Every few years our personal goals change. In the early 2000s, we wanted to work on our businesses rather than work in them, in the style of the e-Myth. In the mid-2000s, we wanted to shorten our path to retirement, which prompted us to move from Toronto to Dauphin, Manitoba. By 2008 we started to travel more, and so we wanted to live a more convenient distance from an airport without increasing our cost of living, so we could stay retired. Recently we began exploring the possibility of living outside Canada, so that we could take advantage of either particularly interesting or particularly lucrative work opportunities. As we have approached similar questions, we devised a kind of pilot project: we’d “move” to Mazatlán, Mexico for three months.

We wanted to simulate living in Mazatlán, which meant not treating the entire trip as a vacation. We wanted to answer a few important questions:

• Could we live outside Canada happily?
• Could we live outside Canada and continue operating our businesses without our presence?
• How much and how successfully had we automated our lives?
• What more do we need to eliminate or automate in order to feel comfortable accepting an opportunity that requires temporary location?
• Could we live outside Canada without increasing our cost of living past our passive income level and without decreasing our standard of living below our minimum comfort level?

We chose Mazatlán in part because relatives had stayed there for several months, but also because it appeared we could live there comfortably quite inexpensively. We decided we would invest about CAD 7-8k to evaluate Mazatlán as a potential second home. In the articles that follow, we will share the details, but for now, we can answer some of our questions.

• Yes, we enjoy living in Mazatlán’s historic downtown.
• Yes, we can live in Mazatlán for even less than we spend to live in Summerside.
• No, it appears we can’t buy a house in Mazatlán similar to ours in Summerside for a price similar to what we paid in Summerside.
• No, we have not yet sufficiently automated our lives to be able to operate our businesses remotely, although we have got very close, and know what we need to do to settle this question.

So, when do we move to Mazatlán full time? We don’t feel rushed to do it, but we feel comforted to know how strong an option it is. We feel that it could form a key part of a strategy of serial remote living: a lifestyle similar to the Snowbird, but without the emphasis on flying south for the winter.