Moving Overseas with 3 Kids and Investing in Real Estate Abroad (Founders of Greenback Tax Services)

Sneak Peek:

Carrie:    00:00:00    You know, booking strategies with ease and do it all with enough advance notice. We tend to be last minute people, so I don't think we were good candidates for some of that.

Kristin:    00:00:07    Okay, everyone, well, you heard it here first. You don't have to be good at planning, and you don't have to be a flight booking whizz to travel the world and live abroad with kids. You have squashed those stereotypes.  

Carrie:    00:00:19    <laugh>

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests. 

Kristin Wilson, Host:     00:00:39    Hi everyone. Kristin Wilson from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 117 of Badass Digital Nomads podcast. My guests today are David and Carrie McKeegan, the founders of Greenback Tax Services for expats. I have been wanting to talk to someone from Greenback Tax Services for probably two years now because they are one of the few firms that specialize in expat taxes. And I'm so happy that I got the chance to talk with David and Carrie because they're married. They're long-term expats, and they founded Greenback out of their own frustrations and confusion with paying US taxes abroad back when they were living in London. And what I learned in researching their story is that they've been location independent since 2009. They've had three kids on three different continents and run two remote businesses with teams of over 50 people, all remote, all fully distributed.  

Kristin:    00:01:49    So this interview went twice as long as expected. So I've split it into two weeks. In the first part of our interview, we're talking about where they've traveled and where they've lived as a family, how they grew their family while living abroad and where they lived and why they recently moved from Bali to Costa Rica, as well as their plans for investing in real estate in Nicaragua, their tips for traveling and living abroad with kids and much more. And in part two of their interview next week, I basically interrogated them on all things taxes with every single tax FAQ, I could think of. These are questions that I've had personally after 20 years of traveling and living abroad, and also questions that my viewers and listeners and subscribers and Facebook group members and people just like you have asked me about. So you're gonna learn everything that you need to know about paying us taxes abroad in next week's episode.  

Kristin:    00:02:54    So definitely tune back in for that. Of course, this is everything that you could know without getting one-on-one consultation, right? But that's gonna be a lot of bang for your buck. Lots of value in next week's episode two. So part one today, traveling with Kids, part two taxes. And I wanna give a big thank you to one of our listeners, Margaret, who bought me a coffee last week. Thank you so much Margaret, I really appreciate it. And if you'd like to chip in and help literally fuel the production of this podcast, we crowdsource my content as I've been talking a lot about recently. Then head over to badassdigitalnomads.com/support where you can buy me a coffee, donate some crypto or PayPal, or join my Patreon team and get access to monthly Zoom Hangouts, discounts on my products and courses and merch, and preview all my videos before they're live on YouTube. Enjoy episode 117 of Badass Digital Nomads on traveling and living abroad as a family of five.

Podcast Interview:

Kristin: Welcome, Carrie Ann David to Badass Digital Nomads podcast. It's so great to have you here. We've been wanting to do this interview, I think for about two years. Is that right, <laugh>?  

David:    00:04:17    Yeah. It seems like everything got uh, shut down when Covid happened and it's like, alright, let's pick it back up. <laugh>  

Kristin:    00:04:24    <laugh>. Yeah, I know like taxes are just a really important topic for people and so we're gonna cover a lot of the most frequently asked questions that people have of me that I can't answer, not being an accountant or  a CPA or an enrolled agent. So we're gonna get into all of those questions, people's burning questions about paying us taxes abroad, <laugh>. But first I wanted to get just a little bit more information about your background because I found it so fascinating that you've been running this remote company for so long, living as a family and traveling in different countries, and that you started Greenback Tax Services based out of your own frustration over filing US taxes abroad. And that is something that I can wholly relate to because when I first lived in Costa Rica in 2005 when I was working there, all the other expats told me, you don't even have to pay taxes like you're living in Costa Rica.  

Kristin:    00:05:27    You don't even have to file. And so that ended up being the start of a very long, annoying process of misinformation and filing back taxes and refiling forms I didn't know I had to file. And hiring very expensive accounting firms where I was just paying them thousands and thousands of dollars a year. They, they were big corporate accounting firms because I started with mom and pop accountants who didn't understand the plight of US citizens living abroad and didn't understand the nuances and the details of what we need to do to file accurately. And then I went to the other end of the spectrum, which were accounting firms that mostly worked with international corporations and they didn't know either. And so there seemed to be this big gap, like they didn't tell me, they didn't know, they charged me a lot of money and then <laugh> did my taxes wrong. So there seemed to be this big gap in like people who actually know what they're talking about when it comes to us expat tax issues. And I say us expat specifically because it can be a lot more straightforward for citizens of other countries, which we can talk about more when we get into the tax stuff. But anyway, back to you. Where were you living when you had the idea to start this company and what were the struggles you were having there?  

Carrie:    00:06:49    Yeah, so when we started the business, we were living in London and probably similar to your experience, you know, we used a local accountant in the US who, you know, said they understood everything, filed things, you know, Dave was doing tons of research. We were, you know, kind of a little bit dubious but still thought, you know, this, uh, this person seems to know what they're doing. Then started looking into hiring accounting firms in London, which was just ridiculously expensive. And so really kind of went through the whole thing and realized that not only were we having this issue, but all of our friends were right. There was a big American expat community in London and we would go out and be talking about this and everyone was saying you the exact same problem. So that was really kind of the, the start of it is actually is knowing that not only do we have the problem, but everyone else did too.  

Kristin:    00:07:35    And for the listeners, uh, we were saying before the interview, both of you have MBAs? 

Carrie:    00:07:40    Yep, yep.  

Kristin:    00:07:41    And I have an MBA as well. And so not like we're rocket scientists, but like we are people who went through grad school and we still were having trouble figuring out how to file our taxes correctly from other countries and even finding qualified accountants. So it's like, I feel like it is such a difficult thing and I wish I would've started this back when I was starting out. Uh, what year did you start Greenback Tax Services?  

David:    00:08:07    Uh, back in 2009, but we originally left New York in 2002 and we went to Spain and did our MBAs in Barcelona, and then after that we moved to London.  

Kristin:    00:08:19    So did you guys meet in college or how did you end up living abroad the first time? It was through study abroad.  

Carrie:    00:08:26    No, so we met, um, we lived in the same town, uh, small town outside of New York City in Westchester County. Didn't go to the same school, worked at the same summer camp <laugh>, so met way back then, and then got together in, uh, right after college.  

Kristin:    00:08:39    And the first time you lived abroad was in Spain? 

Carrie:    00:08:43    Yep. Yeah, so I, I lived abroad as a kid, so I grew up in Mexico City, but the first time we moved abroad together was going to Spain.  

Kristin:    00:08:50    Oh, wow. What, how did you end up growing up in Mexico City?  

Carrie:    00:08:54    So my parents big travelers as well, so, you know, there's no no surprise where I came from in that <laugh> in that regard. My dad had a job at a bank in Mexico.  

Kristin:    00:09:02    Wow. And when, how old were you when you moved back to the US?  

Carrie:    00:09:06    I was 10, so I moved, I lived in um, Mexico from when I was four till when I was 10 and then came back. So I've actually lived abroad more years overall by far than I have lived in the US  

Kristin:    00:09:16    Same here. Do you speak Spanish then?

Carrie:  Yeah.

Kristin: So you guys were living in Spain and then you moved to London. Were you, did you get jobs there, like traditional jobs where you were on an expat assignment?  

David:    00:09:29    No, We got local jobs in the uk. Uh, so I've got dual citizenship through my grandparents who were from Ireland. So I could work anywhere in the EU. This is pre Brexit. And Carrie got a job with, uh, American Express who she had worked with in the US before going to business school.  

Carrie:    00:09:48    And part of the reason of that distinction is important is 'cause if you're on an expat assignment, often the company you're working with sort of takes care of that for you. Whereas if you're moving on your own, and that's actually less common, but at the time that was more common. If you're moving on your own, you're kind of taking on that, you know, responsibility for knowing what you need to do and finding an accounting company and all of those things. It's not something that comes with a package where they're gonna, you know, take on the, the responsibility of figuring it out for you.  

Kristin:    00:10:15    Exactly. I've talked about that in actually talks that I've done at Nomad Summit and Nomad Cruise, talking about the six figure and, uh, location packages that a lot of people get when they are relocated by a company to another country. But most freelancers, online business owners, digital nomad types, we have to figure it out on our own. And so that's where, that's why I started a relocation company for normal people, <laugh> who weren't getting, you know, six figure bonuses and massive support packages to move to London, for example.  And so were you able to work in London, Carrie, because you guys were married or did you have to file for another work permit?  

Carrie:    00:10:57    So we weren't married yet at the time, um, but American Express sponsored me for a visa to work there, so I was working. 

Kristin:    00:11:02    Okay.  Yeah. Great. And then people always ask how to find jobs abroad. And so this would've been in the early to mid two thousands. How did you get a job? Did you just look in the classified ads or kind of go door to door applying for jobs?  

Carrie:    00:11:19    Well, because we had been, we were in a, doing an MBA program in Spain. We were actually using their career resources, which, you know, were mostly in Spain so we sort of were <laugh>, you know, trying to figure it out from Spain into London. So yeah, it was a lot of kind of networking in and cold calling and you know, using the career services. But it was definitely, you know, it wasn't something where they were lining up interviews for you and there was, you know, a whole lot of, uh, support in that way for going to London per se.  

Kristin:    00:11:46    Yeah, every single person I've interviewed on this podcast about getting a remote job in a foreign country, it was all networking, which I guess is how you end up getting jobs a lot of the time in any country, even your home country. I remember graduating from college and then going on monster.com and it was just like a sea of job postings and resumes and I never heard back from anybody. But then my first job in Costa Rica and the offers that I got when I was still living in Orlando were all through friends of friends, like word of mouth, a professor, such and such person, my friend's brother. So yeah, it all, it all tends to happen that way. And so, um, have you lived abroad mostly since then? Yeah,  

Carrie:    00:12:29    Fully since then.  

Kristin:    00:12:30    Okay.  

Carrie:    00:12:31    So we, we come back to the US a lot. You know, we sort of try to spend a couple of months, well, we haven't always tried to spend a couple months here, but right now we're here for a couple of months. We just got here and we're gonna be here till September. So we've always kind of kept in contact with the US and come back and forth, but we haven't lived here since 2002.  

Kristin:    00:12:48    Okay. And how many kids do you have?  

Carrie:    00:12:50    Uh, three. Three boys.  

Kristin:    00:12:52    Oh wow. And were they all born in different countries? I know you said that you have five passports in your family, <laugh>. 

Carrie:    00:12:59    Yeah, So Timmy, who's our oldest, who's 11, was born in London. Um, and then Jake was born in Argentina when we were living there. And Billy, Jake is eight and Billy is six and he was born in the US but it was while we were living in Bali. So we actually flew back just to have him in the US to have the um, US hospital experience.  

Kristin:    00:13:17    Okay.  

David:    00:13:17    We travel with 11 passports.  

Carrie:    00:13:20    Yeah, <laugh>. 

David:    00:13:21   So I joking, I jokingly call it Jason Bourne the later years.  

Carrie:    00:13:24    I know, it's kind of like if you're beginning of the passport control, you have to make sure you bring the right one out or you're afraid you're gonna get in trouble for <laugh>. 

David:    00:13:30    Which  one did we come in here on?  

Carrie:    00:13:32    Yeah, yeah.  

Kristin:    00:13:33    This is totally off topic, but did you have any distinction between the birthing experience in those different countries? Like would you say that the experience in the US was better or safer or more pleasant or anything? Or did you just realize I can have a kid anywhere?  

Carrie:    00:13:53    Yeah, no, I had totally, I mean it probably is a, a very long answer, but you know, I had totally, totally different experiences. So, you know, the UK very natural, you know, childbirth experience, that's very much kind of what they're the path. They're pushing me down in Argentina, you know, they don't even want the dad in the room. Like that seems ludicrous, you know, it's a completely different experience. And then the US was just a bit more kind of medicated, right? So there was a lot more. So it was totally different and you know, it all worked out really well for each one. So I can't complain. But yeah, very, very different experiences.  

Kristin:    00:14:25    I had a friend who had her first kid in Costa Rica, I believe. And it was a very, very natural birth experience, A.K.A very painful <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:14:37    But what I learned from all of my friends who live there was that Costa Rica has one of the highest c-section rates. So they actually schedule more women for c-sections than natural births since that, that's just culturally what they do. And I found that very interesting, especially in um, quite a religious country that it would be more c-section versus natural birth. And then when I was living in the Netherlands, my friends talked a lot about how they did a lot of home births there and like they didn't use any drugs at all. And that made a lot of sense because you can't even find most over the counter medications over there. It's like the strongest pain reliever I could find was paracetamol <laugh>. And, um, so yeah, it's so interesting to see like the differences between all of those countries. So where do you call home then?  

Carrie:    00:15:27   Oh,  So right now we're living in Costa Rica. Um, we happen to be in the US right now when we're having this conversation, but our, we live in a town called Nosara in Costa Rica.  

Kristin:    00:15:35    Did we talk about that over email?  

Carrie:    00:15:37    We did a little bit, yeah.  

Kristin:    00:15:38    Okay. 'cause I know we talked about Nicaragua, so Yeah. 'cause I lived in Nosara 2005 to 2007 or oh eight. Uh, which section of Nosara are you in? Which side of town?  

Carrie:    00:15:50    In uh, Playa Guiones

Kristin:    00:15:52    Okay. Like in the K section or?   

Carrie:    00:15:55    Yep.eah, K section. I can't even imagine how different it must've been back then. <laugh>. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:16:00    Oh yeah, it was like a ghost town. I mean, there were just no people. I got there in September or October during the rainy season, which is the low season in Costa Rica of 2005. And yeah, just didn't see another human being on the beach. Yeah, like surfing by myself. And I remember the first day my four by four broke down at night and the rain and my mom was with me and I, I didn't know how to restart it, it was a manual, so I had to change gears and all sorts of stuff. And we were just going up a hill and stalled out and we just rolled back down. We're at the bottom of this dirt hill at night in the rain on a four wheeler. And I was just like, what have I gotten myself into?  

Carrie:    00:16:43    <laugh>, <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:16:45    But, um, it has grown a lot since then. So for people listening who haven't been there, the reason I asked which section they live in is because the Nosara is this town in Northwest Costa Rica, but then there's different beaches, there's Guiones Beach and Pelada Beach, and then Nosara, the town is actually inland and in Guiones and part of Pelada, they have what's called the American project because uh, American developers split up the land into different sections that have different letters. So it's probably the only city in Costa Rica, I don't wanna say city, the only town in Costa Rica that's zoned that way. It's quite interesting. So did you buy a house there?

Carrie:    00:17:28    Did, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Which was unusual for us. You know, we usually have been kind of fairly fluid, but Nosara, I mean, you probably wouldn't believe how much it's changed, you know, it's really competitive in terms of any kind of long-term housing. So you really just couldn't find anything that wasn't week by week unless you bought something.  

Kristin:    00:17:47    Yeah, it's always been really hard to find long-term rentals because it's such a lucrative short-term rental market. But I used to work in real estate there, and I'm sure if I would've stayed, it would've been quite a lucrative career. But that was one of those things where I saw the writing on the wall, I saw how much it was growing, and I was one of the first people working there in real estate. I mean, people got there in like the sixties and seventies and were working there, but you know, before the, like, I was there during the real estate boom, the first one, and then the crash, and then the next boom. But the people that I worked with are still working there in real estate, almost all of them. But I had to make that decision of do I want this beach lifestyle for the next 10 or 20 years, or do I wanna see more of the world? And so I decided to move on and pursue other interests, but I do think it would be still a nice place to live. Will you rent it out and then, or no, you just bought a property in Nicaragua, right? So will you be splitting your time between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, or what's your plan there?  

Carrie:    00:18:51    No, I mean, so Nicaragua that's more kind of an investment. You know, we just love Nicaragua and think that will be, someday might be a, a place that would be fun to spend more time in or just, you know, something that, that will kind of explode a bit in terms of, uh, the real estate there. But our plan in general is just to spend, you know, the, a good chunk of our year in Costa Rica, but use that more as a jumping off point to be able to travel. So as you said, it's a super small town. It's, you know, it's a great little community. It's, you know, pristine beach. But you know, we definitely are, uh, have the, the travel bug. So <laugh>, you know, we, uh, we spend a good time, a chunk of the year traveling usually.  

Kristin:    00:19:28    Are your kids going to Nosara Academy or homeschool?  

Carrie:    00:19:31    They're homeschooling.  

Kristin:    00:19:32    Okay. So why did you choose Costa Rica after you, you've lived in Europe, you've lived in South America, you just mentioned, I -I know that you traveled to Asia. Did you live in Asia at all?  

Carrie:    00:19:45    Yeah, so we lived in Bali for about eight years. So we literally moved from Bali to Costa Rica. And really, you know, the reason we left Bali is because we were finding it was just way too far away from our families. It was really hard coming back and forth to the us. I think there was one time when we did a calculation and we realized that we spent about, what was it, like 30% of our time Jet lagged <laugh> we're like, this isn't working that well. All this Jet lag.

David:    00:20:09    <laugh> a month and a half of every year we were jet lagged just from this trip, from trip coming back for the summer and for Christmas for to see family. It was exhausting.  

Carrie:    00:20:19    Yeah. And also the kids were craving more time with the grandparents. We wanted to be closer to our family. And so we didn't, we weren't, you know, we're not interested at this point in living in the us but being in Costa Rica, you know, people think it's funny that we say that because we see it as so close to the US relative to Bali, even though obviously it's still, you know, a six hour flight away.  

Kristin:    00:20:37    Yeah, no, it's way easier 'cause you're staying in the same time zone. When you fly back and forth. And so you still get tired from the flight, but not the same way that the jet lag going to Bali is so bad. Yeah.  

Carrie:    00:20:50    And it's also a lot easier business wise. You know, we were, you know, I was doing phone calls at 4:30 and I'm an early riser and so I'm up at that time, but I don't wanna have a phone call at that time. <laugh> and I used to be doing phone calls at four thirty five in the morning every single day. And it's just a, it's a hard thing to do for that long. So yeah,  

Kristin:    00:21:07    You're, let me just have my coffee or in Bali it would be Tea <laugh>. I love their tea there. But where did you live? In Bali?  

Carrie:    00:21:15    In Sanur.  

Kristin:    00:21:17    Okay. And did you have work permits there or how did you stay for eight years?  

Carrie:    00:21:22    So we had a variety of different visas. You can probably speak more to it than I can. But -- 

David:    00:21:26    Yeah, we started out -- 

Carrie:    00:21:27    When changed, I mean the rules changed constantly in Bali, so it was like we were always trying to figure out if we were legally there or not, and always hoping that we'd done the right thing. <laugh> like -- 

David:    00:21:37    We started, when we first got there, we were on a tourist visa for the first year and so you just had to come and go. I think it was every, every 60 days or every 90 days then.  

Carrie:    00:21:48    Yeah. Which was kind of fun. 'cause you're, you know, you, you're forced to do a international trip every 60 days.  

David:    00:21:53    And uh, then they changed the rules where tourists could only come for 30 days. So then we got one of the business visa and got a key toss and the whole thing. And then you could stay for 60 days in a row on the business visa, uh, without having to go somewhere else. But every 60 days you had to go somewhere else. That was fine too because our pediatricians were in Singapore, uh, which is like a two and a half hour flight away. Uh, we had friends in Australia, you know, Sydney's a couple hours away and you know, we got to travel around a lot of Southeast Asia just because, oh, it's our 60 day visa run. Where do we wanna go? <laugh>, it's like, let's go to Cambodia, let's go to Vietnam, let's go to Japan. Like, and you just get to bounce around a bunch. It's a lot of fun.  

Kristin:    00:22:36    That's amazing. Did you have any favorite places that you kept going back to?  

Carrie:    00:22:41    Um, gosh, I feel like we like so many different places.  

David:    00:22:44    Yeah. There's so many great places. Like,  

Carrie:    00:22:45    Uh, we went to Japan, like the first time we went, we, we came back and liked it so much that we went back like two months later. <laugh>, you know, like did this big trip <laugh>. Um, we did a lot of Australia. Australia was really great.  

David:    00:22:58    Yeah, for bigger school holidays we'd go down to, uh, Sydney for, you know, like a week or two at a time, like things like that. You know, we had a great trip to Cambodia. We had a couple of different trips to, uh, Vietnam. You know, Ho Chi Minh City is fantastic.  

Carrie:    00:23:15    I think ironically because of the fact that we were always having to leave for visas. I, looking back, I wish we'd actually done a little more travel in Indonesia, but we were always traveling internationally and we had really, really little kids at the time. And you know, some of the Indonesia travels really intense, right? Lots of little planes and bus rides and you know, you kind of can't have a kid in diapers. You have to have <laugh>. You have to, people have to be able to hold their own stuff and you know, things like that. <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:23:41    Yeah. I, that is so impressive that you've been living abroad for so long with one, then two, then three kids. Um, I always hear, well I haven't been in Clubhouse lately, but whenever I'm doing live streams or in clubhouse, people always ask about tips for traveling with kids. And I know that's a really general topic, but can you give any sort of advice for people that have kids but they think that they have to wait until their kids go away to college or something before they can start traveling?  

Carrie:    00:24:13    I mean, for us, our, you know, our kids have been on airplanes since they were born practically. I think, you know, our, um, our 11 year old we're going to Greece next week for the first time. And he's extremely excited because that's his 25th country that he is been to as an 11 year old. Right. Wow. So you kind of, and you know, he's like, I'm behind because of Covid. You know, we haven't gone anywhere in like a year and a half <laugh>, so they're so used to traveling that I think for us there has never been, you know, a fight about getting on an airplane or we've never had kind of issues with any of those things. But if I had one piece of advice, it'd be that I think parents sometimes get really stressed about it and their kids sense that stress. Like it sort of seems like this, like, oh, this is really difficult.  

Carrie:    00:24:53    And I think that if you almost kind of reframe it and think of it as an adventure and things can go wrong and that's totally fine. It changes the mindset, you know, for the kids. So there was one time for example, that we, I think I, I booked the tickets and I booked myself twice. And not you, like, it was literally like, we're in Bali, we're going to New Zealand, we get there we're, you know, hungry kids ready to go, you know, all of that. We get up there, we realize like, we're not going anywhere. Like we're either gonna go back home and come back tomorrow or figure something out. And I remember you and I kind of like, Ooh, what should we do with the kids right now? And kind of turning around and being like, well now we know it's an adventure. You know, like we, you know, the first kind of crazy thing went wrong. Now it's a story, now it's an adventure. And so I think there's a little bit of like needing to just be really, I don't know, lighthearted about the whole thing and know that, you know, not put too much pressure on things going to plan.  

Kristin:    00:25:47    Yeah, I, I used to travel so much that one time I was visiting my parents and my dad drove me to the airport and I told him to go to the wrong airport. And so I went to go check in for my flight and they were like, you're at the wrong airport <laugh>. And I just thought, okay, I need to slow down <laugh>. I don't even think I looked at my ticket. I think I just assumed I knew where I was going and yeah, those things happened. Or you gonna say something David?  

David:    00:26:15    I was just gonna say it. You know, we've always told our kids that, you know, we're adventurers. Like that's what we do. And you know, adventures aren't always fun, but they're always, you always learn something, there's always gonna be the adventure aspect to it. But, you know, just two practical tips I would give people, you're going somewhere where you're gonna be exploring museums or ruins or anything like that. Uh, get the, the kids excited for it by watching a couple, you know, documentaries about it or Nat Geo shows about it. Like, I've had the kids watching all this stuff about ancient Greece and all that kind of stuff. Uh, just to get them into the headset of going there, the mindset of going there. And the other one, we called it TV diet. So if you have a long flight, you let the kids download a bunch of, uh, shows onto their iPads and then, uh, you don't let 'em watch TV for a couple days before you go. So by the time they get on the airplane they're like, I just wanna sit down and watch a show <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:27:16    Oh, that's an interesting strategy. I like that  

Carrie:    00:27:20    <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:27:22    Yeah, so they get, and they really appreciate it because they've been waiting, like our parent, my parents used to make us wait to use games only on car trips. So we would never get to play video games unless we were in the car. I guess it's like the equivalent of an iPad these days. We had the game gear or whatever. And so we always looked forward to it, but we were never burnt out on it.

Carrie:    00:27:44    Yeah, exactly the same thing.

Kristin:    00:27:46    That's amazing. I, um, didn't even get on an airplane until I was 16. So to think of having been to 25 countries by age 11 is just stunning. Do you have any flight booking tips, <laugh> for getting five people or on all of these international flights?  

Carrie:    00:28:04    No, I mean, you'd think we'd be better at it by now. I feel like we're caught, you know, <laugh>, I feel like if I wish I had one superpower, it's those people that can like, figure out all the miles programs and, you know, booking strategies with ease and do it all with enough advance notice. We tend to be last minute people, so I don't think we we're good candidates for some of that.  

Kristin:    00:28:23    Okay, everyone, well you heard it here first. You don't have to be good at planning and you don't have to be a flight booking whizz to travel the world and live abroad with kids. <laugh>, we have <laugh> squashed those stereotypes. <laugh>. Um, and then I'm so intrigued to hear about what Bali was like when you moved there versus when you left eight years later. Did it develop a ton and do you think it was for the best?  

Carrie:    00:28:52    Yeah, you know, it's a, it's a tricky question. So it, it developed a ton. So we actually, we lived in Bali for a couple years, then we left and we went to Argentina for two years. And even in that timeframe, I feel like that was like a huge, you know, I, I remember literally coming back to Sanur and when we left Sanur, like there wasn't like a place to get a burger, right? Like if you wanted like American food, it was like a big thing. This idea of like kind of finding something like that. I mean there were other places in Bali but not in Sanur. And when we came back there was a Starbucks and we, I mean we were shocked. She cried. Like I literally cried like, wait, wait, what ha you know, this is, this is not, you know, but it also made it easier to live there in some ways, you know? So, you know, for years we could never really, I don't know, like even just little things like getting diapers and stuff, like it was, stuff was complicated to get some of those products before and it became easier. So I think it's gone too far, but it was much harder to live there when we first moved there as expats than it was when we left. But somewhere in between I think would be would be nice.  

Kristin:    00:29:52    Yeah. Yeah, there's, somebody commented on one of my YouTube videos today about how things were so much more difficult when he lived abroad because his single mo mother moved them to Brazil or something like that. And his story sounded fascinating, but it also kind of reminded me of what our grandparents might say. You know, back when I was in school we had to walk 12 miles and no, no, no <laugh>. And yeah, travel was harder back then. Living abroad was harder. Things were more of an adventure and I appreciate that struggle because I think it made me who I am today. I'm sure it built character for both of you as well and for your kids. And a lot for the families I've talked to that are sailing families for example, that go through a lot of struggles. But I don't necessarily miss all of the struggles.  

Kristin:    00:30:43    And I wrote to him in the comment that I don't think that should preclude anyone from moving abroad today. Like just because it's easier, we have to look forward and try to develop these areas sustainably. Of course that's not up to us being the foreigners, it's up to the local governments. But hopefully the globe will develop sustainably and everybody will be able to travel where they want experience life on their own terms and get to live abroad without ruining these places. But then still getting to enjoy conveniences and amenities and also for the locals as well. It's not just like what we get to experience as foreigners, it's like the lifestyle being a higher quality of life for locals without hopefully having a McDonald's on every corner and going to the extremes of commercialism like we have in the US that's not really doing anyone favors when it comes to health and wellness and stress and things like that.  

Kristin:    00:31:44    So I don't know, I, I think hopefully everyone can find balance and that these countries can develop sustainable economies while still being able to benefit from tourism and people who wanna travel can do it. So it's interesting to hear your experience being there for so long, especially now that Bali is becoming a hotspot or is definitely a hotspot already. 'cause last time I went to Bali, I felt like it was too crowded for me to the point where it was almost like suffocating in in Kuta and Seminyak. Like I felt like I had to just get on a moped and just go out into the countryside and get out of <laugh>, get out of the traffic jams. Yeah. And the smog and the smoke and everything. 

Carrie:    00:32:25    Yeah.  And one thing, you know, and just another, you know, I kind of point in terms of how much it's changed. One of the big things that made things a lot easier and I think has made things a lot easier across the globe is better internet. So when we first moved to Bali, you know, we would literally watch the storm clouds and if we, you know, it's like you're about to do an important call and you're like, oh my gosh, we gotta go find somewhere that isn't where it's not gonna rain. And we'd be like madly searching if it rained, you lost internet. You just knew that was gonna happen. Whereas when we left Bali, I mean our internet was, I don't know, it wasn't, I wasn't perfect, but like we have internet problems here too in Connecticut <laugh>, you know?  

David:    00:32:59    Yeah, yeah. I remember when we first got there, a good internet day was 16 kilobytes up and down and it wasn't strong enough for a Skype call most of the time. So you would just have to do Skype chats with people. Like if you're trying to like manage people who are US based and stuff like that. And you're doing it via Skype chat because you didn't have enough bandwidth to actually speak to them. <laugh>,  

Kristin:    00:33:22    That's true. Little known hack that even when the internet would go out, somehow Skype chat would still work. And I don't know how, 'cause we had satellite internet in Nosara, and it was like 116 kilobytes and we couldn't do Skype calls, but we could do the chats too. And even when we couldn't load our email, the chat would still work. And I never knew why <laugh> <laugh> Skype is not the best technology. But yeah, I don't miss all of those struggles. Is the roads still not paved to Nosara?  

David:    00:33:53    It is now paved. They paved, yeah. And painted. They just painted a couple weeks ago.

Kristin: Wow. 

Carrie:    00:33:58    Yeah,  But only in the last couple months. I mean, I wanna say that was January, December, yeah. Yeah.  

Kristin:    00:34:03    Okay. Yeah, I remember living in Nicaragua and they had just paved the road to a Aposentillo, which is, it was Chinandega North and then it was the worst road I've ever been on, way worse than, than Nosara Road. It took a couple hours to get down it. It was 15 minutes now that it's paved <laugh>. But you said to go around all of these huge potholes and like pieces of concrete sticking out of the road and God forbid you get a flat tire there, it was gonna be five days before somebody found you <laugh>. And one of the things that I wanted, I mean the electricity went out all the time and the only place I could go to get a good coffee, like an espresso or a cappuccino, was at this gas station in Chinandega, which was about an hour away from my house.  

Kristin:    00:34:53    And I remember just wanting to be able to get a good coffee and, and really appreciating that when I ended up moving back to Costa Rica. So yeah, those are the things that I don't miss of the old days of travel, the dirt roads, no electricity, no good food anywhere, no grocery stores, like no restaurants. But yeah, now we have, we have it all. <laugh>, this is, this conversation's going in a totally different direction than I expected, but Yolo <laugh>, <laugh>, I love it. It's so interesting. Okay. Argentina versus Bali, where was your cost of living lower?  

David:    00:35:27    Uh, that's an unfair question in a lot of ways because when we first got to Argentina, it was about four pesos to the dollar, but Argentina locked their currency. And so when we left, the official rate was 5.7 pesos to the dollar. But you could buy pesos in the black market and you could buy, I think it was 25 pesos to the dollar in the black market. So, you know, because of government policies, the currency basically collapsed. And so our cost of living went down dramatically. Like all of a sudden we went from eating out like once a week to eating out, you know, three times a week because, you know, it was almost easier to go out to dinner than it was to go to the store, buy food and bring it home. Uh, and cheaper in a lot of ways because the currency just kept devaluing. But yeah, in Bali a lot of things were easier than they were in Argentina. So like schools and childcare and having somebody clean the house and stuff like that was much easier to get and probably cheaper.  

Kristin:    00:36:39    Were you in Buenos Aires?  

Carrie:    00:36:40    We were in Mendoza at first, and then we moved to Buenos Aires. 

Kristin:    00:36:43    Okay. I just checked while you were talking and the exchange rate is 95 pesos to the dollar right now. So just to give people some context as to how much the currency. Okay, well, <laugh>  

Carrie:    00:36:58    No, it was insane when we were living there. I mean, it literally, like you went from, you know, kind of being on this fixed budget, you know, the, you the same amount of money when we started as when we left and you know, went from being able to afford certain things to it being just completely, completely different.  

Kristin:    00:37:13    It's so tragic for the locals. They always comment on my Argentina videos. I feel so bad for them. And when I lived in Eastern Europe, they talked about that a lot as well. My friends in Serbia especially, they were talking about how horrible it was during the war, which was only in the nineties, and how from one day to the next, the currency was just plummeting and everything got more expensive and they couldn't buy food the next day or they would get paid in the morning. And between the time that they got their paid paycheck and went to the store, it was worth nothing. And I, I just can't even imagine what people are still going through that in different places right now. So Venezuela, yeah, we're definitely fortunate to be able to get in and out of places that are going through those sorts of crises unscathed that I think it's one of the unfair things about the world, but it's one of the, one of the realities. But I definitely try to stay cognizant of that. Okay. Well let's talk a bit about expat taxes, because this is such a loaded topic.  

Kristin:    00:38:27    That was such a fun interview. I hope you guys liked it and learned a lot about what it's like to live abroad as a family of five. I loved learning more about David and Carrie's favorite places to live and travel and some of the ups and downs and things they've experienced, as well as getting some insight into their cost of living. And make sure to tune back in next week for part two of this conversation where we're going to be taking a deep dive into what you need to know about US taxes as an American abroad. Now Greenback does work with people of all nationalities, but in next week's episode, we're gonna be focused exclusively on tax topics for US citizens living abroad. So make sure to check that out, take some notes, and see you all next week.