My retirement is about living large before 8. By “living large,” I mean engaging in adventure as well as great food and culture all before 8 p.m.
Jump right to our “Living Large Before 8” itinerary by clicking here
Retiring in San Miguel de Allende
After my first five-day visit here in November of 2022, I decided that I would be retiring in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. I was only fifty-four at the time but knew it was time to leave my career in event production in the sporting industry. My husband was already retired and was planning his own big adventure sailing from our home in Niagara (Canada) to the Bahamas.
Definition of Retirement
I think that the definition of retirement needs clarification as two ideas that are attached to it are misnomers:
- Retirement means the end of your cash flow
- You need cash flow to travel and retirement means you can no longer embark on dream travels
By the time I retired on June 30th, I was fifty-five years old. I had just completed an epic adventure doing a solo, nineteen-hour hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. While I have had many adventures in my lifetime, this one reminded me that adventuring needs to be a big part of what I do next. You can read more about my epic adventure in the White Mountains here.
After the White Mountains, I made a plan for how I was going to live out my dreams in San Miguel de Allende for the winter. San Miguel has the platform for adventuring as well as the culture that I crave. One of the first lessons that my Dad ever taught me was that cash flow was important for everything in life, including retirement. With this knowledge, here is how I define retirement:
A pension to create a healthy cash flow upon retirement in Canada is more the exception to the rule these days than the norm. Plus a pension may not sustain retirement goals such as traveling to and living in another country. "Retirement," in my mind means the cessation of going to the same workplace every day to earn an income to sustain basic living (and a little bit more). "Retirement," again in my mind, means being creative with cash flow opportunities to live your dreams which, ironically you never had time for when you were tied to a day job.
Just before I retired on June 30th, I took an online course on how to build a successful blog and learned search engine optimization to promote it. I was motivated by my desire to write about my adventures. I also thought I could build the blog up to be a cash flow vehicle over the years that would allow me to work virtually. I applied for several virtual jobs but the reality is that cold calling and the chance of getting online work that pays more than minimum wage is sparse.
I had the opportunity to take an interior design gig that pushed my departure date to Mexico forward by a few months. This reminded me of how much I love design! My design gig gave me the finances to apply for an Airbnb license and outfit our house for vacation rentals. While it was hard physical work getting our house ready, I truly loved both putting an art and wine-themed Airbnb together as well as creating a top-notch vacation experience for guests.
Click to see more pics of our “Niagara Wine Country Art House” Airbnb
This is how I created cash flow using my skills and talents to be able to stay in Mexico for the winter. And now a virtual interior design project popped up. My best advice to anyone looking to create their own post-retirement cash flow to live out their dreams is:
Use your existing skills and talents to create a cash flow opportunity and look to your existing networks as well.
There is also one HUGE philosophy that I bought into to make this work. I do think it’s interesting that I have rarely bought into this concept before:
TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH
I did not have all my opportunities set up before I left Canada. I was not sure how I was going to make this all work for six months but I took a leap of faith and trusted that it would and that opportunities would come. I wrote an entire blog post on “Stepping into the Unknown.”
Living Large Before 8
In this next section, I share one of our “living large before 8” experiences as active retirees in San Miguel de Allende. This was such a fun day and is very much how we spend most days.
Rise and Shine! 8:00 a.m.
An 8 a.m. rise and shine call has become somewhat standard for us. That’s right, we sleep for eight-plus hours a night here! This is most likely because we tucker ourselves out each day.
Several times a week we indulge in our absolute favourite breakfast – gluten-free pancakes drenched in blueberry/maple syrup compote with a side of bacon and Americanos. I always add a vanilla-infused collagen protein to the top of my pancakes.
Breakfast is in our courtyard regardless of the weather. San Miguel de Allende is in the interior highlands of Mexico and sits at just over six thousand feet. This means winter mornings can be cool. But the courtyard is spectacular with the gardens and its privacy!
It’s here that we talk about our plans for the day. While I like to bite off more than I can chew, I am becoming more realistic during my retirement as I want to make sure I can keep adventuring well into the future. On this particular day, I decided I would go to the gym to start my day.
Hitting the Gym in San Miguel – 10: 15 a.m.
I love hitting the gym in San Miguel! One thing I have found is that you can find a gym that suits your needs almost anywhere you go. Mine has lots of free weights and this is important to me.
This cute little gym, Condicion Sana is a ten-minute walk downhill from my house. It has three levels with the top being on the roof! The gym has plenty of machines, free weights, and the darn cutest gym clothes for sale!
Coffee Houses in San Miguel – 11: 15 a.m.
Since I’ve confessed to being a coffee whore in my last article, it’s no surprise that I’m smitten with the coffee houses in San Miguel. A routine my husband and I have established is meeting at a coffee house post-gym workout. While we like to experiment, our go-to coffee house, Ki’bok was once featured in National Geographic magazine! It’s rather trendy but the coffee is fabulous!
We discovered this coffee house while here in 2022. I’d like to tell you that we chose to live close by but the reality is this was a complete coincidence (maybe fate?) One thing that sets this coffee house apart from others is the friendliness of the staff. They always greet you when you enter so it really feels like family. They even made a point of ordering gluten-free pastries after I asked for it one day!
Improv JAM – 1:00 p.m.
Today we had to hurry home and eat lunch because I had an Improv JAM that started at 1 p.m. Before I arrived in San Miguel for the winter I looked for improvisational theatre classes. I had done classes back home for a few years and loved it!
Lucky me, I found a class that started the day after I arrived. I actually boogied down to Mexico so I wouldn’t miss the first class! Crazy!
For those who have had the pleasure of doing any kind of performance with Eli and Joseph, you are among the lucky! These two improv teachers are fabulous and the class is a LOT of fun! From my first experience, I could tell that both Eli and Joseph were the embodiment of creativity and relaxation and these are two attributes that I was searching for in San Miguel for myself. Check out the retreats Eli and Joseph offer via their Airbnb here.
The JAM (their interpretation of the acronym is “joy-full and magical”) was amazing! For me, I am someone that loves being on stage and performing. It is this incredibly peaceful, introspective moment. One reason I’m drawn to improv is that you never know what words, actions or ideas will emerge. As expected I left our improv JAM on an incredibly high note after two hours of pure play.
Deep Thoughts on Play As children, we naturally play. I feel that as adults we develop inhibitions and when combined with the stresses of adulting (making a living, family, aging, etc.), we can completely lose our ability to just let go and play. I feel that play may overlap with elements of meditation. Play is a time when we "just do" and engage in something fun. Thoughts and worries dissipate. In retirement one of my goals is to play more!
Early Bird Dinner – 4 p.m.
Have you seen the Seinfeld episode where Jerry makes fun of his parents for having dinner at some crazy early hour like 4 p.m.? This episode pokes fun at the life of retirees. I remember strolling into a restaurant in Florida at 4 p.m. once thinking we’d have a drink and were shocked to see it was packed to the brim at 4 p.m.! It was all retirees having their early bird dinner! We swore this would never be us.
When I left my improv JAM I was exhausted and hungry as a horse! My husband had hiked for a few hours while I was at the gym in the morning so he too was tired and hungry when we met up after improv class. It was 4 p.m. We looked at each other and said “TAXI!”
We jumped into a taxi and decided on an early bird dinner at this pizza place we wanted to try on the other side of town.
It was quasi-roof-top dining at Neopolitan Pizza in the Guadalupe neighbourhood. What most likely set us apart from fellow early bird diners was the bottle of wine we ordered to drink with our pizzas. For 350 pesos (~$30 Canadian) the Argentinian Malbec we ordered was fabulous (it was the only red available by the bottle on the menu).
I had a gluten-free “Italian” pizza with loads of meats and it was great! My husband tends toward Hawaiian pizza when it’s available, for reasons I’ll never understand. And it must have been under the influence of the wine that I agreed to a warm cinnamon-sugar-coated pizza with a dollop of vanilla ice cream for dessert as it was anything but gluten-free.
Final Workout – The Walk Home – 6:00 p.m.
While we could have taken a taxi home we decided on one final workout. We walked up the hills home.
Clouds had already moved in and the warm breeze was beautiful, making our walk home incredibly romantic. The views are always outstanding, especially if you live in the high hills like we do.
In total, we each walked for several hours that day. In San Miguel hill workouts are inevitable and navigating cobblestone is a given. We were home just after 6 p.m. and in bed by eight.
Bed – 8 p.m.
What are you waiting for to retire?