What are you still doing in America?🫵

“What are you still doing here in America?”

Now he asks me the same question nearly every day.

Apparently, my Life Time Fitness membership includes access to the gym, sauna, cold plunge and a daily retirement interrogation.

A Question I Cannot Answer

The uncomfortable part is that I honestly do not know how to answer him.

Some days, I wonder what the hell I am still doing here too.

Other days, I am perfectly content with my laid-back part-time lifestyle. Arizona gives me a familiar home base. Rocky Point gives me an affordable escape in Mexico. The Philippines gives me a completely different life on the other side of the world.

Maybe I am a little too chickenshit to push all my chips into one pile.

Or maybe I have finally realized that I do not need to choose only one pile.

I like having options.

I like being able to call Arizona, Mexico and the Philippines part-time homes without pretending any one of them is perfect.

Arizona gives me my condo, gym, Jeep, familiar doctors and financial infrastructure.

Mexico gives me my little casita, the beach and an inexpensive lifestyle close enough to reach by truck.

The Philippines gives me warmth, energy, adventure and a quality of daily life that can be difficult to reproduce in the United States without spending considerably more money.

That combination may not look like a traditional retirement.

That is precisely why it appeals to me.

Why I Keep Returning to the Philippines

The Philippines is not perfect.

The traffic can be brutal. The humidity occasionally makes me feel as if I showered without taking my clothes off. Some islands are far from advanced medical care, and everyday tasks do not always happen as quickly or efficiently as they do back home.

But I love it anyway.

I love the people, warmth, food, energy and sense that something interesting is always happening around me.

I can rent a comfortable apartment, eat out regularly and live an active social life for far less than the same lifestyle would cost me in Arizona.

More importantly, I feel alive there.

That does not mean I am running away from America.

It means I am running toward a lifestyle that currently makes me happier.

There is a difference.

Geoarbitrage Gives Me More Life

Geoarbitrage sounds like a complicated financial term, but the basic idea is simple:

Earn, save or invest money in a stronger economy—and spend part of it somewhere that offers better value.

My American dollars can buy considerably more lifestyle in the Philippines than they can in the United States.

That does not mean choosing the cheapest apartment, eating instant noodles or living like I am broke.

For me, geoarbitrage means using the same retirement budget to create a better life.

It can mean a furnished apartment, affordable meals, regular massages, inexpensive transportation and enough money left over to keep travelling.

It gives me more freedom without requiring me to become considerably wealthier.

Instead of waiting until I have some magical amount of money that makes every fear disappear, I can use location to make the money I already have work harder.

Geoarbitrage will not solve every retirement problem.

It does not eliminate inflation, healthcare costs, market risk or my impressive ability to destroy a travel budget after too many island trips.

It simply gives me another tool.

And in retirement, options may be more valuable than almost anything else.

My Die With Zero Philosophy

The book Die With Zero helped reinforce something I was already beginning to understand:

Money has no value to me unless it eventually becomes security, freedom or experiences.

I do not have children, and I am not trying to leave behind a giant estate.

I want to use my money responsibly during my lifetime—especially while I am still healthy enough to enjoy it.

That does not mean blowing everything tomorrow and hoping the government adopts me at eighty.

Die With Zero does not mean live with zero.

I still need investments, insurance, emergency savings and a realistic long-term plan.

But I also do not want to protect every dollar so aggressively that I reach the end of my life with a large portfolio and a small collection of memories.

Travel experiences have a shelf life.

There are trips I can comfortably take in my fifties that may become much harder in my seventies. I can replace money. I cannot replace healthy years once they are gone.

That is why I keep asking whether another year of waiting will actually make me safer—or merely one year older.

What Older People Can Teach Us

My gym buddy keeps telling me that life is too short not to do what makes me happy.

He reminds me of Diogo Jota Jared, someone I follow on Instagram who regularly talks about not waiting for the perfect time to live your life.

Give Diogo Jared a follow too!

I sometimes get the feeling my gym buddy wishes he had gone all-in on his own dreams much earlier. Maybe I am projecting my fears onto him, but there is something in the way he talks about time that makes his advice difficult to ignore.

He moves slowly now, and I rarely see him smile.

I do not judge him for that. If anything, seeing him makes me think more seriously about the years I still have in front of me.

Older people can give us an important view of retirement because they are looking backward while the rest of us are still looking forward.

Their advice is not theoretical.

They know which worries eventually became irrelevant—and which opportunities never returned.

So, What Am I Still Doing Here?

For now, I am still in Arizona because I am not ready to eliminate every safety net.

I like my condo.

I like having a familiar place to return to.

I like spending part of the year in Mexico and part of it in Asia.

Maybe my version of going all-in is not selling everything and permanently moving to the Philippines.

Maybe it is building a life that allows me to spend more time there without giving up every option back home.

I do not need to prove my commitment by making the most extreme decision possible.

But I also cannot let comfort become an excuse to postpone the life I already know I want.

The next time my gym buddy asks, “What are you still doing here in America?” I may finally have an answer:

I am getting healthier.

I am protecting my options.

And I am preparing to spend a lot more time living where I feel happiest.

The Philippines is not my escape from life.

It is increasingly becoming part of the life I am trying to build.

Geoarbitrage helps make that life affordable.

Die With Zero reminds me not to wait forever.

And American politics keeps giving me another reason to book the next flight.

Live life to the fullest—before somebody turns that into a political argument too!