Episode 52: Why We Stayed in Portugal When We Said We'd Probably Leave

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to As the Dinoson's Turn, where we chronicle the adventures of the Dinoson family, a seemingly ordinary family from Iowa who decided, hey, you only live once, so let's move to Portugal. And now your hosts, Jason and Tracy Dinison.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome to another episode of As the Dinason's Turn. And this time around, we passed our three three-year anniversary. We had big plans for doing some special podcasts around that.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Life just happened. We got busy, like we had travel, we had surgeries and commitments, and it was all kinds of things.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

But we wanted to talk this time about why we decided not to move back because varyingly we have said or we had said six months, and another time we said two years. And both of those have long since passed at this point, and we're still here. And why?

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Well, and I think that it depends on who you ask. I mean, just talking with Jack, he said that he just didn't want to move again. And also we had no idea where we would move to. We could not agree on where we would move to in the United States because we have very different ideas of where life is and all of these things. And so I think that that would be part of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

I think that it's like a cost-benefit analysis almost. Like you start lining up, well, why would we move back? Well, why not stay and figure it out? This is where life is.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

I think that there are a lot of things that I think are very positive here. Like we have a definite better balance of life, we have more family time, we have more intention around our time. We actually have improved our health because we've got better access to health care, even though we had health insurance. Like it's actually affordable to do the things that you need to do. Like their caps on how much a surgery is or any of those things is a real thing. I would say that I feel safe here. I don't have to question if somebody has a gun or it was going to rob or mug you or any of those things. Like, even as a woman, I feel safer here than I did in the United States and do when we're back in the United States.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Well, the kids didn't remember it this time around when you asked them, but they've brought up safety before.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

That was a huge thing for them, that they feel safe at school, that they can actually learn, that they get to be a kid, that kids can be kids here. There are some times that that drives them crazy, but I think that's a big thing that childhood is actually real. I think that's a good thing. I'd say that if our children weren't thriving or doing very, very well, then that would have been something that would have been easily made the easy decision for us.

SPEAKER_01 3:12

There's no doubt that there's a honeymoon period that we experienced when we first moved here and then the end of the honeymoon period. So when we talked in the introduction about the six-month mark, six months was hard. That point.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

That's when things really became very, very difficult. And then we had just barely gotten through to a year, a little bit more. We thought, well, we're staying for a visa or let's get through the school year and see how it goes. And that we really were waiting to see. And then things worked out well. So I think that you have to know what your threshold is. But we've also, because we've been able to deal with so many things, I would say the other piece of this is that a lot of the crazy dreams and the things that we really wanted to try, or a lot of the business growth and all of those things wouldn't have happened in the same way as they've happened here.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

I think it's an interesting thought exercise. And it's almost impossible to do to think about if we had stayed in the US, could we have made the changes that we've made? The changes, of course, would be different in how they manifest, but could we have made changes that brought us to a better headspace like we're in now?

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Not in the town and in the life that we had. We would have had to have done something just as drastic as we did. And I'd say that we would have had to have done things very differently, and it would have required a complete upheaval. But I think the biggest things, and we've talked about this before, our why has completely changed. Like our why of working was making sure we had health insurance and making sure our kids could go to college. And now we've got both of those things pretty covered in your social systems. And so now your why shifts just to completely other things. And it's now more about what moves me, what feeds my soul, what excites me, what's the thing that I want to do next in that respect. And that I think is huge. That would never have been able to happen, I think, with not while we had children. That would have had to been like when the kids have left the nest and they're both done with college, and then we could start thinking about ourselves. And I think that for us, the family time and the closeness and the honest conversations and those things, the reasons, the things that we have now that's the reason why we didn't want to give those things up, honestly. The pace is very different and the demands are very different. And so I think that we like these demands in this pace better on some level.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

And in some ways, I guess we're privileged because we also I feel like we've made our own privilege in some ways.

SPEAKER_00 6:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

I mean, I know it's not easy to just be like, well, just move. I know that's not something that but sometimes I guess that's the benefit of being married to me, is that sometimes I'm like, well, what the hell? Let's just do it. Which shocks people who think they know me, and they're like, Oh, he would never do something like that. But that actually really is kind of how I am sometimes, where it's like, well, this is ridiculous. So it needs to be different, so it's going to be different.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

And we appreciate that about you because I I am very much that same way. So not everybody can function that way, you know, and I get that.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

But I guess where I was going with that is that we've made our own privilege in some ways. Yeah, we're privileged compared to Portuguese people. Oh, absolutely. Because our income, which is not anywhere near it's barely average in the United States.

SPEAKER_02 7:25

But here's not even average, but here it's it's a very strong and a very good income. And I think that it just goes to prove, though, that we need that income to live the kind of life that we are living right now, though, too. Like it's not like we have extra income to do all of these other things.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Portugal it's a strange place because like the average wage in Portugal is like one-third of what it is in the US, but the costs are the same as in the Midwest of the United States. And so it's in the day-to-day. So is this uh computing? Something doesn't add up.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

It doesn't add up. And I think that like the the country very much says that it doesn't add up, but the thing that you don't pay for, and the thing that will bankrupt anyone in the US at any moment of time is a health crisis.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

We pay what is it? We paid $300 a month, $300 a month for private health insurance. I had fairly major abdominal surgery in April.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

You were in the ICU here, and you which is just here is very different than the ICU in the U.S.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

It wasn't like not the same type of I unfortunately have had plenty of experience with ICUs in America. It wasn't anything like that. It was kind of like a hospital room with a dedicated staff who's right there all it was not quite the same, right? But anyway, all that two or three nights spent in the hospital. Yeah, it was a six or seven hour surgery, and it was 500 euro.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Because that's the most that it can be for our insurance. Like there's a threshold that goes up to this. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

And so we pay 300 or euro, so 350 US dollars a month, and the surgery was like 550 US dollars.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

It was more like 657. Like the exchange rate is one of the things rate isn't right now.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

But anyway, think of how many tens of thousands of dollars that would be in the United States. And yes, insurance would cover it, but you're paying the $2,500 out of pocket and could be the 20%, whatever it is that you pay beyond that.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

So I think that the systems, like even though we've said before, the systems are very different. These systems work for us. We've actually seen that. These systems actually it help us be more creative to help us actually then move things along in a new way to grow our business and new things. And so it's helped us to even gain even more privilege than when we first moved here. We we already make more income. Now, of course, everything in the world has gotten much more expensive. And so we need that extra income, thank goodness. But I would say that yeah, we've been very lucky, and then at the same time we've worked really hard to get here. And one of the things that we didn't want to give up was the way we've reframed our life.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

We worked probably just as much, but just in a different way.

SPEAKER_02 10:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Because we can, and so we can do together time, we can do errands, we can take care of things that need taken care of, and then work. Plus, I mean, you go to a job a couple days a week, and there's a commute with that, but otherwise we work from home, and sometimes I have to work in my office here at home, which kind of stinks, but yet I'm here. And I think that I don't know, I just feel like the way our days are run are so different compared to what they were in the US.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

Yeah, I'd say that this new routine works very well for us, and being able to be there for kid drop off. I can't be there for pickup. There's buses and things like that, everybody takes or any of those things because you're working and all of that at the same time. I feel confident in letting my children take public transportation to get home and the buses that run, I think three times a day, morning, lunchtime, and the evening. So I think that that works just fine for us here. But yeah, I didn't want to give up all of the things that we have. We've gained a lot, even though sometimes at the very beginning or in the first year, it was really hard to see what we were gaining.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Well, there's more to say about some of this we will talk about in our next episode about like marriage and relationships. And I think that we also need to do an episode at some point about us as well. We're kind of I'm on the borderline, Gen X millennial.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

You're Gen X, I'm a hardcore Gen Xer, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

But kind of rebellion against the stuff that we were told as we were growing up about how life was gonna be and and what's life like now.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

I think the people who no matter where you are would feel would feel that one. We've had some interesting conversations of late.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

So we'll have that. Our next episode will be about like marriage and relationships. Then after that, we'll do life lessons.

SPEAKER_02 12:46

Things we've come to accept and question. How's that?

SPEAKER_01 12:49

There you go. All right, join us again next time for another episode.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

You've been listening to As the Dinosons Turn, a podcast presented by Dinoson Media Ventures. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and catch us again next time for another episode.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Media ventures.