Six years after initially conceiving the idea, and seven months after realizing we could make the idea real, we’ve finally done it: we’ve moved abroad! Specifically, we’ve established two “home bases,” in London in Taipei, and split our time between Europe in the summers (approximately May to September) and Asia in the winters (approximately October to April). We love to travel, so while we’re based out of these homes, we plan to spend close to 4 months on the road, exploring Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, and Oceania, as much as we can.

We’ve also quit our jobs! M is now working on a fledgling career as a YouTuber (@AskMichia), and I am spending more time throwing ceramics and writing this blog. We’ve been in London for the last month (honestly shocked the month has flown so quickly), and are absolutely loving it. Every day here feels like we’re on vacation, and we’re enjoying the slower, more walks-filled life that this city offers.

It’s honestly been a whirlwind, but this blog post has been a long time coming, if only so people can understand what we’re doing with our lives! If you’re interested in the journey we went on, I journaled my thoughts at various points over the last 8-9 months that will show you the disorganized mess from which we have stitched together our current narrative. Get ready for a long one.

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October 28, 2022: Written on a flight from NYC to Colombia

A few weeks ago, Michia texted me while I was in a meeting saying, “I have ENORMOUS news.” As soon as I got out of my meeting, I asked him what it was and made a few guesses, to which he responded, “Bigger,” then, “No, bigger,” then:

“[My boss] asked if I wanted to move to Europe and open an office there.”

As the realization of what that meant sunk in, I began to cry. Tears literally leaked out of my face; joy, excitement, and shock all expressing themselves simultaneously. The more we talked about it, the more I cried. This had been my dream for so long — the thought of it actually happening overwhelmed me.

Growing up, I was privileged to travel abroad regularly. My family is from Hong Kong, so we would go back to visit our extended family there every year or two. Living between my two homes gave me an appreciation and thirst for seeing the world that I have been unable to quench.

When I was deciding which college to attend, one of my main reasons for choosing Dartmouth was its study abroad opportunities (almost every department has a study abroad program). Unfortunately and ironically, it took me two years to decide I wanted to major in computer science instead of economics and environmental studies, meaning that I didn’t have time to take a quarter to study abroad, as I had to fit my whole major into two years.

Over the years of course, I have spent multiple months abroad at a time, teaching English in China for seven weeks with ISEC, backpacking Europe right after graduation for seven weeks, and spending several months oversees while working remotely, primarily in Mexico and Europe. But moving and living abroad has been a dream of mine since I was 20. When I graduated, I almost took a job in London or Singapore, but ended up not following through, because of visa complications. I wouldn’t say I regret not doing it then, but it’s definitely been on my mind.

Eating baos in China

Teaching English in China

Backpacking through Prague

In 2017, M and I took a missions course, Perspectives, and I felt God ask if we would go abroad in 3-5 years. 3-5 years felt so far away then, but, as the saying goes, time flies, and 2022 was the 5 year mark. We really thought that M would have to finish his three year stint at Upstart before we could seriously consider it, so we delayed thinking about it, hoping that one day we might get to spend a year abroad.

I always imagined spending that one year abroad in Europe, and M always imagined it in Asia, so our compromise was to do six months in each, and if you had spoken to us about this dream, this is how we always shared it with people. But deep down I really just wanted to live in Europe, Paris in particular. And in fact, I was so afraid of stating that dream out loud, that whatever people asked me where in Europe, I would say Scandinavia, or western Europe somewhere, like France, or Italy. But I’ve always wanted to live the Parisian life, waking up and walking to a Parisian café to buy a fresh croissant and baguette, to sit at a Parisian café, and drink coffee in the middle of the day. To walk by the Eiffel tower holding flowers from the local flower market, on my way home. This has always been my secret dream.

As I asked Michia questions about what this actually meant for us, I realized that this dream had been so deeply buried within me, that the mention of it possibly being a reality, brought tears to my eyes that I could not control. I didn’t even realize how much I wanted this, or how much it meant to me. But my soul knew. It knew.

In all of this, I am so struck by how faithful God is. God the father knows my deepest desires and secrets, and he makes them a reality/brings them to life in ways that I never thought possible.

Even Michia, in all his time at Upstart, didn’t think that this was a possibility. In fact, when his boss initially brought it up, his first reaction was, “No. That’s not what I had in mind.” But he had the wherewithal to walk back from that response, think about his wife, and say that he would give it thought. And after my response, he declared that there was no way he could say no. He told his boss, “yes,” that night, and I don’t know that I’ve ever loved or appreciated him more. When you find someone who sees your dreams and makes them their own, never let go. My eyes tear writing this, because I am just so overwhelmed. How did I get so lucky?

While there are still lots of things to figure out, and we have no idea where we’re going to live yet, every time I think about it, I get so excited. We will probably keep our home in New York city at least for the first six months, and bounce between the two, but we’ll see.

Update: March 20, 2023

It’s been about five months since we originally decided to move to Europe, and so much has changed. Back in November, we/Upstart decided that moving to London made the most sense because Upstart is a fintech company, and there are more banks and opportunities in London than there are in Paris. And then, over the course of the next three months, God just brought a lot of people into our lives who 1. Currently live in London, 2. Had previously lived in London, or 3. Have friends in London they’d love to introduce us to. It just felt ordained. The more we shared that we were moving to London, the more excited we got. We built out our home plans, started searching for neighborhoods, we looked to figure out what we would do in the winters.

By January, we had decided that while we “lived in London,” it would actually just be a hub. During our “Europe months,” we would spend as much time as possible traveling around Europe, coming back to London as our home base. To avoid the cold winters in London, we should also have a hub in Tokyo, so we could spend October - April in Asia, based in Tokyo.

And just as it was beginning to go, so well, we began to see cracks in our plans.

Moving to London meant leaving behind the community we had spent so long building in New York City — a community that was finally really coming together. Our church was thriving, our friendships were growing deeper, and we cared so much about the people we loved here. Could we really build this same community in London if we were traveling all the time? And what about our friends here? How could we stay in touch with them?
M’s deal at Upstart changed. Originally really interesting and lucrative, M looked at it again, three months after discussing it, and decided that it didn’t really make sense to stay.

In January, we literally had new plans every 2 days. On the 14th, it was to have hubs for each region where we rent an amazing villa/mansion, and invite people to stay with us for some weeks, then travel for some weeks (eg. rent out a villa in Croatia for 5 weeks, invite different groups of friends for Week 1 and Week 3, then go on weeklong trips to various European cities between people visiting).

We loved the ideas of huge, luxury villas in cheaper places around the world (eg. Croatia, Thailand, Bali), but felt the beach life wasn’t really “us,” especially for months at a time. So by the 16th of January, we were back to making London a base, this time with full-time traveling and content creation, and maybe both quitting our jobs.

In early February, I went through a Tony Robbins decision process of whether to leave my job, and decided that I wanted to pursue a life of traveling, content creation, and pottery, more than I wanted to stay at my current job.

When I was in college, I came across the concept of FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early), which is notionally about maximizing one’s savings rate while working to achieve financial independence at an earlier date than retirement age. I found this concept revolutionary, as I had always thought the “way to live life,” was to go to college, get a good job, work until retirement, and then spend money. But this really opened my eyes to the idea that your best years are earlier in life than 65, and that if I ever wanted to be financially free, I should start immediately. I didn’t want to spend my whole life working for or worried about money, so I made it my life goal to “retire” before 30. In “retirement,” I would spend my time how I wanted to — maybe working for a nonprofit, maybe enjoying hobbies, or traveling full time. Doing things I enjoyed for the sake of doing them, not because I had to for the money.

***Note: If you’re interested in this philosophy, check out Reddit’s FIRE or FatFIRE subreddits (FatFIRE is the wealthier version of FIRE). Another interesting read along these lines is Bill Perkin’s Die With Zero.

Between M selling his company, my tech salary + stocks for over 7 years, and a few really good investments, we had reached a level of financial independence that we were satisfied with. We had enough.

In moving to London, I was at a crossroads. I could continue to work for my current company, collect a paycheck working on a product I actually love, and level up in my career, moving full-time into management, or I could leave, travel and/or throw pottery whenever I wanted, and achieve my life goal of retiring before 30. I didn’t realize how much this goal really meant to me until I faced the option of choosing not to meet the goal, despite being able to. I decided on the latter — I could always come back to work in tech, the same way we could always move back to NYC if we hated splitting time across the globe.

Leading a workshop with Squarespace power users

Meanwhile, M had also decided to part with his company, and was working through the separation paperwork.

In early March, we were researching how to move to Japan, when we realized that Japan did not want us. Basically, of the landlords who will even rent to a non-Japanese resident, none would rent to non-residents without a Japanese job. And we had no jobs, so that basically made us ineligible for renting in Japan. We spoke to over 20 realtors, and all of them basically said, “We help a lot of foreigners rent in Japan, but we cannot help you. No one will rent to you.”

So we decided to look into Taiwan, M’s not-so-low-key-favorite country, which was very welcoming, and have decided to make that our Asia hub. So in April, we will be doing a two week real-estate tour in Taipei and London, and hope to find our dream home hubs.

Update: April 28, 2023

We just got back from our two week trip, and we have 2 leases!! Learning the rental markets and areas for both Taipei and London was quite a fun experience, and while the trip was EXHAUSTING (we walked ~13-15k steps for 11/13 days on 6-7 hours of jet-lagged sleep), it was extremely successful. Maybe one day I’ll do a full blog post on the experience of lease-hunting in each of these cities, as the process for each is very different from the process in America (at least, in SF and in NYC).

Signing Taipei lease

Sending London deposit

I also kicked off my resignation in Workday today, selecting “Retirement” as my reason for leaving, which felt like such an unreal moment. I know I won’t be in retirement forever, but it’s nice to pretend I will be for at least a few months.

Update: June 3, 2023

What a pleasure it is to start a new journal in a new city on a new day. Time here in London has flown by so quickly and we’ve loved it so far. Even though the mornings and evenings are colder than we’d prefer, it has been lovely. We’re going to the gym regularly, eating healthy, spending time with our hobbies, building out our home, and going on long, ambling, beautiful walks. The only things we’re really missing are friends and an amazing church.

I’m so grateful to be here. It feels like we’re really unlocked a dream we’ve had for so long, and I’m grateful that so far we love it.

Update: July 6, 2023

We just got back from a 2-week trip to Asia to furnish our Taiwanese home and see my aging grandparents.

Eating on the floor Day 1 in London

Eating on the floor Day 1 in Taipei

The trip was wildly successful, and we now have 2 beds, an air mattress, a TV, and, of course, speakers in that home. Taiwan doesn’t have Amazon, so we had to buy everything in person at Costco, IKEA, and a few other local stores (eg. Hola, and Sleepy Tofu), which made for quite the shopping expeditions. We’ll furnish it more when we go for the winter in October or November.

Day 1 walking to next shop

Day 2 shopping haul

Also, random fact, Taiwan Costco only takes cash or a Taiwanese Costco credit card. So we had to decide between buying a TV or a vacuum and air mattress one day because we couldn’t pull out enough cash for all 3. Such unexpected problems.

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So if you’ve been wondering what we’ve been up to, why we always seem to be in London and/or Taiwan, or why it seems like we don’t have 9-5 jobs anymore, now you know!

It hasn’t all been rainbows and ponies. The act of moving a 2br apartment’s worth of furniture from NYC overseas to London was a logistical nightmare that we should have thought more about before deciding to proceed with it. And on top of that we decided to fly with 4 70-lb bags (really 71 lbs each, but the United agent was kind enough to let us through, seeing how hard we tried to keep everything at the 70-lb limit), 2 overly stuffed carry-ons, 2 backpacks full of ridiculously expensive camera gear, because this was the important stuff that we wanted to have with us while our stuff took 6-12 weeks to arrive in London. We were so grateful that the Ubers we took to EWR and from LHR were both massive enough to fit it all — I honestly couldn’t believe that miracle.

And yes, we are still without our furniture. So we bought the cheapest couch and IKEA coffee tables we could to have somewhere to sit and eat and watch “TV” (using M’s monitor that we flew over). Our stuff has supposedly reached London, though, so we’re hoping to receive it in about 2 weeks.

Hours before we flew out, we had the worst argument we’ve ever had, and I declared that we shouldn’t move after all. At some point in our non-talking argument, M asked, “What do you need from me?” and I realized that all I wanted was for him to tell me it was all going to be okay. Which is honestly ridiculous because how did he know it was going to be? But that’s what I needed, more than anything: to know that it was going to be okay. Then I broke down, sobbing as I realized how overwhelmed I was with the stress of the situation/previous month, how crushed I was to lose my friends and community, how afraid I was that London would be awful. It was a real low point.

But we talked it out, called an Uber, and made it to the airport with a few hours to spare.

It’s definitely been a bumpy, soul-searching, life-altering few months, but every time we look outside, or walk to the park, we’re reminded how lucky we are, and know that we made the right call.

Flying from Taipei to London with our lease

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I will be making a separate FAQ for all the questions we get, so keep an eye out for that if that’s interesting! Otherwise, if you have friends in London or Taipei you think we’d get along with, we’d love to meet them! We are in the market for friends in our new home cities!

So much love,
Janice

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