Wife and I are moving to the Caribbean for at least a year. It has been a goal of ours for a long time and things are lining up to give it a shot now. If it goes good and we like it, we’ll stay. If we don’t, we’ll come back. We’re both in our mid 30’s and have a toddler.
We own a home here in the US and it has about $270k in equity. We were initially going to rent in the Caribbean, but: 1) we have 2 dogs and a child and a lot of places won’t accommodate and 2) owning seems to be significantly cheaper on a monthly basis, thus lowering our overhead.
If we keep our current home and try to buy a second home in the Caribbean to live in, we will use all of our savings. We would probably be able to save up $15-$20k before the actual move, but for now, it would totally drain our accounts. (But, remember, we would save $1,000-$1,500/month once in the Caribbean and we would be up about $500-$700month if we rented out our current home and paid the mortgage with the rent income).
If we sold, we could pour a good chunk of the equity into a new home in the Caribbean and still have about $150k in the Bank. Our mortgage payment would also be even lower. Of course, if it didn’t work out in the Caribbean, it might take longer to sell the Caribbean house and it might be tough to get back into the housing market in California if we moved back.
Not sure what to do in this situation, but I’m leaning towards keeping our current home, stretching thin, and taking the risk to buy.
Advice? Recommendations?
Thanks
Not sure what to do on this...
Submitted January 10, 2018 at 12:21AM by diveesq http://ift.tt/2EtCQe1
