I didn't realize how unhappy I was and how much that
manifested itself in my body. In traveling, I saw how other countries and societies
treated work; how in America we are so focused on what you do and how that
defines who you are. It's hard to describe how much happier I am now. Now, I intentionally build a life that I love. I'm Roshida and I'm 42. I retired to Mexico City from the United States. Before I retired. I was a consumer auto finance
lawyer. My last salary was about $200,000 a year. I grew up middle class with parents who didn't talk to
me a lot about money. Being good at saving money came from years of being
reckless with money. Before I went to law school in that time. I was really checked to check after college was the
first time where I really understood how expensive it is to be an adult. I was working as a receptionist and I realized I
couldn't afford myself, so I knew I needed to do something else to be able to
live the life I wanted to live. And that thing was law school. I went to law school at the University of Virginia. By the time I left law school, I had about two hundred
thousand dollars worth of student loan debt between undergrad and law school. I was talking to a friend who invested in real estate,
and I realized that I could pick up houses pretty cheaply in Ohio. I purchased my investment property for seventeen
thousand and sold it for around seventy five and my own home I purchased for eighty four and sold for around
one twenty five. I got to tell you, I hated, hated, hated flipping
houses. And that's when I learned that what might work really
well for another person from a financial perspective isn't going to work for everybody. The investing strategy that's worked best for me has
simply been investing in mutual funds. So I'm very much in the stock market, hands off, give
it to a brokerage firm, invest it in one of their mutual funds, set it and forget it. So after I was laid off in two thousand nine, it really
hit me how much debt kind of controlled me in that, like, I had to go to work, I had to find a
job because I had to pay off this debt. And so when I got another job, my main focus with my
money became paying off my debt. What I did was I really stayed focused. I paid one thing at a time, stayed focused on it, and
I didn't get distracted by shiny things. As I earned more money, I just put it all towards my
debt. I lived what you might describe as a FIRE lifestyle
without actually knowing that FIRE existed. Once I got in the habit of squirreling money
away towards my debt and like pushing it aside, then I just got in the habit of like pushing
that same amount of money aside every month. And as it grew, as my income grew, I just pushed a
larger amount of money to the side. So at first it was to my debts and then it was
towards... When there was no debt left, it went to my
investments. Without the layoff, I would still be there, and even
with the layoff, I was second guessing my decision to go travel. I don't think I would have gone to take a career break
if I didn't have the therapist I did. She was like, if you don't go now, you're never going
to go. I traveled to 44 cities and I think twenty three
countries in my one year of my career break. But in that time I came to Mexico City, I think three
times in that year. It was the only city that I repeated, and I just
really loved how I felt when I was here. I love the energy of the city. My plan after my career break was to go right back and
find a job. I'd be in a better mood and I'd go back to a different
job and things would be fine. But traveling and seeing that the way we work
ourselves to death in America is not common around the world made me realize that I could have a different
life if I made the choice to have a different life. I always say that I accidentally retired. I paid off all my debt, I saved money and then when I
realized I didn't want to work again, I did the math. I looked at my investments and I had about half a
million dollars saved and invested, and I knew I was going to get another hundred and
fifty thousand in stocks from a company I used to work for. I knew I had about six hundred and sixty thousand
because I knew I didn't want to go back to work. That was enough. It was enough for me to live
comfortably in Mexico City or another country for a while. If I was in the U.S., would I have decided that was
enough. Probably not. America doesn't really tell us when enough is enough. People who want to retire, they have to, on their own,
decide how much money they need in order to retire, where you want to retire,
what your lifestyle is going to be, what your expenses are. But that's all part of doing the math that I
described earlier. In a typical month, I spend about twenty three hundred
dollars to live in Mexico City. While the cost of living in Mexico is cheaper than the
U.S., the cost of living in Mexico City is higher than a lot of Mexico. So it's-- it's a cheaper city to live
in, but it's not necessarily a cheap city to live in. One of the things I love to do in Mexico City is
exploring the neighborhoods. They're usually really great places to hang out with
my friends and to see kind of like, look in on what the neighborhood is doing. And I have a couple of favorite dessert places in
town, including some gelato shops that I love. This is good, Joe! I do have a temporary visa. I have a visa for one year as a residency visa. I came down initially on a tourist visa and I rented
my apartment, was on a tourist visa and I did everything was on a tourist visa. But I knew I wanted to stay here, and I didn't want to
keep making trips back to the states to stay here. So I got my temporary residence visa and I will renew
it. And then in four years, I can get my permanent visa. Welcome back, my name's Roshida, and you're here
watching, Shida's on the Loose. Today, we're talking about life in Mexico City and
all the things I love about it. Strangers, mostly women, were reaching out to me and
saying, Oh, like you took a career break. I want to do that, too. Can you tell me more about it? I was helping everyone who came along, and eventually I
realized that this could be a business. And so I became a career break coach. I help women who want to take career breaks, leave
jobs that don't deserve them behind and go travel the world or move abroad and just do what makes them
happy. So I'm helping other women and specifically black
women realize goals that they didn't even know they had. A lot of times I hear from women who were like,
"I've always wanted to live abroad, but I didn't think it was possible." And so a lot of my time is spent
showing people the possibilities and talking to them about what their life could look
like if they made the leap too. The income, but I'm getting from this, prevents me from
having to withdraw anything from my investments, so I very rarely touch my investments, so they're
continuing to grow. A lot of people think that retirement means you're not
working at all, and if you are working, you're not really retired. I consider myself retired because I
only do work I love, and I only do it when I want to. I don't work more than four days a
week. I take weeks off at a time. I've taken months off and I will again and I just do
the work I want to do when I want to do it. I was the best version of myself when I traveled in
that I was open, I was not stressed, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted to do. The only person who can make demands on me was myself. When I had the opportunity to rebuild my life from
scratch, making every decision I wanted to make, I made the decisions that made me happy and I can't
imagine from now into the future ever making decisions that that don't bring you this
joy. I'm very open to what's next. So it's Mexico for me right now. I can see myself in other places for months at a time. I don't know that Mexico is it forever. I'm open to whatever comes my way, but for right now
it's definitely Mexico City.
