Well, it’s over. My brain is overflowing with too much information from all the great presentations and interesting people I’ve met here in Las Vegas. I’ll be heading home tomorrow. Then heading back to work already on Tuesday. Wow! Time flies!!

When I came to the IL conference “Fast Track Your Retirement Overseas” this year, I thought I had my mind made up. I had pretty much decided on Panama.

The main reason is because I’m really not old enough (or rich enough) to ‘retire’ yet. I needed to find some place. ANY place, that would allow me to continue working so I could support myself outside of the USA.

Not many places offered that as an option. In fact, in over 7 years of looking, Panama was the ONLY place that I could find that would allow me to continue to work in my profession. Or even anything remotely resembling the profession I’ve spent over 30 years of my life becoming proficient in.

Most places would not allow me to do anything other than teach English (since I don’t know how to do anything else their own people can’t possibly do). The restriction is to keep me from stealing a job from a local. OK. I get it.

I was seriously thinking about teaching English. I still think I might do that some day. I think it would be pretty interesting. The thing is, I don’t want to have my work visa and ability to stay in country totally dependent on my job.

Lots of times I see language schools will give you a job and they will do all your paperwork for you. Then your work visa (and ability to stay in country) is tied up with that school! They sign you up and promise you health care, housing, etc. OK, all that sounds great.

What happens when you take them up on it? You show up in some foreign country, you’ve never been there before, you don’t know anybody, you don’t speak the language, and the housing they put you in looks NOTHING like the photos they sent you beforehand.

Are you expected to just shut up and live with it? You’re in some small town in China in some freezing cold, dirt floored hovel with a squat toilet. Or a tiny room in Thailand you’re sharing with another couple of teachers that has no AC.

Yeah.

Now what?

The whole idea of looking outside of the USA is to find OPTIONS!

I’m not saying things wouldn’t work out perfectly with a teaching job. I might wind up in the most beautiful situation ever. My point is, I don’t really have any idea WHAT I’d be getting myself into. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that level of risk at this stage in my life.

Soooooo…

I’ve been searching for years to find a country that would allow me to move there and continue to WORK as a mariner. It’s been a very hard thing to find. Panama recently started a program that would work so I figured I had better get down there and start the process.

Too bad my new job switched around my schedule and I had to cancel my trip to Panama.

Over the last couple of days here at the conference, I’ve learned that there might be other options. I’m almost certain someone told me that Mexico has some new programs. Uruguay too.

I’ve signed up for more information from all of those places, along with Belize, Philippines, and even Malaysia.

If nothing else, maybe with this new job I can FINALLY move out of the USA. At the very least escape obamacare before I get sucked into that humongous trap!

I’ll be heading back to the ship on Tuesday. I hope I can work out some kind of schedule with work so they can get their ‘training’ done so I can have the time off I’ve earned the next time home.

That’s a whole nother issue I don’t really want to get started on right now. I think I’ll go enjoy my last night in Vegas and try my luck on a few games.