For the sake of clarity, accountability, and transparency, I am presenting my family’s updated high-level plan for the next decade.
Kelly – My wife intends to focus primarily on her leadership coaching business. This includes life coaching, personal development, business coaching, corporate consulting (with Delivering Happiness), programs and retreats, etc. We are planning to stay in Miami until 2022 and while we are here she will continue to be available to teach yoga and coach the math team as needed.
Max – I hope to get my music career back on track and the real estate business operating at maximum efficiency, and mostly independent of me. I will also increasingly focus my time and energy on all of our online projects (blogs, vlogs, podcasts, website).
Kids – Continue to grow and develop in a quadrilingual environment: English, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese.
Fall 2022:
Our older son will be almost seven and the younger one will be four. We expect to relocate to Asia for a year, with Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei, Singapore, and Penang being our most likely destinations. Some of the reasons for moving to Asia are to put our kids in world-class school programs, get them in an environment where they are used to hard work and self-discipline, and help them learn Chinese. The first four cities listed all have excellent schools, while Penang would likely require us to utilize special Chinese school enrollment.
Taipei is our top choice. It offers a great balance between urban amenities and cost of living. We prefer its Mandarin-speaking environment for the kids. It lacks a bit of the wow factors that we love about some of the other options, but it still offers a lot with the fewest negatives of all our choices. Still plenty of factors that could affect this decision over the next three years.
2023-2028:
During the first year in Asia, we will re-evaluate and decide on the best next step for our entire family. Options include traveling around the world for a year, traveling across North America for a year, or continuing to live in Asia. My personal hope is to spend three years total based in Asia (including two full years in a single city), spend two years total traveling the world, and one year total traveling across North America. Traveling around the world would utilize mostly one month stays, although some could be longer and some could be shorter depending on circumstances. I imagine traveling across North America would be more like 1-2 week stops in any one place. But this is all flexible as we consider what is best for the whole family. After the initial move to Asia we will also explore, one last time, the possibility of expanding our family.
2028-2029:
About ten years from now we would want to return to the US to settle into one city as our oldest son prepares for high school. Northern California, Southern California, and New York City are our favorite eventual landing spots, but we would evaluate options anywhere in the country including a return to Miami. Jadon would be 12 or 13 and entering 7th or 8th grade, assuming standard advancement over the years.
X-Factors:
There are two primary wildcards that would affect this overview. First would be the health of our family members, most notably my parents. If their health is not good, I do not want to be far away from them. I actually hope they will be able to join us on most if not all of our travels, but again, health may affect this possibility. Second would be if our kids have any very special talents/passions that would necessitate being in a particular area. If this is the case, obviously we will seek to provide as much support and opportunity to them as possible, which could include settling in a single particular location.
