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The region of Andalusia, if I had to explain it, it's fire. Yeah, yeah. These people are fire. They're passionate. Life is completely different in Spain, but especially in the village we live in. These kids, they can walk to the park and come home at midnight. We bought a home in Cordoba, Spain for $72,000. And we renovated it for $60,000. Welcome to our home. The number one question we get asked all the time, like, why did we decide to go to Spain? And I always say, like, why not? Yeah. Well, we also speak the language. we had like a little list. What are things that we want to change in our lives? So, one thing was for us is like quality of life. Time with our child was top. And then affordability was another
thing. I mean, we work a lot in the US. Yeah. And so, Spain came back up on the map. Yeah. And that's when we actually got discouraged because, again, we're coming to Spain to live a more affordable life. Right. And our mortgage in the US wasn't even the cost of the rent here. So, we were like, what are we doing? You actually picked up the phone and called her right away. Yes, I did. I'm like, we're getting a rental. We're going to come and see it. The number one reason is it's in Andalusia, which is the southern part of Spain, and it's hot, and it reminds me of Dominican Republic. Plus, we're not
far from Malaga and Cordoba and Granada and Jaen, and major parts of Spain that you can easily get to in an hour. The house also had space, uh especially the backyard. We can't take the mortgages out here because we're not from here. We didn't have all the legal paperworks and all that. So, we did pay cash for the home. And that's a good feeling to have a mortgage-less house. Welcome to our home. Come on in. So, this is our living room and this is where we spend most of our time. As you can see, TV, we get to play some games.
All throughout the house we have all this traditional Spaniard tile and actually it came with this furniture. We're going to touch it up and of course as we improvise we're also changing the floor, but this stays because it's very traditional. There is a full living quarters on the bottom, but we also have that on the top. And that's part of the reason why we purchased. So, one of the rooms up here is my office and I'm here most of the time. But, what I absolutely love about this is space is the lighting. You can even see the church from here, the mountains. Not bad for a view. And this is our bedroom. We want to take this bedroom to another level, but right now we just have the basics, very minimal. So, this is my work in progress
cozy room. I'm a maximalist and my favorite color is mint. And of course, my Barbie collection. This is actually my favorite Barbie. It's Celia Cruz. She's a for Latina. The main heart of our house is our pool. And then of course, this here used to be a chicken pen and a pig pen and we've turned this into our own Spanish oasis.
How can you not love this pool and mountains? I'll be very honest when it comes to work-life balance. There's this sense that you work less, but to be honest, we are on a visa. You work more, really? You work more in a way to make sure that you are staying within those guidelines to stay here. Cost of living is less here when it comes to even electricity and water and food and home insurance Um car insurance
health insurance. Because we don't have a mortgage, our expenses are mostly our home living and food, etc. So, we pay about $115 for light and also for water. And again, it depends on the month and then we pay about 220 for health insurance and $58 for house insurance. And so, those are just kind of like the main expenses. Groceries vary, but it could be about 300 a month. We're both crafters and artists. Lucy does phenomenal work with like multimedias and drawing and uh photography. And then I do a lot more with textiles and sandal making, rug tufting, clay. So, a typical day for us, we take our daughter to school. I can
start the morning whether I have to look at client work, we'll do something in the back, cleaning something or walking around or having a cafecito. Our day in our life is just chill and then on you know at night that's when the whole town wakes up I would say. And you know the local bars and if we have a class we'll have a class. It's different every day. Life is completely different in Spain especially in the village we live in. These kids they can walk to the park and come home at midnight. The kids are running around it's pretty safe. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody looks out for each other. She's learning grit here too. Cuz she was very like
uh instant gratification and all that stuff and the kids here I feel like they're more appreciative. You give them like a little anything and they're like wow and you know and I just feel like everything is different here. It's a great place to raise a child period. Do we ever think about moving back to the states? Why not? Why not have the best of both worlds cuz we absolutely love Spain and we love Ormond Beach. Yeah and I think that our goal is not to always just think of putting ourselves in a box. We own a mortgage free home in the future we might say hey let's go back and forth but not to stay forever. That never does not exist in our world.
