A Year to Get Ready To Go

I am a planner and Rick is a logistics person.  Together it made a good team to get ready to move to the island.  It took us a year to get everything in place to make the move.  Here is how we did it. 

We started by putting together lists of everything we had to do and collecting them in a notebook.  When all the lists were completed or checked off, it would be time to go.  We made lists for house repairs, things to do at the Bonaire house, insurance at both places, finances, shipping, residency, things to purchase, things to pack, going electronic and paperless and travel plans.

The mile stones were renting our house in Arvada, selling cars, moving our belongings into storage and shipping things to Bonaire. We used Zillow to list our house as a rental.  It took two weeks to find good renters and sign the lease. Our house was an asset that we really weren't using so renting provided additional income.  We sold one car to Rick's partner and the other through CarMax.  Both easy transactions with immediate cash. Rick measured everything in the house and estimate the storage we would need.  He was spot on in his calculations.  We rented a 10x10 for our things and a 10x20 for our furniture. We shipped 19 boxes to Bonaire.

We wanted to become residents of Bonaire.  Residency would allow us to have cheaper taxes, free medical, allow us to get a bank account on the island and generally make us part of the island community.  So we had to get an FBI fingerprint and background check with an Apostille that was completed in the last three months.  Our birth and marriage certificates also required an Apostille. Expensive propositions since each one cost $200.  Also required:  a letter from two different banks saying we were customers in good standing, proof of income (they really just wanted to see a bank statement that showed we had social security or a paycheck deposited monthly), copies of our passports verified by a notary, and finally, a deed to the house.  We carried all these document to Bonaire and hired an agent to help us through the process. Agnes, an immigration whisperer, is an ex-immigration officer who makes residency happen through the Dutch government.

All the lists were completed. All to "to-do's were done. It was time to move. A year to the day that we left Bonaire in 2020, we arrived back in Bonaire in 2021.