- Jason Luban, 53, and Selena Medlen, 45, left Oakland, California, for Ronda, Spain, in 2016.
- They were tired of the Bay Area's cost, and found a cheaper and more meaningful life in Spain.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jason Luban, a medical practice consultant, and his wife Selena Medlen, an attorney, who made the decision to relocate from their longtime home of Oakland, California, to Ronda, Spain, in 2016. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.
Luban: We met in California and we both had already been there for a while. I started a clinic and built it up, so that kept me there. We never knew anything better.
Medlen: It was just a good place to be economically and build your career — there's a lot of opportunity there.
Luban: Before we moved, we had experienced a series of losses. We had tried for years to have kids, and had just had a very expensive failed round of IVF. In spite of the fact that I worked as an acupuncturist, I was so stressed out that I became an insomniac and basically forgot how to sleep. Our dog had just died, my mentor as well, and though we were making a good living, the expense of living in the Bay Area was wearing us down.
Medlen: I really thought we needed a break from our current lives and just sort of a reset.
Luban: Against this backdrop, we had a long-planned two week trip to southern Spain on the books. We were enchanted by the village of Ronda, midway between Seville and Granada.
Medlen: We both fell in love with Ronda because of how beautiful it was. It was full of wildflowers and greenery. We also saw that the rents were so much lower than in Oakland. Around that time, the dollar was pretty strong against the euro.
Luban: We were so desperate for change that on the way home, my wife said, "If you would sell your practice, I would move to Ronda." I sold it in six weeks. In 2016, three months after first visiting our village, we were moving back.
We are saving money and making friends
Medlen: Ronda is picturesque. It is surrounded by mountain ranges and undulating hills. Its farmland is very well preserved.
It's visited by tourists from around the world all year, so you don't feel like you're isolated from the world, but in a way it's kind of apart from the buzz of a modern city.
Luban: In the morning we can go for a walk and bike ride. We can work from anywhere and also get on a plane to travel anywhere in Europe within an hour or two.
Luban: We've downsized significantly from the United States. Probably 900 square feet.
We are paying €600 per month for a three-bedroom, two-bath apartment with great views. It's 1/6 of what we paid in rent for our home in Oakland.
Medlen: The last year we were in Oakland, our monthly expenses, including rent, were $3,500 plus utilities. It would be over $5,000 for the house now to rent it out. By living in Ronda, our monthly total is thousands less.
Luban: We have private healthcare that is about 1/10 the cost that we were paying for a good health plan in the United States, with zero deductibles, including dental care. The cost of food and going out is about 25% of what it would be had we stayed in California. We can leave our place unlocked and my wife can walk the dog at midnight without worrying about a thing.
Luban: It's really the people that keep us here.
There are two levels of moving to a new place: One is you meet all the expats, which is the easy first thing you do, and the second — which is important and not everybody does it — is to really try to get involved with the local people.
The people in Ronda are some of the friendliest people anywhere. You can walk outside with a dog and you'll make a new friend.
Our quality of life has improved greatly
Medlen: We're not 100% sure that we want to live here forever. We re-evaluate every year.
Luban: Although there are tons of stories about how great and how easy and cheap it is to buy a house in Europe, the thing is, you're dealing with a bureaucracy, equity, and governmental situation that you are not familiar with — and will never be familiar with.
Medlen: They don't have disclosures and there's no such thing as a buyer's agent.
There's no one looking out for you unless you hire a lawyer.
Luban: It can be a challenge to be this far away from our families, but the ability to work only 20 hours a week and more than cover all of our expenses, as well as put money into retirement, keeps us here.
Medlen: One of the bigger benefits for us is that we have more because of the lower cost of living. We don't feel the pressure to keep making more and more every year because prices are going up. We can work less and earn money.
Luban: It's incredible to realize now how stressed out we were trying to keep our lives going in the United States. We still make money in US dollars, and we pay US taxes. But it's incredible to realize what a toll the stress of life there was taking on us. There's no way to really know until you step away from it.