, so it keeps getting better. I thought you were going to say that the influx has kind of watered down how excited you guys are. Let me ask this. When you finally, I know you did your ten day scouting trip. Then when you went back, were you still kind of 70 30 on whether you’re going to stay or did you guys really, were you kind of all in? You were kind of. But when you went back to move there, and I want to ask you about the shock of the pricing, what was it? Tell me about what the prices were. But were you pretty? Were you 70 30 or were you 99%? Hey, we’re doing this.

Edd Staton [00:19:23]:
We were 100%. We’re doing it.

Wes Moss [00:19:26]:
Looking back, you were burned the boat, literally.

Edd Staton [00:19:29]:
We said to each other, Wes, we’re doing this and we are going to make it work at the highest possible level, period. There is no what if we are going for it and it worked out. I mean, we came here hoping to survive, literally, and instead we’ve thrived. And part of it was mindset. If you, if we believe, if you’re not committed and you don’t put the intent a dream, I say often a dream without action is just a daydream. But we put intent to it, we put action to it, and we’ve made an incredible life here.

Wes Moss [00:20:11]:
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Wes Moss [00:20:43]:
Tell me about the pricing back then. Okay, so what was it to rent a place or buy a place? How dramatic was the difference between the United States and Cuenca?

Edd Staton [00:20:57]:
Well, it was and it is. That really hasnt changed that much. I mean, obviously we have inflation, but not to the degree that its occurred in the states. Back then you could buy a place, 75,000 maybe and up. Our first rental that we lived in for eleven years, we had a two story penthouse apartment. The reason we rented instead of buying is why I’m going to tell you right now. We had a two story penthouse apartment. Gosh, it was over 3000 sqft, much bigger than we needed.

Wes Moss [00:21:33]:
Wow.

Edd Staton [00:21:33]:
But we made the mistake. Pollyanna. It’ll work out. Our container that we shipped was on the way and we had no place. So we were desperate to find a place to unload our furnishings when they actually arrived here. We were so silly to think it was going to be so simple. But anyway, that place was, it started out $650 a month. So when you can have a 3000 square foot penthouse apartment for $650 a month, we chose to go that route.

Edd Staton [00:22:10]:
And the savings that we had, rather than invest so much of it in the roof over our head, we thought we would look around for other potential investment opportunities because we knew nothing about any of that. When we hit the ground, it turns out there are those opportunities.

Cynthia Staton [00:22:29]:
You know, taxis are, I mean, this is, we marvel. A typical lunch will cost you $3.50. That includes it’s a full course lunch, a fresh juice, a soup, an entree and a small dessert. And that’s 350. That’s our main meal of the day. And so it was that maybe $3 when we first moved here. It’s gone up to 350 most places. And the taxi rides, I mean, they’re still the same.

Cynthia Staton [00:23:00]:
We can go anywhere in the city for under $3 for a taxi ride.

Wes Moss [00:23:06]:
So I’m thinking that if you start to try to do apples to apples, an Uber ride in Atlanta can be $80. It really could be.

Edd Staton [00:23:15]:
We do that.

Wes Moss [00:23:16]:
So, I mean, if you’re looking at it that way, three divided by 80 you’re talking about it’s like 95% cheaper in some ways. A lunch in Atlanta is, let’s call it $15 easily could be $20. So you’re looking at again 80% cheap, 75% 80% cheaper. Now housing is still maybe not 90% cheaper, but it’s still call it 60 or 70% less expensive. How do you guys look at the average cost relative to the United States?

Edd Staton [00:23:48]:
Well, when we go back to the states to visit our family, as soon as we walk in the grocery store, holy cow. I mean, you spend $100 at the Harris Teeter or Kroger or wherever and you walk out with a bag in each hand and we spend $100 here and we have to have a taxi to take us home because we can’t carry it all between the two of us. So that’s for starters. And what kind of apartment are you going to rent in Atlanta for six, $700 a month?

Wes Moss [00:24:22]:
Yeah, you almost can’t even do it. No, you can’t even do it.

Edd Staton [00:24:25]:
You’re in a room somewhere maybe.

Cynthia Staton [00:24:27]:
Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:24:27]:
So this is a term that we coined for those that have the courage or the boldness or the whatever or either out of desperation, whatever the motivation to give this moving abroad thing a shot, you hit what I call the retirement trifecta because you get to, number one, lower your cost of living. Number two, raise your standard of living and number three, preserve or even grow your nest egg. Where is that possible? How is that possible?

Wes Moss [00:25:07]:
Only in Cuenca would you say, is it that unique that there or would you, and you guys have become experts on this? And realistically are there three other places in the world that people could do this? Are there 30 places in the world? Just ballpark, how many places would you put on somewhat on par with what you’re able to do at Cuenca?

Edd Staton [00:25:32]:
Oh, it has nothing to do with Cuenca really.

Cynthia Staton [00:25:35]:
The shocker is there are lots of places and we spent until September, October of last year. The previous two and a half years we spent traveling full time to these popular expat destinations and a few others thrown in there to actually put boots on the ground in more places than just Cuenca to make sure that what we’re saying is authentic and real. You can research all day long on the Internet and a lot of places sound great, but you really, I think, need to personally experience those places to be able to talk about them with some authority. So if you want us to throw some out there, we’re happy to do that.

Wes Moss [00:26:24]:
Yes. I want to throw them out. I want you to be. I want our listeners to be able to say to their family or their parents or whoever it might be, call Cynthia and Ed and just go through a handful of places. And I know you guys start, you probably have some income because you’re essentially guides now, and I’m sure you have a little bit or at least some income because you become experts on this. But, yeah, give us. Give me some. Give me a flavor of some other areas.

Wes Moss [00:26:55]:
Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:26:55]:
And the real, I want to tell you realistically, this is what people don’t understand, that two and a half years that Cynthia said that we spent, we just put all our stuff in storage here. After COVID and left, we just.

Cynthia Staton [00:27:07]:
Right. It’s not that we suddenly, you know, had a windfall. We figured out that once we got there, we could cover our transportation to get into these places. And we stayed weeks, not just going, like, for a long weekend.

Wes Moss [00:27:22]:
Oh, so during COVID you guys stored your stuff in Ecuador and went and traveled around?

Edd Staton [00:27:29]:
No, right at the end of COVID when you could travel during COVID you couldn’t go anywhere.

Wes Moss [00:27:33]:
Okay. Okay. So at some point, when the world opened up a little bit. Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:27:38]:
Well, we started with Mexico because Mexico never closed. So that was the beginning of our journey. And for two and a half years, we did Mexico all around there. We went to Europe, we did different places in South America. And I mean, literally, Wes, if you don’t. If you lived in the suburbs, you can live in Paris on a Social Security budget. You’re not going to walk out the door and say, oh, there’s the Alpha tower. We did that because we did it.

Edd Staton [00:28:08]:
We stayed in an Airbnb in the suburbs. We took the train into the city inexpensively. You just have to. A lot of this thing I was talking about, about making your dreams come true. You’ve got to decide, what am I willing to give up to make that happen? Because if you can’t have everything, what are you willing to not have to have? At least most of it. The crux of your dream.

Cynthia Staton [00:28:34]:
Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:28:35]:
In situations like a big city like Paris, that’s how you do it. But we guess there’s all kind of places in Mexico.

Cynthia Staton [00:28:44]:
Well, yeah, it’s like some of the. Some of the top. Top five places that we can wholeheartedly recommend. Of course, we have to give a shout out to Ecuador, our hometown.

Wes Moss [00:28:55]:
Sure.

Cynthia Staton [00:28:55]:
But. Well, our home country right now. But then Costa Rica, Panama, those two have been on the radar for quite some time, probably prices have gone up a little bit, but they’re still quite affordable and they have a lot going for them. And then Ecuador and Mexico, number of places in Mexico. And I mean, I think, gosh, you know, the places we visited, San Miguel de Lende, Lake Chapala. I mean, there are other places that have established ex fat communities that you could transplant to quite comfortably. And then Portugal, we loved Portugal when we were in Europe. That’s been out there for a few years.

Cynthia Staton [00:29:40]:
And then I think Spain and France have come risen to the top of great expat destinations.

Wes Moss [00:29:45]:
So the x. So here’s this combo. So, first of all, right, if you’re going to any of these places, and for some reason, I always think of Portugal because when I was in college, I did study abroad, so I was in that southern Spain or near, near Portugal. And that’s pretty. It’s a, it’s a magical part of the world. But maybe to your point, you’re not living in downtown Sevilla or Seville or downtown Lisbon. You’re maybe living out a little bit more in the suburbs or, or, or maybe not even. Even in some of the cool places now.

Wes Moss [00:30:21]:
You’re not getting a water view. Correct. That’s not happening.

Cynthia Staton [00:30:24]:
Well, I mean, that would be unusual, right, to have that because, you know, you have to do, you have to do the research and you have to really understand your budget and what is it that you’re looking for? What can you spend?

Wes Moss [00:30:39]:
And when you say, so, let me, let me go back to this. Let’s do a baseline here. When you counsel people around this, for the most part, the places that you, let’s call it your top ten, you can live. You can go there and live essentially just on Social Security.

Edd Staton [00:30:56]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Staton [00:30:57]:
Well, of course, that depends on how much your Social Security is. We combine our Social Security, but I have to tell you, in the beginning, we were spending most of it. Now we actually live on our Social Security, and we’re able to save money, which in the United States, I mean, that would be unheard of, right?

Wes Moss [00:31:17]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Staton [00:31:18]:
So we can cover our monthly expenses. We’ve figured out how to use credit cards strategically to earn points and miles, and that will pay for a lot of the transportation outside of the country. And then, you know, we have some leftover to still invest. And it’s really, I mean, if we were living in the states, we would be scraping by and living a very minimal lifestyle and spending every penny of it.

Wes Moss [00:31:48]:
So maybe two things that it makes it seem like this equation becomes more realistic for people relative to when you did this, because, again, you were like the first high school class in a brand new high school. Whereas today, if you were to, you go to one of these places, you pick your country, pick your town, pick your city, and you are much more likely to be able to be plugged in pretty quickly with the expat community. That’s my first question of what that’s like today. And then, and then, of course, I want to know about healthcare. That to me, that’s the scarier part about all this. So let’s. Let’s start with that expat community. What is that? Why does that make it so great? And is that pretty accessible in a lot of these locations?

Edd Staton [00:32:32]:
Yeah, well, that’s. There are two extremes of people that want to expatriate in that regard. Ones that want to duplicate as close as possible to their north american lifestyle. And on the other end, those that want to assimilate into the local culture and. And kiss everything about their former life goodbye. Then there’s the big group in the middle. That bell curve is not equal. It would list toward the people that want some of the comforts they had.

Wes Moss [00:33:05]:
Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:33:06]:
In the US or Canada as opposed to just wanting to go native, so to speak.

Wes Moss [00:33:10]:
Go native, yeah.

Edd Staton [00:33:11]:
And within Mexico, during our travels there, I will tell you that the expats that we found and met in Tulum seem to be more of that off the grid people. Off the grid people. They don’t have a big community there and they don’t get together for happy hours and all that. They do their own thing. They move there for that reason. You go to Lake Chapala, which is home to more north american expats than any place in the world, and you walk into a grocery store there and you feel like you’re back in Kroger. I mean, not the size of it. Not the size of it, but you’re buying availability.

Cynthia Staton [00:33:53]:
Yeah. You’re buying products from Costco.

Wes Moss [00:33:55]:
Yeah. Wow. So it’s just like you’re in Marietta, Georgia, pretty much.

Edd Staton [00:34:00]:
I mean, there is a Costco in the next city over from Lake Chapala. And we found out if you go in a grocery store there and say, can you get so and so, it’s so close to the states that they order things and go weekly across the border into Texas and bring it back. So you got it all and they got, like we do, they got community theater, they’ve got blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So a place like that is just plug and play. You just show up.

Wes Moss [00:34:28]:
That’s all you can play expat living. So in a place like Cuenca, do they have, is it almost like again, little Italy in New York City 100 years ago? That’s where everyone from Italy located and it was a burrow of mostly people that were from Italy. Are there little americas in these towns?

Cynthia Staton [00:34:53]:
You know, I think that that would depend on where, where you are in Cuenca. That’s one of the things that was attractive to us. There are no gated communities where all the gringos live. People live all over the city. So it’s the opportunity for just fitting in more to local life is greater when you have that. And in these gated communities and some expat destinations I think that you become more isolated and those smaller towns within Ecuador have those communities. But that’s not something that appealed to us.

Wes Moss [00:35:34]:
It’s really about that bell curve ed, what you’re saying. The flavor, how much of the flavor of the country do you really want as an example, an extreme? The folks in Tulum really wanted to feel like they’re native whereas if you wanted to, you can find very american subdivisions, if you will, in XYZ country. And you guys are kind of living maybe a little bit in between, I think so.

Edd Staton [00:36:05]:
It’s funny about that. We’ve used the term gringo and I want you to understand it’s not gringo, go home like the old.

Wes Moss [00:36:12]:
Yeah, I think of that as a little bit like, get out of here, gringo. Right.

Edd Staton [00:36:15]:
It’s not like that’s what we’re affectionately called here. There’s no derogatory gringos. Yeah, well I’m tell, I’m telling you that as a lead into the fact that the area of town where we live now is affectionately called Gringolandia. But.

Wes Moss [00:36:35]:
Take a left at Gringolandia.

Edd Staton [00:36:37]:
But the reality is in the building where we live, people are all, we told we were moving into this building, it was like, oh, that’s where all the gringos live. But they have a, we have a roster of all the people that live in this building and we’re maybe 10% of the population of even this building. So it’s, you go to a restaurant here and it’s, we may be the only expats in it, but it’s still.

Wes Moss [00:37:03]:
When you guys said the, you’ve got, let’s call, there were 500 folks in the early, early years today are there 5000? What’s the number now?

Edd Staton [00:37:13]:
Well that is a number that’s thrown around. You never know, Wes, for this reason, the immigration office always knows how many visas they issue. That’s the easy part. They don’t know how many of those people are still here. You can’t count that part of it.

Wes Moss [00:37:30]:
Oh, yeah. I wanted to ask about that. What is the. What are the. Just that you don’t have to be perfect here on this, but what are just kind of the general citizenship rules when you go to most of these countries, are they fine to let you stay? Do you have to get. I guess. Do you have to get nationality? Tell us about that part of this journey.

Edd Staton [00:37:52]:
Sure. That’s easy. You can stay in almost any country 90 days on your tourist, on your passport, and in some cases, you can extend that for another 90 days. But beyond that, you’ve got to get a residency visa.

Cynthia Staton [00:38:07]:
And that’s different than becoming a citizen. So that would be the first step, is to become a permanent resident.

Wes Moss [00:38:14]:
And how hard is that, though?

Cynthia Staton [00:38:17]:
Well, you know what? It’s. You got to jump through some hoops, do a lot of paperwork, and. And we recommend getting somebody to help you do all that. There are plenty of people, facilitators, attorneys, that specialize in that sort of thing that can help you. It’s not that expensive. And you want to make sure you get this right, because if you try to go down that road by yourself, even if you’re. Even if you’re bilingual, you know, things change. And so you really want to streamline that whole process, and that requires getting somebody to help you.

Cynthia Staton [00:38:48]:
But usually, I’ll let Ed jump in. There’s a time period where you have to wait. You get temporary residency, and then you can convert it to a permanent residency.

Edd Staton [00:39:00]:
Yeah, that’s chances we got here.

Wes Moss [00:39:02]:
So now you guys, Ed, you guys have permanent residency, but you have not become citizens.

Edd Staton [00:39:07]:
No, we. There was no. There’s no incentive to. Well, there’s an incentive to if you’re a doomsday conspiracy theorist that thinks that the US is going to go to you nowhere in a hat basket and you need a safety valve with a second passport. We are not of that mindset. So for us, having a second passport really serves no purpose. So, no, we haven’t gone through the required. The only big requirement would be that you have to know more spanish than we do, to be perfectly honest.

Cynthia Staton [00:39:41]:
Well, you have. And you. And there’s a fee, of course, involved. But I will point out here, in case your listeners are interested in this, the US is okay with you having dual citizenship so you don’t have to relinquish your US citizenship, which we would never consider doing. I don’t think to become a citizen in many other places. Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:40:03]:
So that’s the thing. You do a bunch of paperwork and get things. You learn words like apostille.

Cynthia Staton [00:40:09]:
It’s like, who knows what that means?

Edd Staton [00:40:11]:
Never heard of. But that’s just a process where the state verifies that your document is legit, puts a stamp on it that says it’s legitimate. You got to get those kind of things. There are police reports so that you’re not a criminal and so forth and so on. It’s not that hard. But as Cynthia said, there are things in life that are diy projects.

Wes Moss [00:40:31]:
This is not one of them.

Edd Staton [00:40:33]:
This is not one. We’ve known people that brag about how they successfully got their own visa. We know others that. We know others that went down a black hole and never returned.

Wes Moss [00:40:47]:
Is it? I still want to get to healthcare, but I still want to stay on the more, even these more fun topics. Tell me a little bit more about the expat community. Did you guys meet a group of people in those early years and you still friends with them today? Are you continuing to meet new people? Do you guys go out every week to a cool native restaurant? It sounds so magical. Tell me about your friend. I want to know about your friends there, your social connections.

Cynthia Staton [00:41:16]:
Yes. In the beginning, our one social event was called a gringo night. It was at a bar and restaurant downtown. And you. You somehow you found out about this just by talking to other people. Where can we go and get together with. With other expats? That was it. So we’re all standing around a drink, an adult beverage in our hand, trying to.

Cynthia Staton [00:41:41]:
Talking about, okay, where do you get chili powder? And what attorney have you used? And where are you in the, you know, I’m looking for an apartment. Do you know anybody? All of that happened, and we were religious about attending because we needed all those other people to help us.

Wes Moss [00:41:59]:
They were only settlers.

Edd Staton [00:42:00]:
There was none of that cocktail talk, like, in the states, like, hey, what are you doing? So, Wes, what do you do? It was like, here. It was like, where can we find chili powder?

Cynthia Staton [00:42:11]:
So anyway, it was fun in a way. And then ant kind of spearheaded another gringo night because we realized quickly that one week, once a week was not enough. And then people had parties. I mean, you collect. I collected everybody’s email address. We wanna know how to get in touch with you. Do you have a phone? How did you get that phone? And it was great. And then that was the exciting part.

Cynthia Staton [00:42:38]:
Now fast forward 14 years later. It’s like, oh, you know, I play bridge twice a week with my bridge club.

Edd Staton [00:42:45]:
This is not her. This is just people.

Cynthia Staton [00:42:47]:
Other people. Other people. Oh, it’s like we have community theater, we have art groups. You want to go learn how to paint or. Or you want to write your memoir? We’ve got people to get together that do that. We’ve got fishing groups. We’ve got people that travel together. I mean, you name it, whatever you want to do, it’s here.

Cynthia Staton [00:43:06]:
And like I told somebody once upon a time that was complaining about not having a singles group, I said, well, you know what? You’re single. Why don’t you start one? And a lot of us don’t have much to do. And you know what? He did the first meeting. Over 100 people showed up. It’s like, it was crazy. So that’s how you meet your friends. And today, we still stay in touch with. With a handful of those people that we actually ended up liking.

Cynthia Staton [00:43:35]:
And it’s great. We still get together for dinner. We go out, we go to each other’s homes, and we make more than guacamole.

Edd Staton [00:43:44]:
I’ll share with you, though, an interesting statistic for you and listeners, and this is not from us. This is just from studies. The average lifespan of an expat is somewhere between three and four years before they either go back home or move to a different expat place. They’re like, you know, this is great. We survived. Let’s go try Lake Chapala for a while, or let’s go to Lisbon.

Cynthia Staton [00:44:10]:
We know people that have moved to Colombia. I mean, Medellin, Colombia, is a beautiful city.

Edd Staton [00:44:16]:
We live there for a while of that initial massive group of people that we. There were so many that we had to divide them into an a, b and a Sikh group because we couldn’t keep up with everybody. It was so many.

Cynthia Staton [00:44:29]:
That’s ridiculous.

Edd Staton [00:44:29]:
But between people leaving and people dying. I hate to say it, but it’s retirees. We run into people in the supermax at the grocery store, and it’s kind of like, oh, you’re still here.

Wes Moss [00:44:42]:
Yeah.

Edd Staton [00:44:43]:
You don’t want to say, oh, you’re still here.

Cynthia Staton [00:44:44]:
We don’t want to say, oh, you’re still alive. But, yeah, we’ve lost. We’ve lost track. So, you know, that’s the polite thing to say, oh, my gosh, you’re still here. We’re so happy to.

Wes Moss [00:44:52]:
What’s kind of the average age of people when they. When they make their first expat move?

Edd Staton [00:44:58]:
Well, here’s the funny thing. That’s a great question. I think it’s, it appeals to a broader thing than just retirees. COVID and all the remote work really accelerated this, this digital nomad lifestyle. Lifestyle. So now it was all just people at or near retirement age to start with, but now more and more young families or young people without children yet are doing the digital nomad thing. And with speaking to your retire sooner thing, we’ve told many people, we told our own kids, but they didn’t listen to us. Whatever.

Edd Staton [00:45:39]:
Take your six figure income job that you’re spending almost six figures to maintain the lifestyle. Export that to a place like here, where your budget’s two, maybe three, if you want to live like king thousand a month, bank the rest of the money for as long as you want to do it. What a leg up you’ve got on your future retirement. And you had an adventure at the same time. What did I just say? That was bad?

Wes Moss [00:46:07]:
Yeah, I know. It’s such a compelling case. All right, how about this? What, if you’re listening, you’re retired sooner and you’re saying, oh, gosh, I’ve been great about saving, and I’m going to have $2 million in retirement, 100 grand a month in income. What does that look like? Is it still the same great towns you just have? You live like an absolute king.

Edd Staton [00:46:34]:
Well, that’s the other part of it. Expats, we were in the desperate situation that we told you, but all people that do this are economic refugees. There are also people that want to live large. They’ve got some money. They did. Okay, maybe they’re not wealthy, but they can take that money and be wealthy.

Cynthia Staton [00:46:58]:
Yes.

Edd Staton [00:47:00]:
By moving to a different place.

Cynthia Staton [00:47:01]:
And they don’t have to worry about the idea, which, I mean, it’s a view, you know, this, I’m sure one of the biggest concerns about people approaching retirement or thinking about retirement is that they’re going to run out of money. I mean, if you, if you transplant yourself to a place where you don’t have to worry about that, that brings so much peace of mind. And that’s, that’s a big part of finding happiness in retirement, that you don’t have to worry about the money.

Wes Moss [00:47:30]:
Gosh, we need to quote that exact line. I think I’ve said that exact line. All right. I want to ask maybe about kids and visiting, because that’s not inexpensive and grandkids, but let’s go to healthcare. That’s a question I get, and I don’t ever have a great answer about this because I think it would be it’s obviously going to be different almost everywhere you go, but in general, maybe start with Cuenca, tell us about Medicare, because if you don’t sign up for it, then you’ve got an issue if you’re in the United States. So what’s your general protocol around having Medicare in the United States and then using another health system and then being able to have it when you go back to the United States?

Cynthia Staton [00:48:09]:
Yeah, Ed, why don’t you talk about Medicare? We’ve written a lot about this actually.

Edd Staton [00:48:14]:
Basically, Wes, what you just said, we maintained our Medicare in the states for every reason. You never know. We never knew we were going to be here, so we never know. You think you got the future plotted in life when you’re on that journey? You never know what’s around the curve. It might be smooth sailing, it might be a truck on the wrong side of the road. So we, plus we go back frequently to see family. So it made sense for us to maintain the Medicare coverage. One thing I will mention, you read all the time, oh, Medicare doesn’t extend beyond us borders for traditional Medicare.

Edd Staton [00:48:52]:
That’s true. But many advantage plans, which we have one of them, if you look at the fine print, there is coverage for emergency care outside the US. Ours is up to $50,000 apiece. So if something’s wrong, you don’t go to a doctor, you go to the emergency room at the hospital, you’re probably going to have to pay for it and get reimbursed. But still, that’s a workaround abroad. It’s not true that there’s no Medicare beyond us borders with just blanket. It depends on your policy. So we maintain the Medicare there.

Edd Staton [00:49:31]:
We also are part of the healthcare system here. We have 100% coverage, zero deductible, no restrictions for age or pre existing conditions. And our premium between the two of us now is 90 something dollars a month.

Wes Moss [00:49:51]:
So I was going to ask how do they pay for that? But again, you do pay for it. It’s just not a lot. It’s not a lot.

Edd Staton [00:49:56]:
No, 90 plus dollars isn’t a whole lot for what I just told you.

Cynthia Staton [00:50:01]:
But there are different levels of insurance here. That system is kind of like the Social Security system in the states. Health insurance is part of that system here where people that are working pay into the system and then they are eligible for the health care. There’s also an Ecuador, a public health system. We’ve never used that because we are willing to pay and we can pay.

Wes Moss [00:50:29]:
Would that be a little bit more like medic would that be a little more like Medicaid here in the United States? Yeah, yeah.

Edd Staton [00:50:35]:
It’s just for lower income people that either are. They’re the different economy, so to speak. Let’s just put it that way.

Cynthia Staton [00:50:42]:
And then. And then the next level is private insurance. And that’s available, interestingly, through individual hospitals, private insurance through companies that don’t restrict where you can go to get your health care. And then there’s out of pocket. And that’s something that we always feel like we need to mention, because we do sort of a hybrid here in Ecuador of out of pocket and belonging to the system. So, Ed, you can talk a little bit about that.

Edd Staton [00:51:12]:
Yeah. The issue with the system is it is in the states, kind of. You can’t pick your. Or a lot of place, you can’t pick your doctors for things. So for specialty care, like ophthalmology, dentistry, dermatologists. Dermatologists. We want a relationship with those people. So we pay out of pocket for the periodic visits that we have, the Wellchs people, and it’s same day visit, and it’s 40 or $50.

Edd Staton [00:51:37]:
So it’s just. It’s no big deal, money wise, to.

Wes Moss [00:51:41]:
How about the quality? Do you. How would you rate the quality of the healthcare there?

Edd Staton [00:51:47]:
The quality of the healthcare worldwide that we’ve seen? And we’ve certainly not been everywhere. It’s way better than you think or that Americans think in general. Americans think they’ve got the inside track on everything, but it’s better in a number of ways. One, a lot of the doctors are foreign trained. They’re fluent English. There’s modern equipment. But the best thing is the bureaucracy. Bureaucratic bureaucracy.

Edd Staton [00:52:16]:
You got it. I feel like. Like Scooby Doo there for a minute. It’s not there. Like, when we’ve had to use the healthcare system. Cynthia was in for a week one time with a problem.

Cynthia Staton [00:52:30]:
Yes.

Edd Staton [00:52:30]:
And when we left, I signed a clipboard, and we walked out. That was the extent of the paperwork.

Cynthia Staton [00:52:36]:
And from our primary care physician, I was told, and I suspected this was true. I got. For my situation, I got world class care. The protocol was exactly the same as anywhere in the world. And one of the things we really like about the healthcare, and we do think it’s excellent, is it’s more personal. And the doctor will spend however long he needs to spend with you. He’s not looking at the clock, and everybody else is just waiting patiently for their turn. Sometimes we get a little impatient, but it’s okay.

Cynthia Staton [00:53:14]:
And the healthcare is conservative in terms of pharmaceuticals in terms of the procedures that they’re going to recommend the test. And you have to understand that a lot of this, and we do in the US, is CYA stuff. Cya. And it’s because the insurance companies dictate and control so much of what the doctors can and can’t do and get paid for.

Wes Moss [00:53:44]:
Let me ask you this. 14 years ago, this is a totally separate topic. So I feel like we’ve covered healthcare, and I love that. Let’s go to the opposite and the frivolous end. You know, we’re gonna ask about entertainment. So was the. The Internet 14 years ago was still not great, I bet. That’s my guess.

Wes Moss [00:54:04]:
What is it like today? And then does that mean, I guess you just like being in Atlanta? You can watch YouTube tv and see what’s going on in the US if you want to, or any other streaming service. Is that right?

Cynthia Staton [00:54:18]:
And. And so can we.

Edd Staton [00:54:20]:
When we moved here, we had dial up that we paid about $30 a month for and shared with seven other people. It was busy at night. When everybody got home from work and were on Facebook and everything, all you got was constant buffering. It was. It was horrible. Now we have fiber optic for the same price, and we can stream anything.

Cynthia Staton [00:54:46]:
Yes.

Edd Staton [00:54:47]:
And we do. So, um, it’s night and day difference with all that we spend. It actually is cheaper. Is $25 a month.

Cynthia Staton [00:54:56]:
Yeah.

Wes Moss [00:54:56]:
For Internet, it’s just as fast as the United States.

Edd Staton [00:54:59]:
Well, it gets fast as we want. We could have over 100 megabytes if we wanted, but it gets to a point where you just brag.

Wes Moss [00:55:06]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Staton [00:55:06]:
So interesting. I mean, there was a. There was a tipping point, and I really. I wish I could remember the year. And probably with a little research, I could. When you’re walking around and we had little candy bar phones when we first got here and a phone plan, and then suddenly a few years later, it wasn’t very long, where suddenly everybody had an iPhone. Everybody. I’m not talking about green ghost expats.

Cynthia Staton [00:55:35]:
I’m talking about everybody in this city had one. And the little indigenous woman selling her fruits and vegetables on the sidewalk. She pulls out her iPhone and I tell Ed she’s got a better phone than we do. How did that happen? How did that.

Wes Moss [00:55:52]:
It’s probably. It’s probably. Yeah. Well, the iPhone, I think, came out in zero seven. So probably by 2009 or ten, everyone in Cuenca had one.

Edd Staton [00:56:03]:
Yeah.

Cynthia Staton [00:56:04]:
That’s crazy.

Edd Staton [00:56:04]:
Our cell phone plans $8 a month.

Wes Moss [00:56:08]:
I feel like mine’s like $8.

Edd Staton [00:56:09]:
Our Internet’s $25 a month.

Wes Moss [00:56:12]:
Tell me, tell me about the kids. How often do you see your kids? And do you, how do expats deal with leaving their friends, their family, their network back in the United States?

Cynthia Staton [00:56:23]:
You know, that’s tough. And I think that when people talk about how courageous we must have been, they’re really thinking about how they would do something like that. And honestly, expat life is not cut out for everybody if you are on purpose. And we have good friends in the states, in Atlanta, as a matter of fact, they want to be close to their kids. So their grandkids, they, you know, have them over for dinner all the time. They just could never do anything like this. And that is something that you have to ask yourself. If you’re considering this life, you can make friends anywhere, let’s face it.

Cynthia Staton [00:57:03]:
But your family, now, those issues really target a lot of people. But I tell you what, it was our mission, all of our exotic travel was postponed for about ten years so that we could go back to New Jersey in North Carolina to watch our grandkids grow up. And so we were willing again to give up that for ourselves so that our grandkids would really know who we were and just FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp, you can video. I mean, there were many times where I would be chatting with my young granddaughters in the late afternoon so that my daughter could cook dinner. So I was literally babysitting online with my grandchildren. And it’s because I made the time to do that.

Wes Moss [00:57:50]:
How many times a year do you go back to the states?

Cynthia Staton [00:57:53]:
Probably about three. It ends up. But we stay weeks at a time.

Wes Moss [00:57:57]:
Wow. So you really have a nice balance. Really. It does. Listen, I know that it’s not all Skittles and Kit Kats, and it’s not. It’s life. So life’s kind of tough anywhere you go. But it is a pretty.

Wes Moss [00:58:12]:
You guys have done this now for so long that it sounds like you’ve been. You’re wise. You’re wise to a pretty complex move that for anybody to do it financially, seems like it has worked out dramatically to the good. You’ve been able to balance the family, which I think is, in my mind, is the toughest part. The scariest part is kind of the healthcare piece. It sounds like that’s pretty darn good in a lot of these countries, particularly where you guys are in Ecuador. And then the adventure part of it is, which is kind of what wraps this whole thing up in this, just this kind of adventure, magical wrapping that I’ve always thought of this. I still, in my mind, I don’t know if this is something I would ever do, but I think about it because I love the adventure.

Wes Moss [00:59:06]:
I was abroad for a semester and I think back to those days in Spain. It was amazing. It was awesome. At my stage of life, I look around the United States and I think there’s so many places in the US I haven’t spent enough time in, but I totally see this for you guys, and I think a lot of people. And the reality is that Americans are not overly prepared. Well, that’s an understatement. For retirement. It’s hard to get there, right? It’s hard.

Wes Moss [00:59:37]:
You hear Susie Orman say you need at least $5 million to retire. What’s the percentage of Americans that have that by the time they’re 65? Probably. Probably 99.5% are not even close. So the solving this financially and the way you guys have done that is something that I really have a lot of respect for. How you guys have done this. And tell our, as we, as we, as we wrap and close up today, what do you guys do and how do you do it? For people that are thinking about this is it, do you just tell people to go to the website, download some of your material? Do you get on the phone with people? What levels of help do you give?

Edd Staton [01:00:17]:
Well, we have kind of both of those. We have a program or two programs. The introductory package, which is the first two modules of the five module program, just for people that are just wanting to touch their toe and think about it without having to make a big financial commitment, not that the whole program is that big of a financial commitment. And then we got the five module program to take you from getting a passport if you don’t have one, all the way through to getting off the plane and wherever you end up going. And we also offer for people that have specialized needs, uh, consulting services, that the price of that, of course, is based on the amount of time and energy we need to put into helping them solve whatever it is they need solving, whether it be travel, because we kind of become experts on that by default, so to speak, or the whole expat thing in general, as far as whatever they need.

Cynthia Staton [01:01:19]:
Yeah, I will have to add, you know, our program includes our ongoing support. So, you know, what you might need at the beginning of your expat journey is not what you need. Maybe midway through, or even if you’ve been an expat for a long time. And also our website and all the articles that we’ve written in the blogs, we provide a lot of information for free. It’s just our program sort of consolidates everything all in one place.

Wes Moss [01:01:46]:
And that’s Ed and Cynthia.com. And Ed has two to ds, right?

Edd Staton [01:01:51]:
Indeed I do.

Wes Moss [01:01:53]:
All right. As we part one, what is your. Give me your one quick favorite thing about expat living. Ed, you first.

Edd Staton [01:02:03]:
For me, it is the stress free life that comes with financial freedom. We went from a situation where we didn’t know what we were going to do to a point where instead of a lifestyle in the states on Social Security income, where we would always be thinking about what we’re not getting to do, we live an upscale lifestyle and do whatever we want to do within reason. So the peace that that brings you, it’s almost indescribable. And so few people know it, by the way.

Wes Moss [01:02:44]:
That was so good. I just. That was amazing. Cynthia.

Cynthia Staton [01:02:49]:
Well, I have to concur, of course, with what Ed says, but one of my favorite parts about our expat life is our pedestrian lifestyle. And we didn’t touch on that at all. But living in the United States, outside of a few big cities where there is good public transportation, you have to have a car and you have to drive most every single where every place you go. And here we walk out our door and within 1015 minutes, our whole life is right here. And that is a game changer. Not only are you getting physical activity and exercise just by going to the store or walking to the gym or the yoga studio, I’m saying things that we do or just walking by the river, it changes everything. Your whole perspective.

Wes Moss [01:03:42]:
That is like a blue zone ending. It’s a blue zone. It’s a blue zone beginning is what it is. Guys, we’re going to wrap. Thank you. This is so much fun. This is like, so. I feel so warm and sunshiny after.

Wes Moss [01:03:59]:
Sunshiny after talking this through. So thank you, guys.

Cynthia Staton [01:04:04]:
It’s been a pleasure talking with you. And do you ever want to have us back? We would love to do a repeat.

Wes Moss [01:04:11]:
All right, guys.

Edd Staton [01:04:12]:
And I’d share with you that when we do something like this, we get excited all over again. We’ve been doing this a long time, but it’s like, this is a pretty good decision we made. We do have a pretty good life.

Wes Moss [01:04:26]:
First day of high school, you guys are back. So cool.

Mallory Boggs [01:04:31]:
Hey, y’all, this is Mallory with the retire sooner team. Please be sure to rate and subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. If you have any questions, you can find us@wesmoss.com. Dot. That’s wesmoss.com dot. You can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube. You’ll find us under the handle Retire Sooner podcast. And now for our show’s disclosure.

Mallory Boggs [01:04:50]:
This information is provided to you as a resource for informational purposes only and is not to be viewed as investment advice or recommendations. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. There is no guaranteed offer that investment return, yield or performance will be achieved. Stock prices fluctuate, sometimes rapidly and dramatically, due to factors affecting individual companies, particular industries or sectors, or general market conditions for stocks paying dividends. Dividends are not guaranteed and can increase, decrease, or be eliminated without notice. Fixed income securities involve interest rates, credit inflation and reinvestment risks, and possible loss of principal. As interest rates rise, the value of fixed income securities falls. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Mallory Boggs [01:05:31]:
When considering any investment vehicle, this information is being presented without consideration of the investment objectives, risk tolerance, or financial circumstances of any specific investor and might not be suitable for all investors. Investment decisions should not be based solely on information contained here. This information is not intended to and should not form a primary basis for for any investment decision that you may make, always consult your own legal, tax or investment advisor before making any investment tax, estate or financial planning considerations or decisions. The information contained here is strictly an opinion and it is not known whether the strategies will be successful. The views and opinions expressed are for educational purposes only as of the date of production and may change without notice at any time. Based on numerous factors such as market and other conditions.