Thanks to the Godfathers for reminding us.

You are born, you go to school, you get a job, and eventually you die. Surely there's something better in the middle. We are on this small planet for threescore years and 10 apparently. If that is the case why would you spend a lot of that time working in a box with the same day to day routine boring you until you retire and get a clock. Work in the world is changing now and so should your mentality be. Let's face it, those days are now long gone when you worked 40-45 years in the same business that you had no interest in, making money for the owner who you never knew and then you retired and you got your carriage clock. The theory of 6 degrees of separation has now changed. If you don't know what this is, it is a theory that you are only six people away from knowing anybody in the world by mutual connections. Now it is possible to contact your business hero, any politician, your favourite sports star etc via twitter. Previously things were more difficult. You are much more likely to know the boss now. You are also more likely to lose your job. And you are also more likely to change careers because you choose to leave your job many times. However one thing that most people don't do is change their environment. People are often kept in a place that they don't want to be by casual acquaintances and family ties. This is no longer necessary of course. Nowadays many jobs allow you to work from anywhere. An Internet connection and a video camera are often enough to be able to work from anywhere you wish. If this is the case why don't you use the power of geo-arbitrage in order to live in a much better place? And when I say better I think I need to qualify that statement, I mean it is healthier, maybe cheaper, and maybe even wildly different to what you are used to. People can still get into a rut very easily but these days there are so many careers which allow you to be in a different location for working to where you would normally be expected to sit every day. Of course I am going to suggest Spain. Why not? The climate is good, the lifestyle is excellent if you have money, and it is relatively easy to get to from virtually anywhere in the world. For example, oil workers have known this for years. Because their work is usually on a depressing rig in the North Sea, or in some godforsaken hole in Kazakhstan, they want to spend the month they get off every two months in a nice place. For years people in the oil industry have been choosing Spain to live because of the communications, the lifestyle and the weather. Now we see people doing this in many other industries too. PR is one of them, social media, lead generation, website design, hosting... There are an abundance of new jobs which can be done from anywhere and many people are taking advantage of this to live in a lower cost country with better weather and a better lifestyle. Some take it to the extremes of living in Thailand, the Philippines or Singapore for example where life can be very cheap. However the majority of the people choosing Spain are Eurocentric workers who like to live in southern Europe because of the communications to get back to their country quickly if needs be for work or other reasons. Spain is the top choice of these people for various reasons. The main one of course is the ease of communication and getting in and out of the country. Secondly it has a good relationship between price, quality and lifestyle. Next the infrastructure is good meaning that there is fast Internet, fast roads and fast trains. There are also some negative correlations to other places meaning people choose Spain rather than those other countries. An example of this is Italy which has a wealth tax on property held abroad by residents. Therefore people choose not to go to Italy because they know they will have a tax bill for something they had already have paid tax on. France has recently placed a huge capital gains tax on any second property or non-resident property that is sold. This of course means that people are not too keen to buy a property in France now when they know they will never make any money out of it in the future and it will be difficult to sell on due to the lack of demand. Spain is now one of those countries trying to attract people into it by offering residency for €500,000 of investment in property. And the good news about this is that that €500,000 can be divided between various properties meaning that you can rent out other properties whilst living in one and be able to have an income too.

Does this sound better than birth, school, work, death? If it does, get in touch, you will not be disappointed.

**This article originally appeared in issue 14 of the Spanish Property Magazine.