What is My Purpose of Being Abroad?

During one of my catch-up meetings with my client recently, we had gotten “out of focus” from work and ended chatting more about our personal lives – especially relating to life’s choices, retirement decisions and plans for the future. He was married to a co-Asian and recently had their first child, a bouncing baby boy, last month.  It was a great opportunity for me to listen to thoughts of someone who grew up in a first world country and to learn from his elderly thoughts of setting out plans for the future.

He told me that our resident place is surrounded by materialism – I agree! Our place is called “tax-haven” and all professions here are mostly related to finance, managing wealth of the wealthy! Most people have forgotten about family values – parents usually send their children to nursery day care centers, while they keep themselves busy with work to earn.  On another hand, this man had made a choice to be the sole provider for his family, with his wife tending to their son, and had a mortgage for a house near the beach. His thoughts were as simple as ABC – nurture his family with one parent looking after their kid/s (he plans to have another baby soon!), he balances out his work so he can be home early to play and see his son goes to sleep, stays at his house over the weekend to spend time with his wife and son, buy a house to serve as a capital asset which he plans to sell 15-20 years from now, and use the money to retire in Asia! Wow….! He told me that Asia has been growing and with its low cost of living, he can have a comfortable, simple retirement life there with his family.