What I’m Doing Now That the Kids Are Grown Up

Editor's Note: This story originally appeared on Live and Invest Overseas.

For better than 2½ decades, Lief and I have been working together to identify and then position pieces of our eventual “retirement.”

We don’t plan ever to retire in the conventional sense.

What would I do with myself if I didn’t get up each morning and draft a dispatch to you, dear reader?

For Lief and me, retirement isn’t about stopping doing what we’re doing.

Indeed, we’d say we’re already retired … though we’re working more than ever.

A Different Perspective on Retirement

We’ve long looked forward to retirement as a stage of perpetual motion and constant contrast … flexibility, freedom, and discovery.

We like to move around, and we appreciate change.

When our children were in school, our moving around was dictated by school calendars.

We’d base ourselves in one place, where our children then attended school—first Ireland, then Paris, then Panama City — and we’d plan our travels around their breaks.

Now that both children are fully launched, we’re able to embrace the next phase of our plan. Lief and I are able to come and go as we like.

A Bittersweet Transition

For me, this transition has been bittersweet. Sure, it’s nice to be able to wander where we want, as often as we want, and to stay in each place as long as we’d like.

On the other hand, I have to admit that adjusting to the idea of being a mom without kids in the house has taken some effort.

What is a mother to do when her children no longer occupy her attention full-time?

I say: Hit the road!

Our Next Stage Plan

Lief and I are working now in a more focused way than ever to fit together the pieces we’ve accumulated over the past two decades into a more formal Next Stage Plan.

This plan has Paris and Panama as dual hubs. We’ve been residents of Panama for more than 15 years … and we’re in Panama to stay.

Our Live And Invest Overseas business is headquartered in Panama City … while this country’s Veraguas province is where we’ve located our long-term home base at the community of Los Islotes, on Panama’s Pacific coast.

We’re all-in on Panama … and more bullish on this country’s prospects long-term than ever.

Panama is one of the best places in the world to run a business or invest in real estate, and we look forward to every opportunity to spend time with the LIOS team in our Panama City HQ.

Plus, of course, we savor every day we’re able to spend at Los Islotes. Mother Nature has outdone herself on this coast.

Embracing a Life of Travel

Today, though, I write from Paris, where we’ve enjoyed the holidays with our children and local friends.

Next week, we’ll be repositioning … from the Old World to the New … from the City of Light back to the Hub of the Americas.

From our Panama base, we’ve planned trips to Belize, Colombia, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic … chances to reconnect with friends and colleagues on the ground and to check on investments we hold in each location.

As I said, we like to move around.

Thanks to our natural affinity for the place and the four years we lived here when the kids were younger, Paris feels like home and is our second long-term home base.

As well, though, we want to spend time regularly in the other places on our we-love-it-here list … and in other spots, too, that we’ve yet to identify.

Living With Purpose

When we come and go from these places, we want to do it as “locals,” rather than as tourists, and with a purpose.

That’s why we’ve worked to build infrastructure in each location that has gotten under our skin and stirred our imaginations. We’ve made friends in these places … and investments.

We’ve found partners and launched businesses. We’ve bought apartments, built houses, planted trees, and cultivated gardens.

We’ve become involved in the local communities, contributing as we can to support local schools and education programs, for example. We try to take advantage of every chance we identify to support the next generation.

When we show up in each location, we want to have something to do with ourselves (in addition to drafting these dispatches).

We want company for cocktails and companions for dinner, but we also want to be engaged in activities with an aim.

At Home at Los Islotes

Our Los Islotes community on Panama’s Pacific coast is the culmination of this driving lifetime agenda.

At Los Islotes, we’re creating an oceanfront community in the Spanish-colonial style.

I tell the whole story in my latest book, “At Home at Los Islotes — Finding Our Way on This Veraguas Coast.”

Very long story short, at first, Los Islotes was about making money. More than a decade into the most challenging undertaking of our lives, I realize it has nothing to do with cash flow.

Los Islotes has been our bridge to a hidden world with secrets the world should know. Connecting with them has gifted me purpose.

As we stand at the start of new year 2024, my No. 1 resolution is to open the Los Islotes Learning Center. This will be a place for local students to come to access the internet and a lending library, to learn basic computer skills, to meet with tutors, and to take English-language lessons.

Just Getting Started

Giving this particular next generation a leg up seems the most worthwhile use of my time I can now imagine.

For my 40th birthday, Lief took the kids and me to Galway for the weekend. We were living in Waterford at the time.

Walking along the seafront in Galway town the eve before the big day, Kaitlin, then 14, looked up at me and asked, “Does it bother you that your life is over?”

Before I could respond, she continued, “I mean, you’re married. You have two kids. You’ve been doing the same job forever. Does it bother you to think that everything for you is already all figured out and over?”

A 14-year-old’s take on turning 40. Now that milestone is way back in the rear view, as is the big 5-0 … and, as well, with 2023 done, my 60th year.

Does it bother me? Well, sure. We’d all like to slow things down if we could. On the other hand, nothing’s over ’til it’s over. I’d say I’m just getting started.