How to incinerate your life in 47 days
Results guaranteed!
2022 was a decent year all things considered. It was especially palatable since it followed on the heels of the pandemic and life started to feel quasi-normal-ish again. All in all, I’d say it was 60–70% positive. I say this because I lean (mostly) towards the glass half-full camp.
However, in October, my life went into freefall and burned to the ground.
But let’s get back to the pleasant bits for a moment because we love those, don’t we? My husband and I were living in Dubai, having moved there from Abu Dhabi in May 2021. My career was ok; we had great friends; and we managed to squeeze in some epic travel including Egypt and Indonesia. There were milestone birthdays and grand, champagne filled parties and brunches.
I also spent 5 weeks in Canada over the glorious summer. For the first time since the pandemic, no one was tiptoeing through life with masks. We lived large and partied — visiting family and friends between Montreal and Toronto — concerts, cottages, bridal showers, boating — all quintessentially Canadian.
Then came the final three months of the year.
The tail end of 2022 was like skydiving and then asking if the parachute had been tested AFTER you’ve jumped out of the plane.
On September 29, I found out that my role was being made redundant. This was actually a joyous occasion as I’d gotten wind of a likely reorganization and desperately wanted a severance package. While I hooted and hollered in delight, Steve (my husband) and I discussed what to do next.
I think our discussion lasted 4 minutes.
Immediately, we decided to move to Mexico. You see, we’d bought a condo there the year before, and although it wouldn’t be ready until 2024, we figured we could travel across Mexico or Latin America during the interim.
On Monday October 3, I signed off on my package, and we lit a match to our lives.
The UAE celebrates National Day on the first weekend of December which means that flights and travel become more complicated (and expensive), so we set November 25 as our target exit date. Conveniently, November 25 was also our lease expiration which meant we needed to schedule our villa move out inspection for November 20th to allow for a few buffer days of unforeseen issues. This meant that we needed to have everything cleared out and closed by November 19th.
That left 47 days to sell everything we owned and relocate two humans and two chihuahuas.
You might be wondering why we didn’t stay in Dubai since we already had a great lifestyle and friends.
The catch was cost. This really was a no-brainer since our average monthly expenses in Dubai run around $6,000 USD, while in Mexico we knew they would be substantially less.
It turns out that uprooting our lives, planning two international moves plus a job loss in 47 days was a fucking terrible idea.
Oh yes! 5 of those 47 days I spent flat out on my back on the sofa, sicker than I’ve been in a decade.
Technically, that left 42 days.
Did I mention that this was not our first rodeo? That we had sold everything we owned back in 2018? That we’d sworn we’d never forget those hard lessons, and yet here we were in October 2022 in the same predicament.
In case you have an inkling to move, downsize or start over, I’m sharing here some sisterly advice from someone who’s done three international moves in less than five years.
Someone who keeps forgetting the lessons, but at least eventually, re-remembers them.
- STOP buying crap for yourself and others.
If it doesn’t immediately improve your life today (like a bed or a coffee maker), you don’t need it.
But in the event you can’t control yourself (been there), here’s a litmus test you can try. Before you buy the thing, ask yourself these questions:
If you needed to sell this thing in six months, what would it be worth? How long would it take to sell it or give it away? And at what cost to your personal sanity would you be willing to sacrifice to get rid of this item?
Let me provide some actual examples of how this plays out in real time.
- That adorable snow globe with your picture inside? The only suitable place for it is landfill. May as well grind it up and make soup out of it as we’re already drowning in plastics.
- That incredible cast iron pan you bought that weighs 20 lbs and cost $200? You’ll need to pay about 12 times its value in shipping costs if you plan to keep it. But if you plan to sell it, expect to get about $20. And that’s after about 50 DMs back and forth with all kinds of nut jobs trying to nickel and dime you.
- Those incredible plants in those extra-large ceramic pots that you paid $100 for? Good luck getting more than $5 for those. Turns out no one wants to transport large plants full of plants and dirt in their cars.
I could go on and on. All I can say is that for each and every ‘one-click’ purchase you make, expect the current value of whatever you bought to be less than 20% of its retail price within months, and that’s only if it’s in pristine condition.
Now to actually get rid of each and every item you own, factor in at least 10–15 minutes of your time.
Hear me out.
Every item you want to sell, needs its own advertisement on whatever digital marketplace tool you’re using. You’ll need a photo, description, and price. Then there will be endless rounds of haggling with 1–25 potential buyers. Finally someone will agree to come, and then they won’t bother to show. Or they’ll show up 2 hours late, or at midnight, or when you’re not home. My personal favorite was the woman who showed up in a Lexus to pay $15 for an item but was $5 short.
All I can say is good luck with your social life! You’re a slave to whatever stranger is showing up at God knows what time to buy your $400 gadget for $25.
My best piece of advice is to lowball your prices to save yourself the hassle. Or just give it away.
Speaking of giving away your stuff, I highly recommend you find a reputable charity who’ll do a pick up for all the stuff that I guarantee will never sell. I was able to find an animal rescue agency who took everything we had left over. Luckily they took linens and all the other bits that are impossible to sell.
Alternatively you’ll need to hire a truck to either donate your stuff or send it to the dump.
So, if you factor a conservative 10 minutes per item, and you have 500 items, then that’s 5,000 minutes or 83 hours of your life.
2. If you’re planning to ship anything, consider all options.
While many companies pay for relocation or repatriation costs, this is not common in the UAE. This meant we were on the hook for everything.
Though we sold or gave away most of our stuff, there were 10 boxes of personal effects (clothing, art, yoga / sporting equipment) that we wanted to ship.
We assumed that shipping by boat was the cheapest option, but when we got the quote, we were unpleasantly surprised. The price to ship 10 boxes was around $6,000 USD which works out to $600 per box. These are not gigantic boxes by the way. Plus, with shipping by sea, you’re looking at 1–2 months before your items arrive.
We called another company for a 2nd quote, and the representative who came suggested we consider air freight. It seems that since Covid, airline shipping has gotten much cheaper (likely due to the big dip in demand during lockdowns) while sea shipping became more expensive due to supply chain problems.
The quote for air freight came in at $2,700 USD. Accounting for two months of storage and a price bump in 2023, when we were finally ready to ship everything, the actual price came in around $3,300 USD. Needless to say, this is the option we chose.
3. Travel with pets is extremely complicated and stressful
Flying with dogs for a 12 hour + flight is terrible under any circumstances, but flying with elderly dogs post Covid is a disaster. Add to that the horrific airline staffing and scheduling issues that have plagued the industry since the world opened up, and you have a highly stressful new reality for pet transport.
There are three ways to travel with dogs:
- Fly them in the cabin.
If your dog is under 8 kg including their carrier, they may be able to fly in the cabin with you. Each airline and aircraft have different carrier size restrictions, so be sure to check these. Although our dogs are chihuahuas, they are both on the ‘beefier’ side. Plus the elderly one is half pug, so he’s upwards of 10 kg. (Note: I’ve since learned that most airlines don’t actually check the weight of your carriers, and so long as you put them in a carrier and they fit under the seat, you might be good to go).
Pets in-cabin is still very restricted in the Middle East, so there were limited options regardless. In our case, I did not want them stuffed under a seat in a carrier for 12 + hours.
The cost for in-cabin varies depending if your flight is domestic or international. But factor in $100 or more per dog, per leg of the trip.
- Fly them as cargo.
This means your pets fly in pet crates under the plane in the cargo section. It also requires 3–4 hours per leg of additional processing time. With both our dogs being quite old, I did not want them to endure 20+ hours in their crates.
And the cost? The quote I got was for a minimum $7,500 USD. Since my company provides no relocation assistance, this was definitely out as well.
- Fly them as excess baggage.
Similar to cargo, they still go under the plane in crates, but the processing time is much less since they are checked in as luggage.
All in, the cost was around $1,800 USD including their paperwork and flights. This was the option we picked. Since it was such a long flight, we liked that they would have their large kennels to stretch out in.
However, the real pain point starts when you need to find a flight that will actually accept dogs.
Since we opted to fly with the canines as excess baggage, we needed to book our own flights.
Sounds easy, right?
Factor in that travel was an utter disaster in the summer of 2022, and it turns out that many of the pet friendliest airlines had restrictions in place. Suffice to say I spent WEEKS trying to find a flight.
Ultimately, there were no possible flights to Mexico which meant a 10-day detour to Canada. Even to get to Canada, we were limited to one flight option. As a result, we ended up spending nearly $6,200 USD on flights, including flights for two humans, two dogs, and excess bag charges to get us from Dubai to Canada, and then from Canada to Mexico.
4) Whatever you expect to pay to move and start over, double it.
Moving is fucking expensive!
Honestly, if you ever plan to go to the UAE for a ‘new adventure’, make sure they cover your repatriation costs!
I am still trying to stop the financial bleed, but so far here’s a breakdown of the main expenses we incurred:
- Air freight for our personal effects: $3,300 USD
- Flights and pet relocation service: $6,200 USD
- Car rental: $400 USD
- Airbnb: $1,300 USD
- Health Insurance: $424 USD
- Legal fees for Mexico visas $1,800 USD
- Miscellaneous spending: $2,000 USD
In total, that’s nearly $15,500 on costs directly associated with moving.
The lesson here is that with a possible recession, insane inflation, and airlines in upheaval, plan for the worst and add a 30–50% budget contingency in the event everything goes to shit.
It’s been 5 weeks now since we arrived in Mexico. While the dust of our lives is still a choke hazard, we are making steady progress. And while I don’t necessarily recommend burning your life down, if you’ve been itching to make a change, you’d be amazed at what you can do, and how much you can spend (!), in a couple of months.