Before it all started…

Ever since my early 20’s, I’ve been wondering where will I end up living. When will I experience a feeling of truly belonging somewhere?

When I moved out of my childhood home for the first time to go study, I’ve often moved from one student home to another. Those dorms felt more like stations than anything else but I guess that’s reasonable enough. I had to be there, it was the best option from the financial point of view. Not to mention all the fun we had. Yeah, it was fun and I have a lot of good memories but that wasn’t home. It was only a place I stayed for a few years.

After graduation, I moved to my own apartment. And then to another one. But somehow it never felt like home, I knew I didn’t want to stay in that place for the rest of my life. There was always something missing in the apartment. That’s what I thought, at least.

Of course, I was determined never to return to my small hometown. I didn’t appreciate it in my younger days (now I love it but still, not the place I want to live). I wanted to live a big city and all that.

A few years later I wondered, is the big city what I am looking for really? What is it that I want then?

And what about work? I’ve tried many jobs as a student and none of them seemed like something I could do for years. And yet many people work their way to the retirement doing the job they don’t even like.

Somehow I felt different from majority of people. I’ve also known for a very long time that a normal job isn’t for me, don’t want to work for somebody other than myself.

People around me didn’t really understand this because they were all in for a regular job (since this is the only rational thing to do) so I didn’t really talk to anyone about what I wanted. 

So I tried, working for myself. I opened my own tutoring business and the self-employment began. But it lasted for a little over a year. I’ve had quite a lot customers but the expenses of only having a business were over the top! Not to mention I had to lower the price of my tutoring services because people started doing that to get more customers. So what could I do? 

I felt like I was forced to lower my hourly rate. But I had to work many, many hours to get a decent monthly pay. Something like that can’t last a long time. In my previous country, that is!

When it started….

I started thinking to myself. Maybe this whole country doesn’t give me the opportunity I need to grow.

It is a beautiful country but it is not very nice to people who want to be self-employed.

It’s like we are being punished for having our own business!

I just couldn’t understand why.

Don’t get me wrong, I tried hard to make it work there. I started a business and it was a lesson well learned. It wasn’t the right place for growing a business, I just didn’t have the courage to say it out loud.

When I met my now boyfriend, I was finally able to transform my deepest thoughts into reality. He was all into moving from the very beginning we met.

First, we had to be clear with each other about what kind of life do we want to live…

That was easy. I wanted to:

• have my own business,
• be my own boss,
• have the freedom to travel around and take photos
• live outside a big city to have peace but not too far from it

• see my family anytime I want because I can make my own schedule and work from home
• never have to worry about finances again
• have a little special corner on this earth that is all mine and where I can be totally relaxed

Lucky for me, him and I want the same things.

The idea of the UK….

So me and my boyfriend thought and asked ourselves, how can we accomplish all of this? Not where we are now…We have to move, but where?

I want to see many places in this beautiful world. But where can I move easily to start a business that will give me the life I want and deserve?

And the more we talked about it and thought about it, England was the first on the list.

Why did we make that decision?

It is relatively easy to find an employment (for a jumpstart). So that’s what he did while I stayed in the previous country for a while.

Easy to grow and improve lifestyle.

Higher standard. Same food and clothing prices, and almost the same rent like in our home country but higher employment hourly rates and much higher hourly tutoring rates (for me). Which means we can save more money and invest it in our future.

Affordable rents in our chosen part of England.

(I know that London is very expensive but we never wanted to live there anyway. There are many other places that are much more attractive to us so we decided for Nottingham.) We learned it is good to be near a big city but not in it. So we are living outside of city but close enough to be there in 20 minutes which is perfect.

Super easy to open your own business, low monthly expenses.

This one is crucial to me because I have an opportunity to slowly grow my business without worrying about expenses. (in my home country monthly insurance was huge no matter if I had a profit that month or no). The trading allowance is really high which means you can earn a lot before paying any tax.

Beautiful parks and national parks.

Great location to travel from. England is very connected to all countries and flights from London to any country are one of the cheapest (perfect for us travellers). For me, this basically means better opportunities and saving money when travelling to other countries.

Easy to start a property business (which is our long term plan)

Do I have to say more?

It was the best decision ever because now I am having my online tutoring business and have enough time to be working on this blog. I am not stressed and feel obligated to have too many hours of tutoring because I have almost zero monthly expenses and the hourly tutoring rate is higher than before. All I have to pay is tax at the end of year which isn’t something I am stressed about.

That I get to do all of that, motivates me to start fresh, new ideas are coming and now I am finally able to turn them into reality. Everything is possible right now.

Having a profitable tutoring business, blogging and property is going to help me and my loved ones to have a life we always wanted, and deserved.

I visit my hometown every couple of months or so because working from home allows me to do that! And my visits usually last more than a few weeks. It is not vacation because I work from there, as well. 

If you live in the UK and know how to properly save and invest money, then I say go for it. I promise you will never regret this choice.

And here is the tough side …

It’s all great and everything, the only I didn’t expect to happen was that moving itself would be so difficult, emotionally speaking. It still broke my heart when I was leaving my home country.

I guess I only now realized how much I love it. I miss my mom because I don’t get to see her as every week as I did before. She is not here when I need her. First couple of months were quite lonely for me. My boyfriend was working and I was staying at home, and I had no one to call or meet, because I didn’t know anyone except him.

My papers weren’t in order at the beginning and I was also worrying about that every day until everything got settled. This lasted for a few months.

Everything was different than I was used too so it was a shock and a huge learning curve. Not to mention feeling like a stranger among people.

But, this was only for a certain period of time but it is the biggest change I ever made in my entire life.

I still don’t feel very settled but I guess it’s normal to feel like a stranger for some time. How long will this last, I don’t know. It cannot feel as comfortable as the place I have been living in first 30 years. I know I’ll get there eventually because I have someone I love and who loves me. We support each other in good times and bad ones.

What I am trying to say is that not feeling comfortable shouldn’t stop you from making a decision.

Stepping out of your comfort zone can be the best thing you do because it will make you stronger and it will push you to do some things you wouldn’t normally do.

And stepping out of comfort zone is somehow crucial to achieving success, in most cases.

If you want to truly succeed in life, sometimes you have to make the toughest decisions. And stick to them. And you have to believe that it will all be worth it after a while.

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