But Where in the Caribbean?

Whenever we think of the Caribbean, which is often, we are reminded of a couple of songs. Kokomo by the Beach Boys and Caribbean Queen by Billy Ocean.  These are the songs we listen to as we pack for our next Caribbean adventure!




Please don't get us wrong.  We love to travel to other destinations too.  The Mediterranean provided an extraordinary experience that we will never forget. And going through the Panama Canal was a breathtaking once in a lifetime experience.  But in saying that, we still prefer the warm sun, pristine beaches and sweet breezes of the Caribbean!

We love all the Saints: Thomas, Lucia, Kitts, Vincent, Johns, Croix and more. And don't get us started with Jamaica, Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Cayman Islands, Belize, Cozumel, etc. You get the picture.  We wanted to live in the Caribbean, but with so many choices, we needed to decide where in the Caribbean to live.

Now one of the things that will really help a person contemplating living abroad  is MONEY.  Dough. Bread. Cabbage. Moolah. Loot. Bucks. Green. Whatever YOU want to call it.  Bottom line: look at your budget first and THEN look at the place.  But that's not what we did.  At least not at first.

We selected our top 3 places in the Caribbean to live. To make it easy, we chose the A,B,C's of the Caribbean: Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao. With finally narrowing our selection to these three locations, we could begin our research with gusto!

After several months of research, both online and while we vacationed at these locations, we realized that living in these places, at this point in our lives,  would be a financial stretch.

Here's why.  We plan to keep our current home here in the United States and have a second home in the Caribbean.  So it is important to be financially comfortable at both locations.

And this is how we envision our plan. One of us would live in our Caribbean home most of the year (only coming back to the States during summer months). The other in the home here in the States, using their vacation time, longer weekends and holidays for intermittent trips to the Caribbean home. Are you thinking what we're thinking? Yes, lots of frequent flyer miles.  

Our careers make this arrangement feasible since one of us has a virtual profession that can be performed anywhere in the world as long as we have high speed internet. The other one has a couple of years left until retirement.   We will do this until we retire, sell our home in the States and move to the Caribbean permanently.

So with a new budget in hand, and renewed gusto, our research continues.