Meet AskRudy
We are a bi-racial family of 4 from California and New York. We left the US from California and moved our family across the world to Portugal!
In September 2022, we had dinner with friends and in a casual discussion the topic of moving out of California came up, to moving out of the country, where the initial thought was, “maybe in a few years we could move.” What we both learned in that discussion, is that moving out of the country was an option for both of us. It just wasn’t something we had really thought about, being in the midst of our daily lives that were very full of work, kids, our relationship, family obligations and all the things we do to fill up our time. We both worked more than full time, were constantly thinking of a side hustle, wanting to travel but trying to find the time and money to do it and the list goes on and on. As the week went on and we were researching about moving abroad, moving abroad became more and more of an option and one that seemed like a good plan instead of just a pipe dream. We had serious discussions about quality of life, what did we want for our kids, and where do we see ourselves in the next 3 years. Fast forward seven months, we had applied for a visa, rented our house and were on our way to Portugal!
By May 2023, we rented out our house and we left California and began our journey! We figured we would at least visit Portugal because we had an apartment leased for our visa, so if all else fell apart, we had seen our apartment. We traveled to our new home (hopefully) for 6 weeks until we returned to the US to await our visa approvals. Luckily, Rudy’s job was already remote and Nancy could continue her work remotely as a licensed therapist and consultant. While working remotely with time changes was stressful, without school for kids or family support, and trying to explore our new potential home in Portugal, balancing all the responsibilities was nothing new for two full time working parents in the US. But at least now we were on this adventure! We traveled back to the US at the end of June 2023 and visited family in different parts of the US, to the point where our kids couldn’t keep straight if we were in California, Portugal, Michigan, Washington DC or Tennessee. They just knew we were visiting cousins, playing at the water and just getting to be kids. After obsessively monitoring emails and checking 500 times a day, we got our visas in July 2023 and could make the BIG move and bring our dog back with us to Portugal!
We applied for the retired D7 visa and could now say, “We are retired!” This was the mindset that could lead us towards our new life and create more opportunities for our kids and a better quality of life for us. While we weren’t officially retired, Nancy could work significantly less, while Rudy worked full time until we could really lean in to “What do we want our future to be? How do we dig in and parent by example for our kids? And, if we have this vision, let's just do it!” From there we dreamt up AskRudy and here we are…
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