26 Degrees in the Shade . . .

Sell Everything to Live on the Costa del Sol. I want to Know Why? 2

Everybody Wants to Know the Answer to This

Continuing from yesterday’s post.

Well at this point I got a bit philosophical and asked myself?

• Are you ever going to be 35 years old again? Answer No!
• Do you really want to use up the rest of your life doing things that you done before in the country you’ve always lived in, when you dream all day of living in the sun? Answer No!
• Is there any good reason why you can’t sell all the big items that you own and invest the money in your own business in a sunny country? Answer No!
• Can you at some point resume your career either in teaching or as a model maker? Answer Yes!
• Why don’t you just do what you really want to do then? Answer : Because I am frightened of doing something really different.
• When you examine each point clearly, Is it really all that different? Answer No! Its not! It’s just like setting up a small business in a UK beach resort, but it has a greater chance of succeeding, because you’ll be doing it in a sunny climate, where people want to be.

So there you are! That’s the process that I went through and that was 22 years ago.

The summer of 1985 I spent looking at bars and restaurants on the Costa del Sol and I found a pub in a really big urbanization in Mijas Costa which I liked.

It was a very busy up and running business, which sold a lot of food. The owner wanted to retire. The price was higher than many other places I’d looked at, but I decided it was well worth paying a bit extra for a place that was already well established and taking good money.

These type of sales a quite rare, so when you find one, you must snap it up. Remember there are loads of places that have to fight for business and the market is flooded with them.

I returned to UK, gave in my notice and sold most of what I owned, notably my: house, car and motorbikes. I took the pub over just before Christmas and here I have to give a really big thank to my friends Philip and Geraldine, who helped me a lot and taught me everything I am teaching you now.

The pub did a lot of business, but the customers were very price consciousness, so when my friends offered to buy the business from me, I accepted and chose to open the specialized quality fast food place we now have, in the more affluent area of West-Marbella. We have less competition here and can charge higher prices for both food and drink.

In my next post I’ll tell give you an outline of how life has been for me and my family, here in the sun . . . . .

Sell Everything to Live on the Costa del Sol. I want to Know Why? 1

Everybody Wants to Know the Answer to This

I would guess that I have been asked this question at least 10,000 times.

There are obviously a lot of people who would love to leave the UK and come to live in the sunshine, but they have a fear that they would need to allay before they could make such a “drastic” move.

I had studied at art school and also at university, worked in an art studio and then as a car model maker at Fords. My last job was as a head of department teaching CD&T in a comprehensive secondary school.

I enjoyed all my jobs, but my 5 years at Fords were very well paid, allowing me to buy a 3-bed semi with garage and nice gardens, a Mercedes estate and the latest top of the range BMW motorbike. In the school holidays I would travel to the former Yugoslavia and spend a few weeks camping right next to the beach, with my windsurfer permanently at hand for when the slightest wind appeared . . .

The problem I shared with the majority of Brits was that after the Inland Revenue had had their go at my pay packet, it didn’t matter how hard I had worked, I never seemed to have any money left over at the end of each month. Hence the camping holidays.

The expensive car and bike I was able to buy in the mid 70′s when I was earning big money in the car industry. But by the beginning of the 80′s those opportunities had disappeared, never to return again for most people.

The part of my life when I was most happy, was when I was on a golden beach with a windsurfer, so I asked myself this simple question.

You don’t like the cold wet winters and in summer you can count the really hot sunny days on your hands, you are taxed beyond belief, so why don’t you move to a warmer country and really enjoy your life?

There were 4 main, easily identified problems “preventing” me from leaving the UK and going abroad:

1. Great family and really great friends in the UK
2. I had a promising teaching career, backed up with top flight industrial experience in design.
3. I was buying a nice 3 bed house on mortgage in a lovely Essex riverside village.
4. I had a lot of kit: the Mercedes Estate, BMW motorbike, racing motorcycles and thousands of pounds worth of tools.

But none of these reasons were really responsible for keeping me in the UK.

I had to eventually be honest with myself. The main thing keeping me on the treadmill was FEAR! Fear of trying something completely different from the boring but safe life I had been leading for 35 years.

The photos by the way, are of my local pub where I used to live in Essex, and the river nearby.

So what did I do and how did I manage it? Tomorrow I will tell you the answer . . .